e gave a public funeral to this great French
Canadian, always animated by a sincere desire to weld the two races
together on principles of compromise and justice. Sir Francis Hincks
also disappeared from public life in 1873, and died at Montreal in 1885
from an attack of malignant small-pox. The sad circumstances of his
death forbade any public or even private display, and the man who filled
so many important positions in the empire was carried to the grave with
those precautions which are necessary in the case of those who fall
victims to an infectious disease.

But while these two eminent men disappeared from the public life of
Canada, two others began now to occupy a more prominent place in
Dominion affairs. These were Mr. Edward Blake and Mr. Alexander
Mackenzie, who had retired from the Ontario legislature when an act was
passed, as in other provinces, against dual representation, which made
it necessary for them to elect between federal and provincial politics.
Sir Oliver Mowat, who had retired from the bench, was chosen prime
minister of Ontario on the 25th October, 1872, and continued to hold the
position with great success and profit to the province until 1896, when
he became minister of justice in the Liberal government formed by Sir
Wilfrid Laurier.

In 1873 Prince Edward Island yielded to the influences which had been
working for some years in the direction of union, and allied her
fortunes with those of her sister provinces. The public men who were
mainly instrumental in bringing about this happy result, after much
discussion in the legislature and several conferences with the Dominion
government, were the following: Mr. R.P. Haythorne, afterwards a
senator; Mr. David Laird, at a later time minister in Mr. Mackenzie's
government and a lieutenant-governor of the North-west territories; Mr.
James C. Pope, who became a member of Sir John Macdonald's cabinet in
1879; Mr. T.H. Haviland, and Mr. G.W. Howlan, who were in later years
lieutenant-governors of the island. The terms of union made not only
very favourable financial arrangements for the support of the provincial
government, but also allowed a sum of money for the purpose of
extinguishing the claims of the landlords to whom the greater portion of
the public domain had been given by the British government more than a
hundred years before. The constitution of the executive authority and
the legislature remained as before confederation. Adequate
representa