In these colonies as heretofore governed [he said] we have enjoyed great advantages under the protecting shield of the mother country. We have had no army or navy to sustain, no foreign diplomacy to sustain,—our whole resources have gone to our internal improvement,—and notwithstanding our occasional strifes with the Colonial Office, we have enjoyed a degree of self-government and generous consideration such as no colonies in ancient or modern history ever enjoyed at the hands of a parent state. Is it any wonder that thoughtful men should hesitate to countenance a step that might change the happy and advantageous relations we have occupied towards the mother country? I am persuaded there never was a moment in the history of these colonies when the hearts of our people were so firmly attached to the parent state by the ties of gratitude and affection as at this moment, and for one I hesitate not to say that did this movement for colonial union endanger the connection that has so long and so happily existed, it would have my firm opposition.
These and other utterances, equally forceful and appealing directly to the pride and ambition of the country, were not without effect in moulding public opinion. The tour was a campaign of education. By avoiding the constitutional issues the delegates gave little information which could afford carping critics an opportunity to assail the movement prematurely. It is true, some sarcastic comments were made upon the manner in which the Canadians had walked into the convention and taken possession. At the Halifax dinner the governor of Nova Scotia, Sir Richard Graves Macdonnell, dropped an ironical remark on the 'disinterested' course of Canada, which plainly betrayed his own attitude. But the gathering was, in the main, highly successful and augured well for the movement.
The Charlottetown Conference was therefore an essential part of the proceedings which culminated at Quebec. The ground had been broken. The leaders in the various provinces had formed ties of intimacy and friendship and favourably impressed each other. At this time were laid the foundations of the alliance between Macdonald and Tilley, the Liberal leader in New Brunswick, which made it possible to construct the first federal ministry on a non-party basis and which enlisted in the national service a devoted and trustworthy public man. Tilley's career had few blemishes from its beginning to its end. He was a direct descendant of John Tilley, one of the English emigrants to Massachusetts in the Mayflower, and a great-grandson of Samuel Tilley, one of the Loyalists who removed to New Brunswick after the War of Independence. He had been drawn into politics against his wishes by the esteem and confidence of his fellow-citizens. A nominating convention at which he was not present had selected him for the legislature, and his first election had taken place during his absence from the country. Yet he had risen to be prime minister of his province; and his was the guiding hand which brought New Brunswick into the union. His defeat at first and the speedy reversal of the verdict against Confederation form one of the most diverting episodes in the history of the movement.
The ominous feature of the Charlottetown Conference was the absence of Joseph Howe, the most popular leader in Nova Scotia. This was one of the accidents which so often disturb the calculations of statesmen. When the delegates resumed their labours at Quebec he was in Newfoundland, and he returned home to find that a plan had been agreed upon without his aid. From him, as well as from the governors of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the cause of federation was to receive its next serious check.
[[1]] See Recollections of Sixty Years in Canada, p. 2. The original Tupper in America came out from England in 1635. Sir Charles Tupper's great-grandfather migrated from Connecticut to Nova Scotia in 1763.
[[2]] The Speeches and Public Letters of Joseph Howe, edited by J. A. Chisholm, vol. ii, p. 433. Halifax, 1909.