Lieutenant-Governor, in accordance with an intimation previously given, prorogued the Legislature on the 25th of March--they had been committed on the 22nd--and the power of the Assembly to commit did not extend beyond the time when it was actually in session. Colonels Coffin and Givins carried out their threat, and sued the Speaker for damages for false imprisonment. The right of the Assembly to commit for contempt was however a matter too well established, and was confirmed by the Court of King's Bench in another cause then pending. So that the Adjutant-General of Militia and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, in addition to their respective bills of costs, had their three days' imprisonment as a reward for their fealty to Sir Peregrine Maitland, and for their disloyalty to the Canadian people. Sir Peregrine appears to have felt a little dubious as to how his proceedings would be regarded at the Home Office. It was quite certain that the Colonial Secretary would hear of the affair, but that dignitary's approval was open to question. It would at all events be well that the official mind should receive its first impression on the subject from Sir Peregrine himself, who accordingly lost no time in sending over his own version of the transaction. His despatch, which bears internal evidence of having been written or revised by Attorney-General Robinson, is dated the 29th of March--the fourth day after the prorogation. Under the pretext of asking for advice as to how he should act in the future in case of any of the officials being summoned before Parliamentary committees without any notification having been made to himself, he recounts the story of the Niagara Falls outrage. His narrative, it is almost needless to say, is from first to last garbled and one-sided. Forsyth is referred to therein as "a person notoriously of indifferent character;" and the Assembly and its committees are maligned in language highly improper to be employed in a confidential communication from the Lieutenant-Governor of a colony to his superiors at home.[95] The Colonial Secretary, however, was shrewd enough to penetrate the veil of misrepresentation in which the despatch was enveloped, and to arrive at a pretty just appreciation of the merits of the case. He officially expressed his opinion that there had been adequate grounds for inquiry by the Assembly. "I cannot but consider," he wrote, "that Sir Peregrine Maitland would have exercised a sounder discretion had he permitted the officers to appear before the Assembly; and I regret that he did not accomplish the object he had in view in preventing Forsyth's encroachments by means of the civil power, which is said to have been at hand, rather than by calling in military aid." This despatch, however, was written, not to Sir Peregrine Maitland himself, but to his successor, Sir John Colborne. The Forsyth case, coming, as it did, in the wake of other ill-advised proceedings on the part of Sir