History of the constitution: 1896

Aberdeen

On his blog Parliamentum, constitutional scholar James Bowden has recently posted a most intriguing  -- well, at least to those of us somewhat infected with parliamentary and constitutional nerdiness -- essay about Canadian political events in 1896. 

That summer, Charles Tupper, having led the Conservative Party to a resounding electoral defeat at the hands of Wilfrid Laurier, decided he would stay in office until Parliament was recalled and his government was formally defeated in the House. Tupper intended to continue governing vigorously, including making scores of patronage appointments to put loyal Tories in the judgeships, Senate seats and other much desired appointments.

The Governor General, Lord Aberdeen, declared it inappropriate for a government manifestly lacking the support of the new parliament to go on advising him.  He refused to make most of the appointments. (Doing some British Columbia legal history years ago, I came across a BC lawyer slated for a judgeship by Tupper and rejected by Aberdeen. He got the job eventually -- but not until the Tories returned to power in 1911.) 

Tupper resigned when his advice (and in effect his legitimacy as prime minister) was rejected. He also began proclaiming that he was the victim of an unconstitutional coup d'etat by a governor general who was obligated to take the advice of the advisors Parliament had given him. 

It's a long story with much constitutional arcana, and I will let Bowden tell it, which he does well and at length, with some contemporary comparisons thrown in as well. He approves of the conduct of Aberdeen and Laurier and comes down hard on Tupper.

April 20, 2020:  Jared Milne comments:

Bowden mentions that the electorate effectively decides who governs in the case of majority elections, but isn't that almost occurring even in minority governments now too? We can recall the backlash that occurred when it seemed like the Opposition parties were going to replace Stephen Harper in 2008 with a Stéphane Dion-led coalition government. Harper managed to convince a lot of the public that it would be undemocratic for him to be replaced by a coalition. The Governor General prorogued Parliament at his request.

Well, we might consider the alternate outcome in British Columbia (just one of many such examples) a couple of years ago.The Liberal Party won the largest bloc of seats, but was removed from power and placed in opposition for two years and more by the concerted action of the second and third place parties, the NDP and Greens. The Harper government survived not because of the prorogation but because the unity of the opposition parties collapsed when Parliament returned.