of the greatest advocates in the annals of the Canadian Bar, Christopher Robinson, K. C, and the late B. B. Osier, K. C., but was ham pered throughout in his theory of the de fence, namely insanity, by the indignant and clever repudiation of it by the prisoner, whose ainour propre was thereby wounded. Addressing the jury by the permission of the Court after Mr. Fitzpatrick's brilliant and forcible appeal for a verdict of acquittal, Riel said: "It would be easy for me today to play insanity, because the circumstances are such as to excite any man. ... I have this sat isfaction that if I die, I will not be reputed by all men as insane, as a lunatic. . . . My condition is helpless, so helpless, that my lawyers try to prove insanity in order to save me that way. Mr. Fitzpatrick, in his beau tiful speech, has proved he believed I was in sane. If I am insane, of course I don't know it.'1 Other defence than insanity, however, there was none; and, rejecting the theory of moral irresponsibility, the jury found the prisoner guilty of the crime of treason, for which he was subsequently executed. Mr. Fitzpatrick was retained as counsel in some celebrated cases of a political nature which have occurred in recent years. In 1892 he successfully defended the Honorab'.e Honoré Mercier and Mr. Ernest Pacaud (both since deceased) in the prosecutions which ensued upon the fall of the Mercier Administration in the Province of Quebec. The year previous he had appeared before the Standing Committee of the House of Commons, Ottawa, as counsel for the Hon orable Thomas McGreevy, who was there charged with complicity in certain frauds connected with Government contracts. The proceedings before the Committee in this case, resulting as they did in the resignation of a Minister of the Crown and the retirement of the impugned member, were in many re spects the most remarkable in the history of the Dominion Parliament. In 1897 Mr.
Fitzpatrick represented the Dominion Gov ernment before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in an appeal from the Su preme Court of Canada in a special case touching the property, rights and legislative jurisdiction of the Dominion of Canada and the Provinces, respectively, in relation to rivers, lakes, harbors and fisheries in Can ada. (See [1898] A.C. 700.) Mr. Fitzpatrick has always taken a keen interest in public life, and has proved himself a staunch supporter of the Canadian Liberal party. He entered the Quebec Legislative Assembly in 1890 as the representative of Quebec county. In 1891 he was offered the office of Attorney-General for the Province, which he declined. On the formation of the Laurier Administration, following upon the defeat of the Conservative Government in 1896, Mr. Fitzpatrick entered Dominion pol itics as Solicitor-General, and was at once assigned a foremost place in his new sphere of usefulness by members on both sides of the House of Commons, as well as by the frequenters of the galleries. The important duties of Solicitor-General, both in and out of Court, were administered by him with great tact and ability; and beyond doubt the traditions of the office will bear the stamp of his personality for a long time to come. On the resignation of the Honorable David Mills. K. C., in February 1902, Mr. Fitzpatrick was called to the Cabinet as Minister of Justice. Early in 1897 he undertook a political mis. sion to Rome in behalf of a settlement of the Manitoba School question, which affected the right of the Roman Catholics to separate schools in that Province,—arkl, whatever tbe effect of Mr. Fitrpatrick's mission was, this much is certain that the difficulty was there after solved by Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Gov ernment to the extent of its ceasing to be a present factor in practical politics. It might be explained, by the way, that this stumbling-block to Dominion statesmen
