uring 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.

{22}

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 {23} 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 t