244 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART II
resented by Mr. Mercier and his supporters, and his conduct
was violently denounced as unconstitutional and illegal.
But Mr. de Boucherville, who was asked by the Lieutenant-
Governor to take office, was successful in forming a Ministry,
and at the election in March 1892 he was triumphantly
returned with an overwhelming majority of thirty-one, in
a House then of seventy-three members.
Among the numerous points discussed during the course
of the dispute, which was conducted with much heat on both
sides, as the Ministry was a Liberal one and the Lieutenant-
Governor the nominee of a Conservative Government at
Ottawa, there was the point whether the Lieutenant-Governor
had not broken the law in dissolving the new Legislature
before it could conduct any business, with the result that
the year 1891 saw no session whatever of the Legislature of
Quebec? It was argued that this was a breach of the pro-
visions of the British North America Act, which requires one
session of the Legislature every year, but on the other hand
it was contended, apparently correctly, that it was sufficient
that the Legislature should be formally summoned, and that
the necessity of having one business session a year was subject
also to the power of the Lieutenant-Governor at any time to
dissolve the Legislature. In any case, it was certainly in
harmony with common sense that the Legislature should not
have met until a general election had decided the question
as to the confidence of the country in the new Ministry.
In 1903 the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia
decided to dismiss Colonel Prior, who was then the head of
the provincial Ministry. Ever since 1900 there had been
constant strife of parties divided on no intelligible lines, and
mainly concerned with the ambition for power of the several
members of the party. But the Ministry had suffered early
in the vear a serious blow by allegations made against two
1 See Canadian Gazette, xviii. 4, 9, 81, 97, 289, 296, 300, 322, 324, 398,
471, 513, 565, 584, 588; Canada Sess. Pap., 1891, No. 86; 1892, No. 88.
* Cf. Provincial Legislation, 1867-95, p. 456; in 1910 there was only a
formal session in Saskatchewan.
* See Canadian Annual Review, 1903, pp. 213 seq.
