erman on the lower reaches
could prevent the one higher up from floating down his logs, Mowat had
an act passed providing that all persons possessed, and were thereby
declared always to have possessed, the right denied by this judgment.
This measure was at once disallowed by the Dominion Government. Then
the Privy Council upheld the contention of the Ontario Government as to
what the law had been even before the act was passed; and, when in 1884
the provincial legislature again passed the same act, the Dominion
conceded the point. Thereafter the veto power has been used only when
Dominion or Imperial interests were concerned, or when a statute was
claimed to be beyond the power of the province to pass. The wisdom or
justice of measures affecting only the local interests of the citizens
of a province has been left to the judgment of its own people to
determine.

The regulation of the liquor traffic provided the next battle-ground.
In 1876 Ontario had passed the Crooks Act, which took the power of
granting licences from the municipalities and gave it to provincial
commissioners. Two years later the Dominion parliament passed the
Scott Act, giving counties power to {70} prohibit the sale of liquor
within their limits. The constitutionality of this act was upheld in
1882 in the Russell case, and Sir John Macdonald concluded that if the
Dominion had power to pass the Scott Act, the province had not the
power to pass the Crooks Act. 'If I carry the country,' he declared at
a public meeting in 1882, 'as I will do, I will tell Mr Mowat, that
little tyrant who has attempted to control public opinion by getting
hold of every office from that of a Division Court bailiff to a
tavern-keeper, that I will get a bill passed at Ottawa returning to the
municipalities the power taken from them by the Licence Act.' At the
next session the M'Carthy Act was passed, providing, not for municipal
control, but for control by federal commissioners. Here again the
highest courts held in 1883 and 1884 that the Ontario measure was
within the power of the province, but that the M'Carthy Act was beyond
that of the Dominion. Once more 'the little tyrant' had scored!

The Dominion Franchise Act of 1885 was the last important measure which
need be noted in this connection. By the British North America Act the
Dominion was to adopt the provincial franchise lists for its elections
{71} until parliament should order otherwise. Sir John Macdonald