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 {45} 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. A word concerning the services of Charles Tupper to the cause of union will be in order here. None of the Fathers of Confederation {46} fought a more strenuous battle. None faced political obstacles of so overwhelming a character. None evinced a more unselfish patriotism. The overturn of Tilley in New Brunswick, of which we shall hear presently, was a misfortune quickly repaired. The junction of Brown, Cartier, and Macdonald in Canada ensured for them comparatively plain sailing. But the Nova Scotian leader was pitted against a redoubtable foe in Joseph Howe; for five years he faced an angry and rebellious province; he gallantly gave up his place in the first Dominion ministry in order that another might have it; and at every turn he displayed those qualities of pluck, endurance, and dexterity which compel admiration. The Tuppers were of Puritan stock.[1] The future prime minister, a practising physician, had scored his first political victory at the age of thirty-four by defeating Howe in Cumberland county. Throughout his long and notable career, a superabundance of energy, and a characteristic which may be defined in a favourable sense as audacity, never failed him. {47}