The radical opposition between the governor and the coalition which his
executive council represented led naturally to the crisis of November
26th, 1843. For months the feeling of mutual alienation had been
growing. On several occasions, more notably in the appointment to the
speakership of the legislative council, and in one to a vacant
clerkship of the peace, the governor's use of patronage had caused
offence to his ministers; and, towards the end of November, the entire
Cabinet, with the exception of Daly, whose nickname "the perpetual
secretary" betokened that he was either above party feeling or beneath
it, handed in their resignations. The motives of their action became,
as will be shown, the subject of violent controversy; but the statement
of Sir Charles Metcalfe seems in itself the fairest and most probable
account of what took place. "On Friday, Mr. La Fontaine and Mr.
Baldwin came to the Government House, and after some irrelevant matters
of business, and preliminary remarks as to the course of their
proceedings, demanded of {169} the Governor-general that he should
agree to make no appointment, and no offer of an appointment, without
previously taking the advice of the Council; that the lists of
candidates should in every instance be laid before the Council; that
they should recommend any others at discretion; and that the
Governor-general in deciding, after taking their advice, shall not make
any appointment prejudicial to their influence."[9]

At a slightly later date the ministers attributed their resignation to
a serious difference between themselves and the governor-general on the
theory of responsible government. To that statement Metcalfe took
serious exception, but he admitted that "in the course of the
conversations which both on Friday and Saturday followed the explicit
demand made by the Council regarding the patronage of the Crown, that
demand being based on the construction put by some of the gentlemen on
the meaning of responsible government, different opinions were elicited
on the abstract theory of that still undefined question as applicable
to a colony."[10] There can be no doubt that the _casus belli_ was an
absolute assertion of the right of the council to control patronage,
but it is, at the same time, {170} perfectly clear that in the opinion
of the ministers the disposal of patronage formed part of the system of
responsible government, and that they were quite explicit to Metcalfe