think it liable to considerable objection.'

Thus briefly was the first definite proposal set aside. The idea, however, had taken root and never ceased to show signs of life. As time wore on, the provincial constitutions proved unsatisfactory. At each outbreak of political agitation and discontent, in one quarter or another, some one was sure to come forward with a fresh plea for intercolonial union. Nor did the entreaty always emanate from men of pronounced Loyalist convictions; it sometimes came from root-and-branch Reformers like Robert Gourlay and William Lyon Mackenzie.

The War of 1812 furnished another startling proof of the isolated and defenceless position of the provinces. The relations between Upper Canada and Lower Canada, never cordial, became worse. In 1814, at the close of the war, Chief Justice Sewell of Quebec, in a correspondence with the Duke of Kent (Queen Victoria's father), disclosed a plan for a small central parliament of thirty members with subordinate legislatures.[1] Sewell was a son-in-law of Chief Justice Smith and shared his views. The duke suggested that these legislatures need be only two in number, because the Canadas should be reunited and the three Atlantic colonies placed under one government. No one heeded the suggestion. A few years intervened, and an effort was made to patch up a satisfactory arrangement between Lower Canada and Upper Canada. The two provinces quarrelled over the division of the customs revenue. When the dispute had reached a critical stage a bill was introduced in the Imperial parliament to unite them. This was in 1822. But the proposal to force two disputing neighbours to dwell together in the same house as a remedy for disagreements failed to evoke enthusiasm from either. The friends of federation then drew together, and Sewell joined hands with Bishop Strachan and John Beverley Robinson of Upper Canada in reviving the plea for a wider union and in placing the arguments in its favour before the Imperial government. Brenton Halliburton, judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia (afterwards chief justice), wrote a pamphlet to help on the cause. The Canada union bill fell through, the revenue dispute being settled on another basis, but the discussion of federation proceeded.

To this period belongs the support given to the project by William Lyon Mackenzie. Writing in 1824 to Mr Canning, he believed that

a union of all the colonies, with a government suitably poised and modelled, so as to have under its eye the resources of our whole territory and having the means in its power to administer impartial justice in all its bounds, to no one part at the expense of another, would require few boons from Britain, and would advance her interests much more in a few years than the bare right of possession of a barren, uncultivated wilderness of lake and forest, with some three or four inhabitants to the square mile, can do in centuries.

Here we have the whole picture drawn in a few strokes. Mackenzie had vision and brilliancy. If he had given himself wholly to this task, posterity would have passed a verdict upon his career different from that now accepted. As late as in 1833 he declared: 'I have long desired to see a conference assembled at Quebec, consisting of delegates freely elected by the people of the six northern colonies, to express to England the opinion of the whole body on matters of great general interest.' But instead of pursuing this idea he threw himself into the mad project of armed rebellion, and the fruits of that folly were unfavourable for a long time to the dreams of federation. Lord Durham came. He found 'the leading minds of the various colonies strongly and generally inclined to a scheme that would elevate their countries into something like a national existence.' Such a scheme, he rightly argued, would not weaken the connection with the Empire, and the closing passages of his Report are memorable for the insight and statesmanship with which the solid advantages of union are discussed. If Lord Durham erred, it was in advocating the immediate union of the two Canadas as the first necessary step, and in announcing as one of his objects the assimilation to the prevailing British type in Canada of the French-Canadian race, a thing which, as events proved, was neither possible nor necessary.

Many of the advocates of union, never blessed with much confidence in their cause, were made timid by this point of Durham's reasoning. His arguments, which were intended to urge the advantages of a complete reform in the system and machinery of government, produced for a time a contrary effect. Governments might propose and parliaments might discuss resolutions of an academic kind, while eloquent men with voice and pen sought to rouse the imaginations of the people. But for twenty years after the union of the Canadas in 1841 federation remained little more than a noble aspiration. The statesmen who wielded power looked over the field and sighed that the time had not yet come.

[1] It has been said that Attorney-General Uniacke of Nova Scotia submitted, in 1809, a measure for a general union, but of this there does not appear to be any authentic record.

CHAPTER II

OBSTACLES TO UNION

The prospect was indeed one to dismay the most ardent patriot. After the passage of the Constitutional Act of 1791 the trend of events had set steadily in the direction of separation. Nature had placed physical obstacles in the road to union, and man did his best to render the task of overcoming them as hopeless as possible. The land communication between the Maritime Provinces and Canada, such as it was, precluded effective intercourse. In winter there could be no access by the St Lawrence, so that Canada's winter port was in the United States. As late as 1850 it took ten days, often longer, for a letter to go from Halifax to Toronto. Previous to 1867 there were but two telegraph lines connecting Halifax with Canada. Messages by wire were a luxury, the rate between Quebec and Toronto being seventy-five cents for ten words and eight cents for each additional word. Neither commerce nor friendship could be much developed by telegraph in those days, and, as the rates were based on the distance, a telegram sent from Upper Canada to Nova Scotia was a costly affair. To reach the Red River Settlement, the nucleus of Manitoba, the Canadian travelled through the United States. With the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia the East had practically no dealings. Down to 1863, as Sir Richard Cartwright once said,[1] there existed for the average Canadian no North-West. A great lone land there was, and a few men in parliament looked forward to its ultimate acquisition, but popular opinion regarded it vaguely as something dim and distant. In course of time railways came, but they were not interprovincial and they did nothing to bind the East to the West. The railway service of early days is not to be confounded with the rapid trains of to-day, when a traveller leaves Montreal after ten in the morning and finds himself in Toronto before