[[1]] Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald, by Sir Joseph Pope, vol. i, p. 265.
[[2]] This portion of the lengthy survey of the new Dominion in the Globe of July 1, 1867, is said to have been written by George Brown himself.
[[3]] Sir Joseph Pope states that in the printed copy of this memorandum which Sir John Macdonald preserved there appears, immediately following the word 'Legislature' at the end of this paragraph, in the handwriting of Mr Brown, these words: 'Constituted on the well-understood principles of federal gov.'
CHAPTER V
THE CHARLOTTETOWN CONFERENCE
Not an instant too soon had unity come in Canada. The coalition ministry, having adjourned parliament, found itself faced with a situation in the Maritime Provinces which called for speedy action.
Nova Scotia, the ancient province by the sea, discouraged by the vacillation of Canada in relation to federation and the construction of the Intercolonial Railway, was bent upon joining forces with New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The proposal was in the nature of a reunion, for, when constitutional government had been first set up in Nova Scotia in 1758, the British possessions along the Atlantic coast, save Newfoundland, were all governed as one province from Halifax. But the policy in early days of splitting up the colonies into smaller areas, for convenience of administration, was here faithfully carried out. In 1770 a separate government was conferred upon Prince Edward Island. In 1784 New Brunswick was formed. In the same year the island of Cape Breton was given a governor and council of its own. Cape Breton was reunited to the parent colony of Nova Scotia in 1820, but three separate provinces remained, each developing apart from the others, thus complicating and making more difficult the whole problem of union when men with foresight and boldness essayed to solve it. Nova Scotia had kept alive the tradition of leadership. The province which has supplied three prime ministers to the Canadian Dominion never lacked statesmen with the imagination to perceive the advantages which would flow from the consolidation of British power in America.
In 1864, a few weeks before George Brown in the Canadian House had moved for his select committee on federal union, Dr Charles Tupper proposed, in the legislature of Nova Scotia, a legislative union of the Maritime Provinces. The seal of Imperial authority had been set upon this movement by the dispatch, already quoted, from the Duke of Newcastle to Lord Mulgrave in 1862.