The attempts to build an intercolonial line have a lengthy and chequered history. In 1850 Joseph Howe, Nova Scotia's distinguished champion of responsible government, obtained an imperial guarantee to support the colonies in financing the project, but the plan collapsed on account of irreconcilable opinions as to what route the line should take. In the following years negotiations continued, but a dismal succession of circumstances made them sterile. What the provincial governments failed to perform, private enterprise in part attempted. The Grand Trunk Company took the field, and pushed its lines west and east. But the vision of a truly intercolonial line was not lost. The need of it, to relieve Canada's dependence on American ports, increased in urgency. In 1857 the Canadian government, co-operating with Nova Scotia, again pressed the question on the attention of the imperial authorities, but without results. Nothing daunted, the Macdonald-Sicotte government resumed the project, and McGee was its warmest advocate. To him the railway was an instrument of creative statesmanship. "The construction of the intercolonial railway would have the effect of inducing a union of the colonies and making them one in interest and importance, whereas now they were but isolated, lone, undistinguished provinces." In the Quebec conference of 1862, the first of the important colonial conferences, he drew up in company with Howe of Nova Scotia and Tilley of New Brunswick a memorandum concerning its construction and management. It was agreed that "if it should be concluded that the work shall be constructed and managed by a joint commission of the three provinces, it shall be constructed in the proportion of two appointed by the government of Canada, and one each by the governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the four to select a fifth before entering upon the discharge of their duties." It was also planned that Canada should assume five-twelfths of the risk of construction, the provinces by the sea dividing up the other seven-twelfths between them. Intercolonial free-trade was to follow at once on the making of the railway. But the scheme, like its predecessors, came to grief. For its adoption, the financial backing of the imperial government was imperative, and to obtain it Sicotte and Howland went to England. But British ministers would give a financial guarantee only on such conditions as would render it in the opinion of Sicotte of no advantage to the colonial governments concerned, and the Canadians returned empty-handed. The possibility of sinking money in the inter-colonial also led to disagreement within the government party. In hostility to the project Dorion in January, 1863, left the ministry. This confluence of adverse circumstances forced the administration to discard its intention of carrying through the much desired intercolonial line, much to McGee's regret. Little more was gained than the extension of the survey