Again,
The Great Republic Across Their Borders, With Its Obvious Future,
Offered With Open Arms, And Especially To The Young
And ambitious, a
noble field, not shut in by winter or divided by separate governments.
Thus the gravitation towards aggregation
- Which seems to be a condition
of the progress of modern states - a condition to be intensified as
space is diminished by modern discoveries in rapid transit - was, in the
case of the Provinces, rather towards the United States than towards
each other or the British Empire. Thus there were, in 1860, many causes
at work to discourage the idea of Confederation. And it is by no means
improbable that the occurrence of the great Civil War destroyed this
tendency.
I remember an incident which occurred at a little dinner party which I
gave in Montreal, in September, 1861, to the delegates who assembled
there, after my visits, in response to the appeal just made to the
Governments of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, on the subject
of the Intercolonial Railway. It illustrates the personal isolation
alluded to above. The Honorable Joseph Howe, then Premier of Nova
Scotia, said, "We have been more like foreigners than fellow-subjects;
you do not know us, and we do not know you. There are men in this room,
who hold the destinies of this half of the Continent in their hands;
and yet we never meet, unless by some chance or other, like the visit
of the Prince of Wales, we are obliged to meet.
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