To these terms the contractor was not prepared to accede. It is difficult not to feel sympathy with his refusal. I had the advantage of hearing the contention on this point of a well-known Newfoundland Liberal, who brought forward intelligible, but not, I think, convincing arguments. The clause against assignment without the consent of Government ought surely to be qualified by the implied condition that such consent must not be unreasonably withheld. In the private law of England equity has long since grafted this implication upon prohibitions against assignment. If, however, the Government had been content with a blunt _non possumus_, a case could no doubt have been made out for insisting upon their pound of flesh. They chose, however, to do the one thing which was neither dignified nor defensible: they offered to assent to an assignment on condition that Mr Reid surrendered his most valuable privileges. It is no answer to say, as many Newfoundland Liberals did say: We opposed the contract from the start, and it is therefore impossible for us to assent to any extension of the contractor's privileges. In fact, such an argument seems to betray an inability to understand the ground principle on which party government depends. That principle, of course, is the loyal acceptance by each party on entering office of the completed legislation of its predecessors. To borrow a metaphor from the Roman lawyers, the _hereditas_ may be _damnosa_, but the party succeeds thereto as a _haeres necessarius_. Any other rule would substitute anarchy for order, and an endless process of reversing the past for a salutary attention to the present.