e 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.

{11}

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 {12} 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 six o'clock in the afternoon. Said
Cartwright, in the address already cited:

Even in our own territory, and it was a matter not to be disregarded,
the state {13} of communication was exceedingly slow and imperfect.
Practically the city of Quebec was almost as far from Toronto in those
days, during a great part