Galt's course had forced the question out of the sphere of speculation. A careful student of the period[3] argues with point that to Galt we owe the introduction of the policy into practical politics. In the light of after events this view cannot be lightly set aside. But the effort bore no fruit for the moment. The colonial secretary, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, declined to authorize the conference without first consulting the other provinces, and the government did not feel itself bound because of this to resign or consult the constituencies. In other words, the question did not involve the fate of the Cabinet. But Galt had gained a great advantage. He had enlisted the support of Cartier, whose influence in Lower Canada was henceforth exerted with fidelity to win over the French to a policy which they had long resisted. The cause attained additional strength in 1860 by the action of two other statesmen, George Brown and John A. Macdonald, who between them commanded the confidence of Upper Canada, the one as Liberal, the other as Conservative leader. Brown brought before parliament resolutions embodying the decisions of the Reform Convention of 1859 in favour of a federation confined to the Canadas, and Macdonald declared unequivocally for federative union as a principle, arguing that a strong central government should be the chief aim. Brown's resolutions were rejected, and the movement so auspiciously begun once more exhibited an ominous tendency to subside. The varying fortunes which attended the cause during these years resembled its previous vicissitudes. It appeared as if all were for a party and none were for the state. If those who witnessed the events of 1860 had been asked for their opinion, they would probably have declared that the problem was as far from solution as ever. Yet they would have been mistaken, as the near future was to show. A great war was close at hand, and, as war so often does, it stimulated movements and policies which otherwise might have lain dormant. The situation which arose out of the Civil War in the United States neither created nor carried Confederation, but it resulted, through a sense of common danger, in bringing the British provinces together and in giving full play to all the forces that were making for their union.

[1] Address to Canadian Club, Ottawa, 1906.

[2] Union of the Colonies, by P. S. Hamilton, Halifax, 1864.

[3] See the chapter, 'Parties and Politics, 1840-1867,' by J. L. Morison, in Canada and its Provinces, vol. v.

CHAPTER III

THE EVE OF CONFEDERATION

A day of loftier ideas and greater issues in all the provinces was about to dawn. The ablest politicians had been prone to wrangle like washerwomen over a tub, colouring the parliamentary debates by personal rivalry and narrow aims, while measures of first-rate importance went unheeded. The change did not occur in the twinkling of an eye, for the cherished habits of two generations were not to be discarded so quickly. Goldwin Smith asserted[1] that, whoever laid claim to the parentage of Confederation, the real parent was Deadlock. But this was the critic, not the historian, who spoke. The causes lay far deeper than in the breakdown of party government in Canada. Events of profound significance were about to change an atmosphere overladen with partisanship and to strike the imaginations of men.

The first factor in the national awakening was the call of the great western domain. British Americans began to realize that they were the heirs of a rich and noble possession. The idea was not entirely new. The fur traders had indeed long tried to keep secret the truth as to the fertility of the plains; but men who had been born or had lived in the West were now settled in the East. They had stories to tell, and their testimony was emphatic. In 1856 the Imperial authorities had intimated to Canada that, as the licence of the Hudson's Bay Company to an exclusive trade in certain regions would expire in 1859, it was intended to appoint a select committee of the British House of Commons to investigate the existing situation in those territories and to report upon their future status; and Canada had sent Chief Justice Draper to London as her commissioner to watch the proceedings, to give evidence, and to submit to his government any proposals that might be made. Simultaneously a select committee of the Canadian Assembly sat to hear evidence and to report a basis for legislation. Canada boldly claimed that her western boundary was the Pacific ocean, and this prospect had long encouraged men like George Brown to look forward to extension westward, and to advocate it, as one solution of Upper Canada's political grievances. It was a vision calculated to rouse the adventurous spirit of the British race in colonizing and in developing vast and unknown lands. Another wonderful page was about to open in the history of British expansion. And, hand in hand with romance, went the desire for dominion and commerce.

But if the call of the West drew men partly by its material attractions, another event, of a wholly different sort, appealed vividly to their sentiment. In 1860 the young Prince of Wales visited the provinces as the representative of his mother, the beloved Queen Victoria. His tour resembled a triumphal progress. It evoked feelings and revived memories which the young prince himself, pleasing though his personality was, could not have done. It was the first clear revelation of the intensity of that attachment to the traditions and institutions of the Empire which in our own day has so vitally affected the relations of the self-governing states to the mother country. In a letter from Ottawa[2] to Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Newcastle, the prince's tutor, wrote:

I never saw in any part of England such extensive or beautiful outward demonstrations of respect and affection, either to the Queen or to any private object of local interest, as I have seen in every one of these colonies, and, what is more important, there have been circumstances attending all these displays which have marked their sincerity and proved that neither curiosity nor self-interest were the only or the ruling influences.

Of all the events, however, that startled the British provinces out of the self-absorbed contemplation of their own little affairs, the Civil War in the United States exerted the most immediate influence. It not only brought close the menace of a war between Great Britain and the Republic, with Canada as the