8
to a Fenian assassin. From the Maritime Provinces the ablest recruit was
Tupper, the most dogged fighter in Canadian parliamentary annals and a
lifelong sworn ally of Macdonald.

It was at first uncertain what the grouping of parties would be.
Macdonald naturally wished to retain the coalition which assured him
unquestioned mastery, and the popular desire to give Confederation a
good start also favored such a course. In his first Cabinet, formed with
infinite difficulty, with provinces, parties, religions, races, all to
consider in filling a limited number of posts, Macdonald included six
Liberal ministers out of thirteen, three from Ontario, and three from
the Maritime Provinces. Yet if an Opposition had not existed, it would
have been necessary to create one in order to work the parliamentary
machine. The attempt to keep the coalition together did not long
succeed. On the eve of the first federal election the Ontario Reformers
in convention decided to oppose the Government, even though it contained
three of their former leaders. In the contest, held in August and
September, 1867, Macdonald triumphed in every province except Nova
Scotia but faced a growing Opposition party. Under the virtual
leadership of Alexander Mackenzie, fragments of parties from the four
provinces were united into a single Liberal group. In a few years the
majority of the Liberal rank and file were back in the fold, and
the Liberal members in the Cabinet had become frankly Conservative.
Coalition had faded away.

Within six years after Confederation the whole northern half of the
continent had been absorbed by Canada. The four original provinces
comprised only one-tenth of the area of the present Dominion, some
377,000 square miles as against 3,730,000 today. The most easterly of
the provinces, little Prince Edward Island, had drawn back in 1865,
content in isolation. Eight years later this province entered the fold.
Hard times and a glimpse of the financial strength of the new federation
had wrought a change of heart. The solution of the century-old problem
of the island, absentee landlordism, threatened to strain the finances
of the province; and men began to look to Ottawa for relief. A railway
crisis turned their thoughts in the same direction. The provincial
authorities had recently arranged for the building of a narrow-gauge
road from one end of the island to the other. It was agreed that the
contractors should be paid 5000 pounds a m