The people of Halifax--who had always regarded with a jealous eye the disposition of the inland British colonies, to use the port of New York in preference to their own--managed, at this juncture in the history of ocean transport, by an appeal to imperial considerations to make a strong case for their port. By a happy chance, the "Sirius" on its first homeward voyage, overtook the mail packet from Halifax, and the captain of the packet, impressed by the higher speed of the steam vessel, induced the captain of the "Sirius" to take the mails, with the result that their arrival was advanced by several days. Joseph Howe and some other gentlemen from the Maritime provinces who happened to be passengers on the sailing packet when this incident occurred, were struck with this demonstration of the superiority of steam, and discussed among themselves whether this fact might not indicate the means of overcoming, in favour of Halifax, the advantage enjoyed by the port of New York. On the arrival of Howe in London, a meeting was called of men interested in the subject, and it was resolved to press their views on the attention of the government. Several of the gentlemen wrote to the colonial secretary, and a memorial of a more formal character was submitted, bearing the signatures of Howe, as representative of Nova Scotia, and of William Crane, a member of the legislature of New Brunswick, as representative of that province.[258] The views and arguments were of a character similar to those employed by imperial federation leagues since that period--the shorter sea voyage, the fostering of common interests among the provinces, and the desirability of an interchange within the empire of news and correspondence, uncontaminated by passage through a foreign channel. At that period, the last of these points had a peculiar timeliness. The rebellion in Upper Canada had just been subdued, but the embers were ready to blaze up afresh with the first favouring breeze; while in Lower Canada the outbreak was still unchecked. The fast sailing packets on the New York-Liverpool route so far outsailed the post office packets which ran to Halifax, that the news carried by way of New York was sometimes weeks in advance of that which arrived by the Halifax packets. As American popular sympathies, as distinct from official sympathy at Washington and Albany, lay mainly with the rebels, and as newspaper publishers were in general less scrupulous as to the veracity of their news than they are to-day, it often happened that the British public, and even the government in Downing Street, were grossly misled as to the movement of events in the Canadas. The truth reached England eventually, but it had the proverbial difficulty in catching up with the nimble fiction, which had earlier circulation.