Major-General Rowan came down, and the thunder of cannon announced the close of the last parliament ever to sit in Montreal.

The summer sped away and autumn came, but tumult still lived in Montreal. In August the ringleaders in the spring riots were rearrested and released again on bail, but the mob flew to arms, and after nightfall gathered like fiends around M. Lafontaine's dwelling. The inmates knew the fate in store for them should they fall into the hands of that mob, and after due warning fired, wounding several of the rioters. One of the gang, William Mason, was shot in the thigh, and as he fell his associates cried out, "The blood of a Saxon has been shed by a Frenchman." Then, and, as it would seem, when the house and its inmates were about being torn to pieces, the military came and the mob went off, bearing with them the insensible Mason who died next morning.

Since the burning of the parliament buildings, the question of removing the seat of government from Montreal to some other city had been under the governor's consideration. The protracted and outrageous disposition of the mob, which appeared ready to rise to deeds of destruction at any moment out of cold blood, now decided his course. It was therefore fixed that the remaining two sessions of parliament should be held in Toronto, and that henceforth the sittings should be held at that city and Quebec, at each for four years alternately. Thus was the parliament driven out of Montreal, and thus was the reputation of the city once again, as but too often since, smirched by the lawlessness of her mobs.

A

CHAPTER IX.

THE GREAT MINISTRY FALLS.

FTER the wild paroxysm of loyalty had spent itself in storm, many of the tories, who by their speeches had stirred their followers up to the riot point, and afterwards attempted to find excuse for their excesses, began to feel ashamed of the part they had played and to be anxious about the consequences. A conclave was held at which it was decided to send Sir Allan MacNab and Mr. Cayley to England to avouch in Downing Street the loyalty of the party who had burnt down the parliament buildings, poked sticks through a picture of the queen, and attacked the representative of the Sovereign with addled eggs. No one to this day knows what reception these two got at Downing Street; but as they have remained so reserved upon the subject, it would not be hazardous to say that their silence was probably judicious. Hot upon their heels followed Mr. Francis Hincks, accredited by his government to make known fully the causes of the disgraceful outbreaks. We are not surprised that the colonial office about this time took a good deal of our provincial business into its own hands; for if two parties here had a dispute a jack-knife they ran to Downing Street to have it settled. Why was it necessary for Sir Allan and Mr. Cayley to hurry off to England to apologize to an indifferent official in the colonial office for the riots in Canada ?-and why was

about a

it

necessary for Mr. Francis Hincks to follow them there? We complained then, and murmur still about Downing Street interference; yet it is we who have taught the officials there how

to interfere. Even at this day, though we regard the authority of the colonial office only a fiction, and lash ourselves into a rage when it becomes a reality, we take sometimes the most trivial cases from our own supreme court and refer them to the judicial committee of the imperial privy council. The persons who proclaim the loudest that Canadians ought to be supreme in their own affairs, are among the very first, when a decision contrary to their views is given in our highest courts, to hasten away to the oracle at Downing Street. If every disputed case, originating in a magistrate's court about the paying of a municipal tax or the right of prosecution under a Dominion act, is to be submitted for a decision to the superior wisdom and higher justice of a conclave of English law officers, why perpetuate the costly mockery here of a "supreme "court?

Mr. Hincks returned from England, elated as a schoolboy who had received the "well done" of his parents. During the autumn the weather-cock in the colonial office described a revolution, and the governor-general was raised to the peerage of the United Kingdom for pursuing a course the precise opposite to that for which, five years before, Lord Metcalfe had been ennobled. Though perhaps title conferred according to this method of discrimination, does not fill our minds with awe for the "belted knight, the duke and earl and a' that,” that a king can make, the honour was highly prized at the time by Lord Elgin, and properly prized, for his conduct had been on trial before the home government. He made an extended tour of the province, and at every place was received with evidence of admiration and gratitude. As he drove through Toronto a party of gentlemen hurled a few eggs and some bottles at him, but they fell short of the mark. In Kingston a few persons came down to the wharf at which lay the viceregal steamer, and gave some dismal howls, then slunk away again. This trifling exhibition of tory manners was dictated by fear, however, rather than by hate, for the rumour had got abroad in Montreal that the seat of government was to be re