ion. Those members of the Cartier-Macdonald
Government, on the contrary, who had been members of the
Macdonald-Cartier Government, did not vacate their seats by reason of
their resumption of office. The Independence of Parliament Act of 1857
provided that

whenever any person holding the office of Receiver General, Inspector
General, Secretary of the Province, Commissioner of Crown Lands,
Attorney General, Solicitor General, Commissioner of Public Works,
Speaker of the Legislative Council, {60} President of Committees of the
Executive Council, Minister of Agriculture, or Postmaster General, and
being at the same time a member of the Legislative Assembly or an
elected member of the Legislative Council, shall resign his office, and
within one month after his resignation accept any other of the said
offices, he shall not thereby vacate his seat in the said Assembly or
Council.

These words are clear. Any member of a government could resign his
office and accept another within one month without vacating his seat in
parliament. Thirty days had not elapsed since Macdonald had held the
portfolio of attorney-general. There was, therefore, no legal
necessity for his taking the sense of his constituents on resuming it.
Elections no more in 1858 than now were run for the fun of the thing.
One technical objection alone stood in the way. The Act says that if
any member resign office, and within one month after his resignation
accept _any other_ of the said offices, he shall not thereby vacate his
seat in the Assembly. It says nothing about the effect of accepting
anew the office just demitted, though it seems only reasonable {61} to
infer that, if the acceptance of a new office by a minister did not
call for a fresh appeal to his constituents, _a fortiori_ neither would
the mere resumption of an office whose acceptance they had already
approved. In the judgment of Macdonald and several of his colleagues
there was no legal impediment to the direct resumption of their former
offices, but a difference of opinion existed on the point, and, in
order to keep clearly within the law, the ministers first accepted
portfolios other than those formerly held by them. Thus, Cartier was
first sworn in as inspector-general and Macdonald as
postmaster-general. On the following day they resigned these
portfolios and were appointed respectively to their old offices of
attorney-general East and attorney-general West. Their colleagues i