The Competition for Personal Savings Deposits in Canada: A Comment

to the Reid-Morris Combination,"33 and went on to denounce in the strongest possible terms not only his handling of the constitutional crisis but the whole of his personal conduct as governor. All such protests, however, had about them an air of apoplectic impotence. The dissolution could have been given to either Bond or Morris and justified with equal plausibility: by giving it to Morris the Governor and his superiors in the Colonial Office made what amounted to a simple political choice. The bulk of the Newfoundland electorate could not be interested in constitutional niceties: to them what mattered far more was who had local patronage to dispense and that, the Colonial Office had decided, would be Morris's party, not Bond's. In every town and outport, applicants for government contracts or civil service appointments, or even poor relief, had thus to seek the favour of the People's Party candidate. On May 8 1909, the govemment of Sir Edward Morris was returned to office with a majority of sixteen in the new Assembly.