that the Government and the Imperial Parliament are
overwhelmingly against you, it is important for you to consider the
next step.'[5] This was to put the finger upon the weakest spot in
Howe's armour. After his mission had failed and the Imperial
authorities had refused to allow the union to be broken up, as they
most assuredly would, what could Howe and his friends do next? A
revolution was unthinkable. A province 'on strike' would have no
adequate means of raising a revenue, and a government lacking the power
of taxation soon ceases to exist. The extremists talked Annexation;
but in this they counted without Howe and the loyal province of Nova
Scotia. The movement, noisy and formidable as it appeared, was
foredoomed to failure. All this Tupper put to Joseph Howe; and when
Tupper proposed that Howe should enter the Dominion Cabinet, not as his
docile follower but as his leader, it {156} can readily be believed
that he was 'completely staggered.'

True to Tupper's forecast, and due in part, at least, to his powerful
advocacy of the cause of union, the home government stood firm against
the cry from Nova Scotia. The delegates and their opponents returned
home. Then the rapid development of events compelled Howe to face the
issue: when legal and constitutional methods were exhausted without
avail, what then? The crisis came. Howe was obliged to break with his
associates, some of whom were preaching sedition, and to take a stand
more in accordance with his real convictions and his Imperial
sentiments. Early in August 1868 Sir John Macdonald went to Halifax
and met the leading malcontents. 'They have got the idea into their
heads,' wrote Howe in a private letter, 'that you are a sort of wizard
that, having beguiled Brown, McDougall, Tupper, etc., to destruction,
is about to do the same kind of office to me.' Howe was not beguiled,
but a master of tactics showed him the means by which Nova Scotia could
be kept in the union; the way was paved for a final settlement; and a
few months later Howe joined the Dominion government.

Long after Joseph Howe had passed to his {157} rest, echoes of the
repeal agitation were heard in Nova Scotia; and it was frequently
asserted that the question of union should have been submitted to a
vote of the people. Such a course, owing to the circumstances already
narrated, was impracticable and would have been fatal to Confederation.
But the pacification of the province was a gre