Lord Metcalfe, at the very outset, decided not to distribute the patronage of the crown under the advice of his responsible advisers, but to ignore them, as he declared, whenever he deemed it expedient. No responsible ministers could, with any regard to their own self-respect, or to the public interests, submit to a practice directly antagonistic to responsible government, then on its trial. Consequently, all the members of the Baldwin-Lafontaine government, with the exception of Mr. Daly, immediately resigned, when Lord Metcalfe followed so unconstitutional a course. Mr. Dominick Daly, afterwards knighted when governor of Prince Edward's Island--who had no party proclivities, and was always ready to support the crown in a crisis--became nominally head of a weak administration. The ministry was only completed after a most unconstitutional delay of several months, and was even then only composed of men whose chief merit was their friendliness to the governor, who dissolved the assembly and threw all the weight of the crown into the contest. The governor's party was returned with a very small majority, but it was a victory, like that of Sir Francis Bond Head in 1835, won at the sacrifice of the dignity of the crown, and at the risk of exciting once more public discontent to a dangerous degree. Lord Metcalfe's administration was strengthened when Mr. Draper resigned his legislative councillorship and took a seat in the assembly as leader. Lord Metcalfe's conduct received the approval of the imperial authorities, who elevated him to the peerage--so much evidence that they were not yet ready to concede responsible government in a complete sense. The result was a return to the days of old paternal government, when the parliamentary opposition was directed against the governor himself and the British government of which he was the organ. Lord Metcalfe had been a sufferer from cancer, and when it appeared again in its most aggravated form he returned to England, where he died a few months later (1846). The abuse that followed him almost to the grave was a discreditable exhibition of party rancour, but it indicated the condition to which the public mind had been brought by his unwise and unconstitutional conduct of public affairs--conduct for which his only apology must be the half-hearted, doubtful policy of the imperial authorities with regard to the province, and his own inability to understand the fundamental principles of responsible government.