Of importance to the Port of Montreal is the West Indian commercial agreement made in 1913 between Canada and the British West Indies. By this reciprocal pact Canada secured a new market on advantageous terms, and the principal factor in bringing it about was the Canadian West Indian League with its headquarters in Montreal. As in Federal politics, so also in the life of the Provincial parliament, Montreal has also been a large factor, the principal reason being that it supplies the biggest share of the income of the Province, and also because the city’s representatives have usually been leaders of thought and probity. Practically all the premiers, from confederation to the present holder of the office, have been either citizens of Montreal or largely connected with the city. In the first legislative assembly of 1867 Montreal had four members; they being Sir George E. Cartier, Edward Cartier, his brother, and law partner, and who Sir George always said was the legal brains of the firm; A.W. Ogilvie, a prominent member of one of Montreal’s best known families; and the Hon. Louis Beaubien, who became Commissioner of Agriculture in the de Boucherville and Flinn administrations. Since that time Montreal has been represented at Quebec by such men as the Hon. L.O. Taillon (1875-1887) who became Premier in 1887, and afterwards joined the Federal government as Postmaster General; to-day he is Postmaster of Montreal; Hon. James McShane (1878-1891), who became in turn Provincial Minister of Public Works, Mayor of Montreal and Harbour Master of the Port; Hon. L.O. David (1886-1890), now Senator of Canada and City Clerk of Montreal; Dr. G. A. Lacombe (1897-1908), the author of the famous Lacombe Law of 1906, by which a debtor upon being too hard pressed by his creditors could come under the protection of the courts without any extra cost to himself; Sir Lomer Gouin, the present Premier, who first entered the legislature as member for St. James in 1897; Henri Bourassa (1908-1909); D.J. Decarie (1897-1904), and his son, the Hon. Jérémie Decarie, Provincial Secretary, who succeeded his father in the latter year; Hon. Dr. J.J.E. Guerin (1895-1904), Cabinet minister and Mayor of Montreal; Robert Bickerdike (1897-1900), the present federal member for St. Lawrence division of the city; the Hon. H.B. Rainville and the two George Washington Stephens--father and son--the one representing Montreal Centre from 1881 to 1886 and the other the St. Lawrence division, 1904 to 1908, being afterwards Chairman of the Harbour Commission.