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which the administration were prepared to yield. Brown asked for half, with the recent division in the assembly in his mind. Macdonald and his friends said this was impossible, but promised to consult their colleagues. Brown desired four offices for his supporters and wished himself to remain out. Macdonald promised to consult with him as to the conservative personnel of the Cabinet. It was a hard-fought fight. There would be only three liberals in a cabinet of twelve. Taché's work was finished, and Macdonald would be the real prime minister. The presidency of the council which Brown was offered was a place of little influence or importance. The big public to whom the Globe was only second to the bible lay outside ready to misconstrue, ready to condemn. Broken friendships lay ahead. The radical party would look hopelessly to the future, feeling that they had been betrayed. Brown made perhaps the greatest constructive decision in Canadian history, certainly in his career. He had seen the vision. He turned his back on the past. With no coward's bent head, but with forward look and with squared shoulders, he went out from his Ur of the Chaldees with faith, and knowing not whither he went.

[AUTHORITIES.-State Papers, [A], Series G. 292, 296, 298, 465 (Canadian Archives); Journals of the Legislative Council and Assembly of Canada. O. D. Skelton, Life and Times of Sir A. T. Galt (Oxford, 1920); J. Pope, Memorials of the Right Honourable Sir John A. Macdonald, vol. i (Ottawa, 1894); Alexander Mackenzie, The Life and Speeches of George Brown (Toronto, 1882), contain much valuable material. The pamphlet literature of importance includes J. Cauchon (?), Étude sur l'Union projetée des Provinces Britanniques de l'Amérique du Nord (Quebec, 1858); Alexander Morris, Nova Britannia: or British North America, its Extent and Future (Montreal, 1858); The Hudson's Bay and Pacific Territories (Montreal, 1859); A. T. Galt, Canada, 1849-59 (Quebec, 1860); C. B. Adderley, Letter to Rt. Hon. Benjamin Disraeli on the Present Relations of England with the Colonies (London, 1861); T. D. McGee, • Plea for British American Nationality' (The British American Magazine, August 1863). C. D. Allin, The Genesis of the Confederation of Canada (Kingston, 1912), discusses the influence of the British American League in the federation movement.]

CHAPTER XIX

THE COMING OF FEDERATION

MACDONALD and Brown came together none too soon. The Maritime Provinces had seen the wider colonial synthesis grow more hopeless as the Canadas continued to cling to party warfare. Nova Scotia was specially irritated by the apparent lack of constitutional purpose and of constructive energy in relation to transportation, and determined to urge a union among the Maritime Provinces, which, if worked out, would restore in some respects the original historical union which had existed before New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island had been erected into separate governments. Before Brown took the great step forward, Charles Tupper, relying on the dispatch from the colonial office to which reference has been made,1 moved a resolution in the assembly of Nova Scotia for a legislative maritime union to be worked out by delegates sitting in conference at Charlottetown. Tupper did not abandon hope of a British North America, which he had frequently urged in public, but he felt that the smaller union which he now proposed might give occasion to Canada to waken up from its apparent apathy. At any rate, internal and external events within recent years pointed to the necessity for local consolidation. There had been no dangerous and arresting difficulties in government, but separation disclosed weaknesses in the negotiating of policies with the imperial cabinet and in meeting the innuendoes of American politicians. Personal reasons, wholly praiseworthy and constructive, entered into the proposals. Many began to look for a wider sphere of political activity than that afforded by a sparsely populated province. Tupper succeeded in con

1 See above, p. 292.

vincing Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island of the necessity for action, and a conference was called to meet at Charlottetown on September 1, 1864. In Canada the event was considered propitious, and at the request of his cabinet Lord Monck entered into communication with the lieutenant-governors of the Maritime Provinces and asked if a Canadian delegation might join the conference and lay before it the plans on which the coalition ministry had been formed in Canada. Permission was only too gladly given, and in due course eight Canadian ministers, including Macdonald, Brown, Cartier, and Galt, joined the conference.

