e overthrow of his
ministers owing to it occasioned him no great grief. James Hannay, the
historian, attributes his conduct to chagrin at the pushing aside of
maritime union, as he had hoped to be the first governor of the smaller
union.

{119}

CHAPTER XI

THE FRAMING OF THE BILL

When the British American delegates met in London to frame the bill
they found themselves in an atmosphere tending to chill their
enthusiasm. Lord Palmerston had died the year before, and with him had
disappeared an adventurous foreign policy and the militant view of
empire. The strictly utilitarian school of thought was dominant.
Canada was unpleasantly associated in the minds of British statesmen
with the hostile attitude of the United States which seemed to threaten
a most unwelcome war. John Bright approved of ceding Canada to the
Republic as the price of peace. Gladstone also wrote to Goldwin Smith
suggesting this course. The delegates were confronted by the same
ideas which had distressed George Brown two years earlier. The
colonies were not to be forcibly cast off, but even in official circles
the opinion prevailed that ultimate separation was the inevitable end.
The reply {120} of Sir Edward Thornton, the British minister at
Washington, to a proposal that Canada should be ceded to the United
States was merely that Great Britain could not thus dispose of a colony
'against the wishes of the inhabitants.' These lukewarm views made no
appeal to the delegates and the young communities they represented. It
was their aim to propound a method of continuing the connection.
Theirs was not the vision of a military sway intended to overawe other
nations and to revive in the modern world the empires of history. To
them Imperialism meant to extend and preserve the principles of
justice, liberty, and peace, which they believed were inherent in
British institutions and more nearly attainable under monarchical than
under republican forms.

Minds influential in the Colonial Office and elsewhere saw in this only
a flamboyant patriotism. The Duke of Newcastle, when colonial
secretary, had not shared the desire for separation, and he found it
hard to believe that any one charged with colonial administration
wished it. He had written to Palmerston in 1861:

You speak of some supposed theoretical gentlemen in the colonial office
who wish {121} to get rid of all colonies as soon as possible. I can
only say that if there are such