tution there was the
best guaranty for sound political progress, having a patriotic confidence
in the ability of Canada to hold her own on this continent, and become, to
use his own words, a "nation within a nation,"--that is to say, within the
British Empire--Sir John Macdonald offers to the political student an
example of a remarkable combination of strength and weakness, of qualities
which make up a great statesman and a mere party politician, according to
the governing circumstances. Happily for the best interests of Canada, in
the case of confederation the statesman prevailed. But his ambition at this
crisis {410} would have been futile had not Mr. Brown consented to unite
with him and Cartier. This triple alliance made a confederation possible on
terms acceptable to both English and French Canadians. These three men were
the representatives of the antagonistic elements that had to be reconciled
and cemented. The readiness with which Sir Charles Tupper and Sir Leonard
Tilley, the premiers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, co-operated with the
statesmen of the upper provinces, was a most opportune feature of the
movement, which ended in the successful formation of a confederation in
1867. Although the Liberal leaders in Nova Scotia, Mr., afterwards Sir,
Adams Archibald, and Mr. Jonathan McCully, like Brown, Howland, Mowat, and
McDougall in old Canada, supported the movement with great loyalty, the
people of the province were aroused to a passionate opposition mainly
through the vigorous action of the popular leader, Mr. Joseph Howe, who had
been an eloquent advocate of colonial union before it assumed a practical
shape, but now took the strong ground that the question should not be
forced on the country by a legislature which had no mandate whatever to
deal with it, that it should be determined only by the people at the polls,
and that the terms arranged at Quebec were unfair to the maritime
provinces. Mr. Howe subsequently obtained "better terms" for Nova Scotia by
every available means of constitutional agitation--beyond which he was
never willing to go, however great might be public grievances--and then he
yielded to {412} the inevitable logic of circumstances, and entered the
Dominion government, where he remained until he became lieutenant-governor
of his native province. The feelings, however, he aroused against
confederation lasted with some intensity for years, although the cry for
repeal died away, according a