The details of what took place are apparently lost, if ever they were committed to writing. But it is possible to piece together enough of the history to give the Charlottetown conference its due place in the developments. The Maritime delegates were unwilling that their own scheme should be discussed first, lest such a discussion should prejudice wider plans. Accordingly the Canadians were asked to open the general debate. While professing to favour the union of the Maritime Provinces as a step in a greater union, they were not unwilling to disclose their ideas and the consultations which had taken place in their cabinet since its formation. Galt dealt with the financial aspects of a general union. Brown outlined the organization, scope, and work of a federal legislature. Macdonald sketched the general framework of government. It would thus seem that many vital questions were opened up. The delegates from the Maritime Provinces then proceeded to the separate consideration of the proposals to which their respective legislatures had agreed. It was at once apparent that the local union could not hope for immediate success. New Brunswick was doubtful. Prince Edward Island refused to surrender its local government. Nova Scotia alone was prepared to support whole-heartedly the plan out of which the conference had arisen. Federation seemed to satisfy the conditions. The desire for strength,

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influence, and width would be satisfied with a central government, and local sentiment would not be outraged by the destruction of local institutions. On adjourning to Halifax, Macdonald was able to announce that the delegates were one in believing that a general federal union could be formed. Arrangements were made for delegates from all the colonies to assemble at Quebec during the following month to consider, and if possible to work out, a plan to the possibilities of which the Charlottetown conference had agreed. There were, however, vague indications of danger. Joseph Howe was unable, owing to his official duties as imperial commissioner for fisheries, to go to Charlottetown. He professed to give support to anything that might be agreed on. When the Quebec conference had concluded its sittings he found on his return from Newfoundland that the actual foundations had been laid without him. His influence in his native province was so great that his absence from the negotiations might and did prove highly detrimental. In addition, Arthur Hamilton Gordon, lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, and Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell, lieutenantgovernor of Nova Scotia, were not at all sympathetic. From these three sources future difficulties arose.

On October 10, 1864, there assembled at Quebec one of the most epoch-making conferences in history. It was an assembly of almost all the greatest British North Americans in public life-Taché, the aged French-Canadian premier; Cartier, who bore the olive branch of union to his countrymen; Galt, whose genius saved the proposal from wreck on the dangerous shoals of financial difficulties; Macdonald and Brown, who had shed party for the higher vision; Tupper and Tilley and others of less note, but of no less necessity at the moment. The Quebec conference saw the death with the autumn of 1864 of the visionless past, and by its constructive work it took a place among the great

1 See Tupper to Howe, August 16, 1864, and Howe to Tupper, August 16, 1864, J. W. Longley, Joseph Howe, pp. 176 ff. (Toronto, 1904).

ventures of political faith. It is impossible to reconstruct those pregnant days without emotion. Outside, the most ghastly civil war in history was desolating a kindred race, and Sherman was on the move, leaving destruction and ruin in his wake. Inside, broken little provinces had toiled for a long colonial night and caught apparently nothing. Sectionalism was a recent sore. Party politics then as now were unstable. Jealousies, but recently shed, might easily be reassumed. Suspicion, publicly cast out, lay watching in the secret recesses of every heart. Every step forward meant a backward look to see how others viewed it. Upper Canada and Lower Canada composed a kind of armed neutrality. The Maritime Provinces were on guard lest they should sell their birthright for a mess of Canadian pottage. Historical darkness lies almost impenetrable over the scene. No official record has survived. Only a few notes kept by Lieut. Col. Hewitt Bernard, the executive secretary, and A. A. Macdonald, a delegate from Prince Edward Island, have come down to us. At times the issue was ambiguous, at times doubtful, at times hopeless. Men's hearts almost failed them because of fears. It is only possible to imagine the heated discussions, the clash of interests, the balancings of hope and despair, when behind closed doors strong men tried to crush down passion with the hands of creative faith. Joy came at length in the morning. In less than eighteen days seventy-two resolutions were agreed on, which practically became the British North America Act of 1867, and the Quebec conference gave not only a constitution to the colonies but an example and an inspiration to states yet unborn within the empire. Canadian unity may not have behind it as prelude the military achievements of the embattled farmers' which gave to the world its first great federal system, nor the dramatic and brilliant faith which launched the union of South Africa. It has, however, a singular romance. There was, too, a stroke of genius in selecting Quebec as the place for the momentous conference. Where

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