r. Willson, the Reform
candidate for the Speakership in the Assembly, already referred to, is
not easy to say. That his deliverances may have produced an effect upon
one or two waverers, and thereby have brought about the desired
result--the vote, it will be remembered, was a close one, standing
twenty-one to nineteen[67]--is possible enough. It is at all events
certain that the combined action of the Reform Party in and out of
Parliament produced early and specific consequences. On a number of
questions the Government found themselves confronted by a hostile
majority considerably greater than they had encountered on the
Speakership. But these seeming triumphs were of no immediate advantage
to the Opposition. Let the majority against the Government be ever so
great in the Assembly, the official policy remained the same. The Upper
House rejected Bill after Bill which had been passed by the Lower, and
the Executive clung to their places in undisturbed serenity.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] _Ante_, p. 44.

[58] The repealing statute is 1 Geo. IV. chapter 4. The statute repealed
is 59 Geo. III., sess. 1, chapter 2.

[59] It was however a bare majority, the vote standing 17 to 16.

[60] See Stat. 2 Geo. IV. chapter 4, passed 17th January, 1822.

[61] Six years later Francis Collins, editor of _The Canadian Freeman_,
lay in York jail for having charged Attorney-General Robinson with
"native malignancy." During his incarceration he addressed several open
letters to his prosecutor, in one of which may be found the following
comments upon the episode referred to in the text:--

"In the next place, a most respectable portion of the colony returned
the venerable Mr. Bidwell, Sen., to Parliament, and upon this occasion I
think you displayed more 'native malignancy' than I ever witnessed, in a
political way, in the colony. A hired pimp was despatched to Boston to
hunt up slanders, originating in political feuds there. Mr. Bidwell was
put on his trial before a corrupt House, and when thus you saw your
innocent victim within your reach, then it was you lifted up the
flood-gates of your loyal wrath, and let your vengeance fall upon his
devoted head. Then it was that the overflowings of your 'native
malignancy' hurled the tears of loyalty down your pallid cheeks. Then it
was that your natural flippancy gave rapid birth to the most gross,
unqualified and unjustifiable abuse I ever heard heaped, not only upon a
member of Parliament, but even