It is difficult to imagine a more uninviting arena than was presented at that time by Nova Scotian politics, or more undesirable associates in public life than the politicians of that day. The Province was ruled over by a Council consisting of a few officials living at Halifax, one of the leaders of which was the Church of England Bishop. In vain, therefore, year after year Mr. Haliburton got the House to vote a grant to a Presbyterian institution, the Pictou Academy. It was invariably rejected by the Council; while a small grant in aid of public schools was contemptuously rejected without any discussion as to it. His ridicule of the conduct of the Council in that matter gave them great offence, and they demanded an apology from the House, which, however, was refused, as the House resolved that there was nothing objectionable in his remarks, and also that they were privileged. The Council again more peremptorily demanded an apology, when the House, incredible as it may seem, unanimously stultified itself by resolving that Mr. Haliburton should be censured for his remarks. He accordingly attended in his place, and was censured by the Speaker! It must, therefore, have been an infinite relief, when an opportunity offered of escape from such an ordeal as public life was in those days. He lived in the district embraced by the Middle Division of the Court of Common Pleas, of which his father was Chief Justice, while he himself was the leader on that circuit. When, therefore, his father died, the vacant post was, as a matter of course, offered to him, and was gladly accepted. But in Pictou County, which was largely settled by “dour” Cameronians, and which gloried in those annual and ever-recurring battles against the Bishop and his followers, there are no doubt types of “Old Mortality” that will never cease to denounce his retirement from the perennial strife as a great sin, and an act of treason to his country, or (what is the same thing) to the Pictou Academy. In 1828, when only thirty-two years of age, he received the appointment of Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1841 the Court of Common Pleas was abolished, and his services were transferred to the Supreme Court. In February, 1856, he resigned his office of a Judge of that Court, and soon afterwards removed to England, where he continued to reside till his death. It was a curious instance of “the irony of fate,” when the successful advocate of the removal of the political disabilities of Roman Catholics was a quarter of a century afterwards called on as a Judge to rule that the rights of Roman Catholic laymen, as British subjects, could not be restricted by any ecclesiastical authority.