partly because of the prejudice of Tache and Cartier against the Rouges; and this exclusion was a serious defect in a ministry supposed to be formed on a broad and patriotic basis. The result was, that while the Liberals were in a majority in the legislature, they had only three representatives in a ministry of twelve. Such a government, with its dominant Conservative section led by a master in the handling of political combinations, was bound to lose its character of a coalition, and become Conservative out and out. A broader question is involved than that of the mere party advantage obtained by Macdonald and his party in the retention of power and patronage. There was grave danger to the essential principles of Liberalism, of which Brown was the appointed guardian. Holton put this in a remarkable way during the debate on confederation. It was at the time when Macdonald had moved the previous question, when the coalition government was hurrying the debate to a conclusion, in the face of indignant protests and demands that the scheme should be submitted to the people. Holton told Brown that he had destroyed the Liberal party. Henceforth its members would be known as those who once ranged themselves together, in Upper and Lower Canada, under the Liberal banner. Then followed this remarkable appeal to his old friend: "Most of us remember--those of us who have been for a few years in public life in this country must remember--a very striking speech delivered by the honourable member for South Oxford in Toronto in the session of 1856 or 1857, in which he described the path of the attorney-general [Macdonald] as studded all along by the gravestones of his slaughtered colleagues. Well, there are not wanting those who think they can descry, in the not very remote distance, a yawning grave waiting for the noblest victim of them all. And I very much fear that unless the honourable gentleman has the courage to assert his own original strength--and he has great strength--and to discard the blandishments and the sweets of office, and to plant himself where he stood formerly, in the affections and confidence of the people of this country, as the foremost defender of the rights of the people, as the foremost champion of the privileges of a free parliament--unless he hastens to do that, I very much fear that he too may fall a victim, the noblest victim of them all, to the arts, if not the arms of the fell destroyer."