Legislature of Nova Scotia presenting him with a costly sword. Sir Fenwick was the first native Governor of Nova Scotia, an office afterwards filled by two distinguished Nova Scotians, the Hon. Joseph Howe (1873) and the Hon. Sir A. G. Archibald, who had done good service in Manitoba previously.

(9) The session of 1856 settled that the members of the Upper House or Legislative Council who, according to the Act of 1841, had been nominated by the Crown, were to be now chosen by the vote of the Canadian electors. Those who had already been appointed by the Crown were to retain their seats during life; but twelve new members were to be elected every second year to serve for eight years, and the whole country was divided for the purposes of election into forty-eight electoral districts. An elective Upper House had been the dream of Louis Papineau, but his motive for desiring it was that of securing French domination and perhaps French independence in Lower Canada.

(10) There was a constitutional crisis during the Governorship of Sir Edmund Head in 1858, when the Queen was asked to decide upon a seat of Government in Canada. No fewer than five cities (Quebec, Toronto, Montreal amongst them) claimed the distinction. But the Queen chose Ottawa (Bytown). There was some dissatisfaction at this choice, but, as time went on, the wisdom of it became apparent. By its geographical position the town commanded both steamboat and railway traffic, and was removed equally far from the jealousies of Upper and Lower Canada.

(11) During Sir Edmund Head's term of office substantial progress had been made. In 1861 the population of all Canada amounted to 2,506,000. The terrible struggle that was going on in the United States between North and South had indirectly benefited Canada. In

the fisheries she was relieved from American competition, and her agriculturists and farmers found a ready market for their produce in the war-exhausted regions across the border. Canada herself was on the eve of greater things. The outlines of a wider confederation, which should pacify all parts and unite all parts, were more clearly seen. It was the time for wise men and for wise measures. Parliamentary and public life in the colonies, during these times of the struggle for emancipation, was a splendid training-ground for men of genius, faith, and imagination. Those who have contended for the freedom of their province and colony, and not forgotten the claims of the empire at large, are worthy of honour and respect from every quarter of it.

(12) Lord Monck succeeded Sir Edmund Head (October, 1861), and it was during his administration that the true relation of the colonial Governor to the colonial constitution was discovered and acted upon. Contending parties in Canada were equal, and the balance was so slight that the result was practically a dead-lock between the Upper Canadian Reformers and the Lower Canadian Conservatives. Lord Monck was, to use Lord Norton's words, the first Governor-General to hold a perfectly neutral constitutional-monarchical attitude towards contending parties. He so calmly confronted them, without fear or favour, that a coalition took place between the Brown Reformers and Cartier Conservatives on the policy of a federal union. This coalition included the names also of Tache, Alexander Galt, and John A. Macdonald.

(13) This question now before the country was expressed in Lord Monck's speech upon the occasion of the opening of Parliament in 1865. 'It remained with the public men of British North America to say whether the vast tract of country which they inhabited should be consolidated into a State, combining within its area all the

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elements of national greatness, providing for the security of its component parts, and contributing to the strength and stability of the empire, or whether the several provinces of which it was constituted should remain in their present fragmentary and isolated condition, comparatively powerless for mutual aid, and incapable of undertaking their proper share of imperial responsibility.' The answer to this is the Confederation Bill of 1867. It is instructive to read that the politicians of the great Republic across the border had just previously introduced a Bill into Congress, providing for the admission of British North America into the American Union as four separate States, and the assumption of their public debt by the Federal Government.

CHAPTER XX.

Confederation.

(1) IN 1864 the Governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island appointed delegates to arrange the terms of a legislative Union of the three Provinces. The delegates met at Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island on September 1, and amongst them were Charles Tupper, W. A. Henry, R. B. Dickey, Jonathan McCully, and Adams G. Archibald from Nova Scotia; Samuel G. Tilley, J. M. Johnson, J. H. Gray, E. B. Chandler, and W. H. Stevens from New Brunswick; Colonel Gray, E. Palmer, W. H. Pope, G. Coles, and A. McDonald from Prince Edward Island. The Coalition Government, which had been considering the

question of the union of the two Provinces of the St. Lawrence valley, asked permission to join the Charlottetown Convention, and accordingly John A. Macdonald, George Brown, Alexander Galt, George E. Cartier, Thomas D'Arcy Magee and William McDougall came down the St. Lawrence in the Government steamer Victoria, to join the rest. Out of the common needs and difficulties of the River and Maritime Provinces a representative Council had arisen. The equally divided representation of 42 members each for the two River Provinces (1841) was becoming unfair in the presence of a very rapidly increasing immigrant British population in Ontario, and by its even balance was destroying Ministries and rendering a strong party government impossible. The inhabitants of both Provinces, the progressive British element in Ontario and the Conservative French in Quebec, welcomed confederation as giving them, by means of provincial autonomy, the right of remedying local grievances arising from different laws, customs and religion, now denied them by the very position of parties. The colonists of the Maritime Provinces had stood apart too long as four separate Governments, to be blind to the obvious advantages of political amalgamation now more than ever forced upon them. The Conservatives and Liberals (or, as they were called, 'The Tories' and 'The Grits') were able to join hands on the momentous issue before them, which was nothing more nor less than the re-construction of their machinery of government. The arrival of the delegates from the River Provinces had widened the character, aim and scope of the Charlottetown Convention, and the delegates of the Maritime Provinces were not authorised at first to discuss the larger Union. It was clear that an effort should be made in every province to make the idea of confederation popular, and with this object in view the

first convention decided to make an appeal to the various centres and sound the constituencies. At the same time the delegates made arrangements for another meeting at Quebec, and the result was the Quebec Scheme (Oct. 10, 1864).

(2) The Canadian Legislatures of the Upper and Lower Provinces met in Quebec in February, 1865, and adopted the Union resolutions by a large majority. The subject had, practically speaking, been a familiar one with them for some years, and upon its satisfactory solution depended a release from an embarrassing political dead-lock. With the Maritime Provinces the case was different. There was a storm of opposition in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. In New Brunswick a general election took place and an anti-union Government came into power; in Nova Scotia the subject of confederation was shelved, and the chances of the success of the Quebec meeting seemed very remote. The main objection of the Nova Scotians was that they did not receive enough of the Dominion revenue to meet the expenses of government. But there was suddenly a great revulsion of feeling in New Brunswick. The Lieutenant-Governor and a majority of the Legislative Council had always been strongly in favour of Union, and in a speech from the throne the Lieutenant-Governor, in opposition to his constitutional advisers, recommended Union, and spoke as emphatically on it as Lord Monck, the Governor-General. There was a constitutional crisis and the Ministry resigned; a general election took place, an Unionist majority was returned, and a Ministry formed under the leadership of the Hon. S. L. Tilley. This change of views in the one Maritime Province influenced public opinion in the other. The Government of Nova Scotia again approached the subject, and upon their representations some essential alterations were introduced into the