which always asserted itself when he received a positive or fancied injury.  He had been a solicitor-general of Upper Canada in the LaFontaine-Baldwin government, and had never forgiven Hincks for not having promoted him to the attorney-generalship, instead of W.B.  Richards, afterwards an eminent judge of the old province of Canada, and first chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Dominion.  Hincks had offered him the commissionership of crown lands in the ministry, but he refused to accept any office except the one on which his ambition was fixed.  Subsequently, however, he was induced by his friends to take the speakership of the legislative assembly, but he had never forgiven what he considered a slight at the hands of the prime minister in 1851.  Accordingly, when he appeared at the Bar of the Council in 1853, he made an attempt to pay off this old score.  As soon as he had made his bow to the governor-general seated on the throne, Macdonald proceeded to read the following speech, which had been carefully prepared for the occasion in the two languages: 

“May it please your Excellency:  It has been the immemorial custom of the speaker of the Commons’ House of Parliament to communicate to the throne the general result of the deliberations of the assembly upon the principal objects which have employed the attention of parliament during the period of their labours.  It is not now part of my duty thus to address your Excellency, inasmuch as there has been no act passed or judgment of parliament obtained since we were honoured by your Excellency’s announcement of the cause of summoning of parliament by your gracious speech from the throne.  The passing of an act through its several stages, according to the law and custom of parliament (solemnly declared applicable to the parliamentary proceedings of this province, by a decision of the legislative assembly of 1841), is held to be necessary to constitute a session of parliament.  This we have been unable to accomplish, owing to the command which your Excellency has laid upon us to meet you this day for the purpose of prorogation.  At the same time I feel called upon to assure your Excellency, on the part of Her Majesty’s faithful Commons, that it is not from any want of respect to yourself, or to the August personage whom you represent in these provinces, that no answer has been returned by the legislative assembly to your gracious speech from the throne.”

It is said by those who were present on this interesting occasion that His Excellency was the most astonished person in the council chamber.  Mr. Fennings 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