they have never ventured to open their
opinion to me. If they did so on grounds of peaceful separation, I
should differ from them so long as colonies can be retained by bonds of
mutual sympathy and mutual obligation; but I would meet their views
with indignation if they could suggest disruption by the act of any
other, and that a hostile, Power.

The duke was not intimate with his official subordinates, or he would
have known that Palmerston's description exactly fitted the permanent
under-secretary at the Colonial Office. Sir Frederic Rogers (who later
became Lord Blachford) filled that post from 1860 to 1871. He was
therefore in office during the Confederation period. He left on record
his ideas of the future of the Empire:

I had always believed--and the belief has so confirmed and consolidated
itself that I can hardly realize the possibility of any one seriously
thinking the contrary--that the destiny of our colonies is
independence; and that in this view, the function of the Colonial
Office is to secure that {122} our connexion, while it lasts, shall be
as profitable to both parties, and our separation, when it comes, as
amicable as possible. This opinion is founded first on the general
principle that a spirited nation (and a colony becomes a nation) will
not submit to be governed in its internal affairs by a distant
government, and that nations geographically remote have no such common
interests as will bind them permanently together in foreign policy with
all its details and mutations.

In other words, Sir Frederic was a painstaking honourable official
without a shred of imagination. He typifies the sort of influence
which the delegates had to encounter.

The conference consisted of sixteen members, six from Canada and ten
from the Maritime Provinces. The Canadians were Macdonald, Cartier,
Galt, McDougall, Howland, and Langevin. From Nova Scotia came Tupper,
Henry, Ritchie, McCully, and Archibald; while New Brunswick was
represented by Tilley, Johnston, Mitchell, Fisher, and Wilmot. They
selected John A. Macdonald as chairman. The resignation of Brown had
left Macdonald the leader of the movement, and the nominal {123}
Canadian prime minister, Sir Narcisse Belleau, was not even a delegate.
The impression Macdonald made in London is thus recorded by Sir
Frederic Rogers in language which gives us an insight into the working
of the conference:

They held many meetings, at which I was always