policy, to seek a conference with the Lower Colonies, and endeavour to bring about a general union. This House formally gave the Government its confidence after the announcement of that policy, and although I have no desire to strain terms, it does appear to me that this House did thereby fully commit itself to the principle of a union of the Colonies, if practicable. Everything we did was done in form and with propriety, and the result of our proceedings is the document that has been submitted to the Imperial Government as well as to this House, and which we speak of here as a treaty. And that there may be no doubt about our position in regard to that document, we say, Question it you may, reject it you may, or accept it you may, but alter it you may not. It is beyond your power, or our power, to alter it. There is not a sentence--not even a word--you can alter without desiring to throw out the document. Alter it, and we know at once what you mean--you thereby declare yourselves against the only possible union. On this point, I repeat, after all my hon. friends who have already spoken, for one party to alter a treaty, is, of course, to destroy it. Let us be frank with each other; you do not like our work, nor do you like us who stand by it, clause by clause, line by line, and letter by letter. Well, we believe we have here given to our countrymen of all the Provinces the possible best--that we have given them an approximation to the right-- their representatives and ours have laboured at it, letter and spirit, form and substance, until they found this basis of agreement, which we are all confident will not now, nor for many a day to come, be easily swept away. And first, I will make a remark to some of the French Canadian gentlemen who are said to be opposed to our project, on French Canadian grounds only. I will remind them, I hope not improperly, that every one of the Colonies we now propose to re-unite under one rule--in which they shall have a potential voice--were once before united as New France. Newfoundland, the uttermost, was theirs, and one large section of its coast is still known as the 'French shore;' Cape Breton was theirs till the final fall of Louisburgh; Prince Edward Island was their Island of St. Jean; Charlottetown was their Port Joli; and Frederickton, the present capital of New Brunswick, their St. Anne's; in the heart of Nova Scotia was that fair Acadian land, where the roll of Longfellow's noble hexameters may be heard in every wave that breaks upon the base of Cape Blomedon. In the northern counties of New Brunswick, from the Mirimichi to the Metapediac, they had their forts and farms, their churches and their festivals, before the English speech had ever once been heard between those rivers. Nor is that tenacious Norman and Breton race extinct in their old haunts and homes. I have heard one of the members for Cape Breton speak in high terms of that portion of his constituency; and I believe I am correct in saying