to prize.'

[Illustration: SIR JOHN HARVEY. From a portrait in the John Ross
Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library]

Falkland's successor was Sir John Harvey, in old days a hero of the War
of 1812, more recently governor of New Brunswick. Shortly after his
coming he endeavoured to induce Howe and his friends to enter the
government, but Howe now saw victory within his grasp, and had no mind
for further coalitions. To a friend he wrote: 'I do not in the abstract
disapprove of coalitions, where public exigencies, or an equal balance of
parties, create a necessity for them, but hold that, when formed, the
members should act in good faith, and treat each other like
gentlemen--should form a party, in fact, and take the field against all
other parties without. If they quarrel and fight, and knock the
coalition to smithereens, then a governor who attempts to compel men who
cannot eat together, and are animated by mutual distrust, to serve in the
same Cabinet, and bullies them if they refuse, is mad.'

Foiled in his well-meant attempt, Sir John then consulted the Colonial
Office. Into that {88} department a new spirit had come with the arrival
in 1846 of Lord Grey, who replied with a dispatch in which the principles
of Responsible Government were laid down in the clearest terms, while at
the same time the Reformers were warned that only the holders of the
great political offices should be subject to removal, and that there
should be no approach to the 'spoils system,' which was at the time
disgracing the United States. In 1847 the Reformers carried the
province, and Sir John Harvey gave to their leaders his loyal support.
Mr Uniacke was called on to form an administration, in which Howe was
given the post of provincial secretary. There was a final flurry. For a
month or two the province was convulsed by the conduct of the former
provincial secretary, Sir Rupert D. George, who, amid the plaudits of
fashionable Halifax, refused to resign. But Sir Rupert was dismissed
with a pension, and Joe Howe ruled in his stead. The ten years' conflict
was at an end. The printer's boy had faced the embattled oligarchy, and
had won.

It was a bloodless victory. Heart-burning indeed there was, and the
breaking up of friendships. But it is the glory of Howe that
responsibility was won in the Maritime {89} Provinces without rebellion.
In the next year, in his song for the centenary of the landing of the
Britons in Halifax,