time, along with the presence of the British minority in the Lower Province, to secure the predominance of British institutions. In his insular self-confidence he believed that the superiority of Anglo-Saxon ways and methods was so self-evident that it needed but due opportunity for its trumpet-call, and the walls of French Nationalism and language would come crumbling down from their sheer insufficiency. The new creed of Nationalism was soon to give forth a gospel very different from the imaginations of Liberals of the type and temper of Lord Durham.

What would have been the result of a real union, such as that advocated by Lord Durham, it is impossible to say, because such a union was never attempted. In its stead the two divisions of the Province were treated as separate entities, each having under the Act of Union of 1840 an equal number of members. At first the grievance was on the side of the French; but, as the population of Upper Canada grew by leaps and bounds, the burden was shifted on the other shoulder; till at the time of the British North America Act a majority of some 400,000 Canadians in the upper division had only the same representation as the population of the lower division. In other ways the Union only served to emphasize racial distinctions. The FrenchCanadians believed, and a perusal of Lord Durham's Report might justify them in that belief, that the Act of Union was intended as a blow to their separate nationality, and therefore sought by all possible means to prevent the blow taking effect. It must be remembered that in Lower Canada union was not the deliberate choice of a free people, but was superimposed on the people by a special council nominated by an autocracy. The French-Canadians had therefore no affection or respect for the system introduced. At the same time the majority were wise enough to see that their interests lay not in standing aloof from the new system, as the extremists advised, but in moulding that system to their interests. If the intention was to

swamp the French nationality in an Anglo-Saxon Province, the more necessary it was to maintain a separate FrenchCanadian organization for the attainment of FrenchCanadian ideals. During the time of Lord Sydenham's Government the French remained suspect, the memories of the rebellion being still fresh in the minds of men, and Sydenham was not prepared to accept the full consequences of responsible government, so far as it meant party government by a parliamentary majority. He aimed at being his own first minister and to rule through the best men chosen by himself on other than party grounds. Sydenham's attitude was well adapted for a period of transition, but it postulated a very strong Governor and a very simple Colonial Assembly. Meanwhile the French-Canadians had joined forces, for the purposes of opposition, with the Reformers from Upper Canada, and Sydenham's successor, Sir Charles Bagot, recognized that it was impossible to refuse as ministers those who represented the will of the majority. The next Governor, Metcalfe, in his heart distrusted the system of responsible government; and it was not till the government of Lord Elgin in 1848 that it can be said to have triumphed permanently. But simultaneously with that triumph, the internal difficulties in the way raised their head. Responsible government means party government, and party government means the ascendancy, at least, of two distinct parties. But in the Canadian Assembly there were four, if not five, distinct parties. There were the Upper Canadian Reformers, who held Radical opinions, the Conservatives from that Province, and the small faction which maintained the family compact' tradition. The French-Canadians were, at first, for the most part unanimous on the side of opposition, but when once they had been admitted within the portals of the Government, it was inevitable that their natural tendency to Conservative opinions should find expression; so that in time there developed a French-Canadian Conservative

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