party and a French-Canadian Radical party known as the 'rouges'. It was that astute parliamentary hand, John A. Macdonald, who first bridged the artificial gulf existing between the French-Canadians and the Conservatives. But, it must be remembered, Liberals and Conservatives from different portions of Canada, though sharing the same name, did not really hold the same views and opinions. Thus every ministry was a coalition, possessing the inevitable weakness of a coalition. How was it possible that strong Protestants from Upper Canada should see eye to eye with their Roman Catholic colleagues on such questions as education; or that the Upper Canadian grievance of the clergy reserves should interest much the FrenchCanadians? The dual nature of the Government was in every way emphasized. There were two first ministers, one English and one French. The Union Legislature started with a pre-eminence given to the English language, but this pre-eminence had soon to be taken away. To such lengths did mutual suspicion and distrust go that it came to be a kind of convention that a ministry must possess a dual majority; that is, a majority from both Upper and Lower Canada. The system was extremely expensive, as, if public money was spent on one portion of Canada, an equal sum had to be provided for the other. Thus, when the abolition of the seigniorial tenures in Lower Canada involved large payments from the public purse, an equal sum had to be given to Upper Canada. There was no real life in the party controversies, and the dreary struggle between the ins and outs never ended in a real victory. In three years four ministries were defeated, and two general elections only gave uncertain results. Meanwhile in Upper Canada the demand for representation by population was gathering strength; and Conservatives, as well as Liberals, from the upper division of the Province were beginning to urge its necessity. But such a solution would have seemed to the French-Canadians a direct breach of a solemn engage

ment, and would assuredly not have made for general harmony.

In this state of things, when the Union as framed by the Act of 1840 had been tried and found wanting, it was natural that men's minds should turn to the other solution of the difficulty which had in the past been more than once proposed and which had been the first choice of Lord Durham. In 1858 the Canadian Government advocated a Federal Union of British North America, Mr. Alexander Galt, the finance minister, having made the adoption of this policy a condition precedent to his joining the ministry. At the time but little encouragement was got in England; but the advocacy of federation by an opportunist ministry showed which way the wind was blowing. Equally significant was the attempt in the next year to rally the opposition in favour of a programme which proposed the formation of two or more local governments for the control of all matters of a local or sectional character, and some joint authority charged with such matters as were necessarily common to both sections of the Province. The attempt was not very successful, but at least it showed that practical politicians were feeling their way to some other solution of the problem than representation by population in a single Parliament.

Mr. George Brown, who first in 1864 pointed the way to a compromise, was the same statesman who, in his constant advocacy of representation by population and his profound distrust and dislike of French-Canadian Roman Catholicism and its fruits, had done much to bring about the breakdown of constitutional government.

If, then, we confine our gaze to Canadian party controversy there is ample ground for the assertion that the adoption of federation was a mere counsel of despair, occasioned by the bankruptcy of party government. No doubt economic motives were also at work. Fears at the coming termination of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 with the United

States marked the dangers of isolation. The restrictions on intercolonial trade were more and more felt irksome, and the powerful interest of the Grand Trunk Railway Company worked, though silently, in the same direction.

Beyond and above all this there was besides, in the background, and for a time hardly consciously, a nobler motive at work. The idea of a greater Canada had for years been in the minds of thinking men. The conviction that one day or other the East and the West would be linked by the unifying force of a transcontinental railway had been expressed by Joseph Howe in 1851, and again by ChiefJustice Draper before the House of Commons Committee of 1857, which considered the rights of the Hudson Bay Company. The matter was complicated by Canadian claims to the company's territories which the Home Government could hardly recognize. Mr. G. Brown had advocated for some twenty years the annexation to Canada of the Northern and North-West territories; but as his advocacy had been part of a crusade against a 'grasping monopoly', it did not advance the movement much with cautious men. Moreover, owing to the sectional jealousies which prevailed, Lower Canada was opposed to the opening of the West, lest it should add to the importance of the Upper Division. The half-breeds in the Red River Settlement were mostly French-Indian Roman Catholics, and the development of the country might mean their submergence under a wave of Anglo-Saxon immigration. John A. Macdonald had not at first been in much sympathy with a movement which was mainly advocated by his Radical rivals; but as time went on he realized the danger lest Americans should occupy the hinterlands of Canada and intercept the road to the Pacific. What might have happened if the American Civil War had not given the people of the United States ample field for their energies in other directions, it is impossible to say; but it is very doubtful how far Americans would have recognized rights resting on charters, unenforced by occupa

tion. Fortunately for the British empire, by the time that American pioneers were ready to advance into the Canadian West, the country had already become part of the Dominion. It is impossible to bring out the argument here, but it is certain that the recognition of the need of a greater Canada to secure an outlet for future population, and fear and suspicion of Canada's mighty neighbour to the south, were main contributing causes to the speedy success of the federation movement.

In this state of things, when the ultimate destinies of British North America and the immediate necessities of Canadian politics alike pointed to the need of a new departure, the visit of the Canadian delegates to the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 gave the directing touch to the course of the future history. It was decided to adjourn the Conference to Quebec, so as to consider the wider and broader Union which had been proposed. The Quebec Conference met on October 10th, and between that date and the 29th the seventy-two resolutions were passed which with a few variations represented the substance of the British North America Act. Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland were represented; each Colony voting as one, except that Canada had two votes, Upper and Lower Canada being treated as separate Provinces. Among the builders of the new Dominion were the veteran French-Canadian Prime Minister Sir E. P. Taché, who did not live to see the consummation of his labours; George Etienne Cartier, the French-Canadian Conservative, who did more than any one to make federation possible by reconciling to it his French fellow-countrymen; George Brown, the stalwart champion of Upper Canadian interests; John A. Macdonald, most versed in the arts of party management, but, through all his party finessing, a fervent Imperialist; and Alexander Galt, who mapped out the financial arrangements of the new Constitution. From the Maritime Provinces came, with others,

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Mr. Charles Tupper, who was to grow grey in honourable service to the Dominion, and Mr. Samuel Tilley, the leading figure in New Brunswick politics. At the second meeting a general motion in favour of a Federal Union was passed unanimously, and on the following day it was explained to mean a General Government charged with matters of common interest to the whole country, and Local Governments for each of the Canadas and for the Maritime Provinces, charged with the control of local matters in their respective sections; provision being made for the admission into the Union on equitable terms of the North-West Territory, British Columbia, and Vancouver. The proceedings of the Conference were not reported, so that our main knowledge of them is derived from the scanty notes published in Mr. Pope's Confederation Documents. There was complete unanimity as to the form which the federation should take, the American Civil War being an object lesson in the dangers of the system under which any kind of sovereignty could be claimed by the separate component parts. There was some division of opinion with regard to provincial representation in the Legislative Council, but there was no opposition to the proposal that members should be nominated by the Crown and hold office for life. Population was accepted as the basis of representation for the House of Commons by all the Colonies, with the exception of Prince Edward Island, which demanded more members than the five allotted to it under the scheme.

Although George Brown spoke in a private letter of the Conference being nearly broken up on the question of the distribution of members in the Upper Chamber, the most serious difficulty seems to have been over the financial provisions. The matter was complicated by the fact that in the Maritime Provinces there was no system of levying local rates for local needs. The Colonial Government had been the nursing mother of all provincial undertakings. In framing the new financial system it was necessary to