rs and a quarter, and though the chief
justice adjourned the court to the next day, the spell was unbroken.
He was not only acquitted, but borne home in triumph on the shoulders
of the crowd, the first, but by no means the last, time that such an
extremely inconvenient honour was paid him by the Halifax populace.
When once inside his own house, he rushed to his room and, throwing
himself on his bed, burst into passionate weeping--tears of pride, joy,
and overwrought emotion--the tears of one who has discovered new founts
of feeling and new forces in himself.

On that day the editor leaped into fame as an orator. Early in the
next year (1836) the House of Assembly was dissolved. Howe and his
friend William Annand were chosen as the Liberal candidates for the
county of Halifax, and were elected by large majorities. On taking his
seat Howe was at once recognized as the leader of the party, and
without delay began the fight.

[1] In 1872 it obtained a charter from the Dominion, but in 1903 was
absorbed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce.

{47}

CHAPTER IV

THE FIGHT FOR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

One of the oldest political struggles in the world is that of the people
to control their government. In this struggle the barons faced King John
at Runnymede. In this struggle King Charles I was sent to the block. It
is a struggle of which the end is not yet. In the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries the British people worked out what seemed to them a
satisfactory solution of the problem, by making the Executive, or
Government, responsible to the House of Commons, which in its turn had at
certain periods to appeal to the people in a general election.

In this system the Executive holds office just so long as it can obtain
the support of a majority in the House of Commons. Thus, while certain
members of the Executive may be chosen from the House of Lords or the
Legislative Council or the Senate or whatever the Upper House may be
called, most of its {48} members must sit in the House of Commons, in
order to explain or defend their policy. From this arrangement certain
consequences follow.

(1) To be endurable a government must be more or less permanent, must
have time to initiate and, partly at least, to carry out its policy.
Constantly shifting governments would be intolerable. But if the
government depends on the will of a majority, then that majority must
also be more or less permanent. Hence we g