In April, 1853, the Honorable Charles Young and Captain Swabey—the former attorney general, and the latter registrar of deeds and chairman of the Board of Education—resigned their seats as members of the executive council. Mr. Joseph Hensley was appointed to the office of attorney general, and Mr. John Longworth to that of solicitor general, in place of Mr. Hensley. Mr. Young’s resignation was mainly owing to the approval, by a majority of his colleagues in the government, of an act to regulate the salaries of the attorney general and solicitor general, and clerk of the Crown and prothonotary, for their services, to which he and other members of the government had serious objections, which they embodied in a protest on the passing of the bill. The temperance organizations in the island were particularly active at the period at which we have arrived. A meeting was held in Charlottetown, for the purpose of discussing the propriety and practicability of abolishing by law the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors. There would be consistency in prohibiting the manufacture and importation of intoxicating liquors, as well as the sale of them. But the Maine law, which permits the importation of liquor into the state, whilst it prohibits its sale, is a useless anomaly. Let anyone visit Portland—where he might expect to see the law decently enforced—and he will find in one, at least, of the principal hotels in the city, a public bar-room in which alcoholic liquors of all kinds are openly sold; and, if he chooses to begin business in the liquor line, he can, for thirty dollars, procure a license from one of the officials of the United States government, for that purpose. The United States law sanctions the importation and sale of intoxicating drinks; the Maine state law forbids the sale ostensibly, whilst it is really permitted. The temperance movement has effected a vast amount of good, but coercion is not the means by which it has been accomplished. During the session of 1853, an act to extend the elective franchise was passed, which made that privilege almost universal. The house was dissolved during the summer, and at the general election which ensued the government was defeated. A requisition was in consequence addressed to the governor by members of the assembly, praying for the early assembling of the house, in order that, by legal enactment, departmental officers might be excluded from occupying seats in the legislature, to which request the governor did not accede.