The Charge That We Have Not Gone Far Enough - That We Have Not Struck Out Boldly For A Consolidated Union, Instead Of A Union With Reserved Local Jurisdictions - Is Another Charge Which Deserves Some Notice.

To this I answer that if we had had, as was proposed, an Intercolonial Railway twenty years ago, we

Might by this time have been perhaps, and only perhaps, in a condition to unite into one consolidated government; but certain politicians and capitalists having defeated that project twenty years ago, special interests took the place great general interest might by this time have occupied; vested rights and local ambitions arose and were recognized; and all these had to be admitted as existing in a pretty advanced stage of development when the late conferences were called together. The lesson to be learned from this squandering of quarter centuries by British Americans is this, that if we lose the present propitious opportunity, we may find it as hard a few years hence to get an audience, even for any kind of union (except democratic union), as we should have found it to get a hearing last year for a legislative union, from the long period of estrangement and non- intercourse which had existed between these Provinces, and the special interests which had grown up in the meantime in each of them. Another motive to union, or rather a phase of the last motive spoken of, is this, that the policy of our neighbours to the south of us has always been aggressive. There has always been a desire amongst them for the acquisition of new territory, and the inexorable law of democratic existence seems to be its absorption. They coveted Florida, and seized it; they coveted Louisiana, and purchased it; they coveted Texas, and stole it; and then they picked a quarrel with Mexico, which ended by their getting California. They sometimes pretend to despise these our colonies as prizes beneath their ambition; but had we not had the strong arm of England over us we should not now have had a separate existence. The acquisition of Canada was the first ambition of the American Confederacy, and never ceased to be so, when her troops were a handful and her navy scarce a squadron. Is it likely to be stopped now, when she counts her guns afloat by thousands and her troops by hundreds of thousands? On this motive a very powerful expression of opinion has lately appeared in a published letter of the Archbishop of Halifax, Dr. Connolly. Who is the Archbishop of Halifax? In either of the coast colonies, where he has laboured in his high vocation for nearly a third of a century, it would be absurd to ask the question; but in Canada he may not be equally well known. Some of my honorable friends in this and the other House, who were his guests last year, must have felt the impress of his character as well as the warmth of his hospitality.

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