aken 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, {7} 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 {8} 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