ings Taylor, the deputy clerk with a seat at the table, tells
us in a sketch of Macdonald that Lord Elgin's face clearly marked
"deep displeasure and annoyance when listening to the speaker's
address," and that he gave "a motion of angry impatience when he found
himself obliged to listen to the repetition in French of the reproof
which had evidently galled him in English." This incident was in some
respects without parallel in Canadian parliamentary history. There was
a practice, now obsolete in Canada as in England, for the speaker, on
presenting the supply or appropriation bill to the governor-general
for the royal assent, to deliver a short address directing attention
to the principal measures passed during the session about to be
closed.[14] This practice grew up in days when there were no
responsible ministers who would be the only constitutional channel of
communication between the Crown and the assembly. The speaker was
privileged, and could be instructed as "the mouth-piece" of the House,
to lay before the representative of the Sovereign an expression of
opinion on urgent questions of the day. On this occasion Mr. Macdonald
was influenced entirely by personal spite, and made an unwarrantable
use of an old custom which was never intended, and could not be
constitutionally used, to insult the representative of the Crown, even
by inference. Mr. Macdonald was not even correct in his interpretation
of the constitution, when he positively declared that an act was
necessary to constitute a session. The Crown makes a session by
summoning and opening parliament, and it is always a royal prerogative
to prorogue or dissolve it at its pleasure even before a single act
has passed the two Houses. Such a scene could never have occurred with
the better understanding of the duties of the speaker and of the
responsibilities of ministers advising the Crown that has grown up
under a more thorough study of the practice and usages of parliament,
and of the principles of responsible government. This little political
episode is now chiefly interesting as giving an insight into one phase
of the character of a public man, who afterwards won a high position
in the parliamentary and political life of Canada before and after the
confederation of 1867, not by the display of a high order of
statesmanship, but by the exercise of his tenacity of purpose, and by
reason of his reputation for a spiteful disposition which made him
feared by friend a