True to Tupper's forecast, and due in part, at least, to his powerful advocacy of the cause of union, the home government stood firm against the cry from Nova Scotia. The delegates and their opponents returned home. Then the rapid development of events compelled Howe to face the issue: when legal and constitutional methods were exhausted without avail, what then? The crisis came. Howe was obliged to break with his associates, some of whom were preaching sedition, and to take a stand more in accordance with his real convictions and his Imperial sentiments. Early in August 1868 Sir John Macdonald went to Halifax and met the leading malcontents. 'They have got the idea into their heads,' wrote Howe in a private letter, 'that you are a sort of wizard that, having beguiled Brown, McDougall, Tupper, etc., to destruction, is about to do the same kind of office to me.' Howe was not beguiled, but a master of tactics showed him the means by which Nova Scotia could be kept in the union; the way was paved for a final settlement; and a few months later Howe joined the Dominion government. Long after Joseph Howe had passed to his {157} rest, echoes of the repeal agitation were heard in Nova Scotia; and it was frequently asserted that the question of union should have been submitted to a vote of the people. Such a course, owing to the circumstances already narrated, was impracticable and would have been fatal to Confederation. But the pacification of the province was a great feat of statesmanship; for to maintain the young Dominion intact was essential to its further extension. [1] _Memoirs_, vol. i, p. 319. [2] _Sir George Etienne Cartier, Bart; His Life and Times_, by John Boyd. Toronto, 1914. [3] Sir James Whitney, prime minister of Ontario from 1903 to 1914, who was a young student in Sandfield Macdonald's law office in Cornwall and shared his political confidence, assured the present writer that Ontario's first prime minister was not a Liberal in the real sense, his instincts and point of view being essentially Conservative. After Robert Baldwin's retirement Sandfield Macdonald's natural course would have been an alliance with the progressive Conservatives under John A. Macdonald, but his antipathy to acknowledging any leader kept him aloof. His laconic telegram in reply to John A. Macdonald's offer of cabinet office is characteristic: 'No go!' [4] A conspicuous case in point is the entire want of sympathy between Brown and Galt, men of similar type, whose opinions on several questions coincided. [5] _Recollections of Sixty Years in Canada_, by the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, Bart. {158} CHAPTER XIII FROM SEA TO SEA