,000,000
dollars, he and his three sons forming the company. On the properties
included he proposed to raise 5,000,000 dollars by debenture bonds,
this sum to be expended in development.[51]

A Liberal Ministry under Mr Bond, who had consistently opposed the
Reid arrangements, displaced Sir James Winter. Finding himself unable
to hold his own in the Assembly, Mr Bond formed a coalition with Mr
Morris, the leader of a section of Liberals who had not associated
themselves with the party opposition to the contract. The terms of
accommodation were simple: "The contract was to be treated as a _fait
accompli_, but no voluntary concessions were to be made to Mr Reid
except for a consideration." Consistently with this view, Mr Reid was
informed by the Government that the permission he requested would be
given upon the following terms:

(1) He should agree to resign his proprietary rights in the railway.

(2) He should restore the telegraphs to the ownership of the
Government.

(3) He should consent to various modifications of his land grants in
the interest of squatters able to establish their _de facto_
possession.

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