nductor of a most influential organ of
public opinion, _The Toronto Globe_, and the leader of the "Grits," or
extreme wing of the Reformers or Liberals. In opposition to him were
allied Mr. George Etienne Cartier, once a follower of Papineau, but now
a loyal leader of his race, and Mr. John Alexander Macdonald, who had
occupied a prominent position for years as a Conservative leader.

The time had come for the accomplishment of a great change foreshadowed
by Lord Durham, Chief-Justice Sewell, Mr. Howe, Sir Alexander Gait, and
other public men of Canada: the union of the provinces of British North
America. The leaders of the different governments in Canada, and the
maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island combined with the leaders of the opposition with the object of
carrying out this great measure. A convention of thirty-three
representative men[1] was held in the autumn of 1864 in {373} the
historic city of Quebec, and after a deliberation of several weeks the
result was the unanimous adoption of a set of seventy-two resolutions
embodying the terms and conditions on which the provinces through their
delegates agreed to a federal union. These resolutions had to be laid
before the various legislatures and adopted in the shape of addresses
to the Queen, whose sanction was necessary to embody the wishes of the
provinces in an imperial statute.

The consent of the legislature was considered sufficient by the
governments of all the provinces except one, though the question had
never been discussed at the polls. In New Brunswick alone was the
legislature dissolved on the issue, and it was only after a second
general election that the {374} legislature agreed to the union. In
Nova Scotia, after much discussion and feeling, the legislature passed
a resolution in favour of the measure, though a popular sentiment
continued to exist against the union for several years. In the
December of 1866 a second conference of delegates from the governments
of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, was held at the Westminster
Palace Hotel in London, and some modifications were made in the Quebec
resolutions, chiefly with a view of meeting objections from the
maritime provinces. In the early part of 1867 the imperial parliament,
without a division, passed the statute known as the "British North
America Act, 1867," which united in the first instance the province of
Canada, now divided into Ontario and