r. After he
entered the House of Assembly, the speeches of opponents were as fully
and promptly reported as his own. Able men--and the province could boast
then of an extraordinary number of really able men--gathered round him or
sent contributions to the paper, while from all parts of the country came
correspondence, telling Mr Howe what was going on. As he began to feel
his powers, and to know that he had power in reserve; to hold his own
with older and better educated men; and to taste the sweets of popular
applause, that fame which he, like all young poets, had affected to
despise appeared beautiful and beckoned him onwards. He loved his
country from the first, and, as it responded to {28} him, that love
increased, until it became one of his chief objects to excite in the
bosoms of the people the attachment to the soil that gave them birth,
which is the fruitful parent of the virtues of every great nation.

To promote this object he made sacrifices. He published, between 1828
and 1839, ten volumes, connected with the history, the law, and the
literature of the province, often at his own risk. Another of his
literary enterprises was the formation of 'The Club,' a body composed of
a number of friends who met in Howe's house, discussed the questions of
the day, and planned literary sketches, afterwards published in the _Nova
Scotian_. Among those who thus gathered round him, such men as S. G. W.
Archibald, Beamish Murdoch, and Jotham Blanchard are now only remembered
by students of Nova Scotian history. Even the Irish wit and humour of
Laurence O'Connor Doyle gives him but a local immortality. But the names
of Thomas C. Haliburton (Sam Slick) and Captain John Kincaid of the Rifle
Brigade are known even to superficial students of English literature, and
no two men were more regular members of 'The Club.'

Literary rambles and literary sketches were {29} all very well, but what
really roused enthusiasm in those days was the political struggle.
'Poetry was the maiden I loved,' said Howe in after years, 'but politics
was the harridan I married.' In the early nineteenth century aristocracy
and democracy, alike in politics and in society, were fighting their
battle all over Europe, and the struggle had spread to the British
colonies. In the first year of his editorship Howe had a little brush
with the lieutenant-governor and his circle, but not for some time did
the crisis come. On the 1st of January 1835 an anon