CHAP. IV] THE GOVERNOR AS HEAD 228 
funds to bribe the constituencies by means of promising 
various privileges to capitalists in connexion with the 
building of the Pacific Railway. Naturally feeling ran high in 
Canada, and the Governor-General was asked by the Liberal 
press to put in force the reserve powers of the Crown and to 
dismiss the ministers. He declined to do so, and left matters 
to develop. A Royal Commission of three judges was at last 
appointed to investigate, and the evidence taken by them was 
laid before the Parliament when it reassembled in October, 
together with his own dispatches to the Secretary of State. 
The result was a strong outburst of feeling in Parliament, 
which led to the resignation of the Ministry to avoid a vote 
of censure, and to the formation of a new Government by 
Mr, Mackenzie, which held office until 1878. The Governor- 
General was shown by the result to have acted wisely : he 
recognized, as he wrote to the Secretary of State, that 
he could have dismissed his Ministry, and have taken the 
chance of Parliament approving his action, but he did not 
feel justified in doing so on the evidence before him. It 
was therefore with justice that he congratulated himself, in 
reporting on the termination of the incident to the Secretary 
of State, that the result had been brought about not by an 
ill-considered and hasty exercise of Imperial authority, nor 
by.the application of premature pressure from without, but 
by the free and spontaneous action of the representatives 
of the Canadian people. He recognized that he could have 
used the power of dismissal, and that he would have done so 
if essential, but he naturally was glad to have avoided the 
use of an instrument which would probably have told against 
the party which sought to find out the real facts of the case 
by enabling the Government to divert attention to what 
would have been called an invasion of the powers of Canada.l 
* Canada House of Commons Journals, October Session, 1873; Parl, 
Pap., C, 911. The matter is told at length in Pope’s Sir John Macdonald, 
especially ii. 174-89. The proposal to investigate Mr, Huntingdon’s 
charges came first in the form of a Parliamentary Committee, and a Bill 
was passed to give it power to administer oaths, but was disallowed as 
ultra, vires (under s, 18 of 30 Vict. c. 3). Then Parliament tried to discuss 
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