end sectional discord between Upper and Lower
Canada. Questions that used to excite sectional hostility and jealousy
were now removed from the common legislature to the legislatures of
the provinces. No man need be debarred from a public career because
his opinions, popular in his own province, were unpopular in another.
Among the local questions that had disturbed the peace of the common
legislature, he mentioned the construction of local works, the
endowment of ecclesiastical institutions, the granting of money for
sectarian purposes, and interference with school systems.

He advocated confederation because it would convert a group of
inconsiderable colonies into a powerful union of four million people,
with a revenue of thirteen million dollars, a trade of one hundred and
thirty-seven million five hundred thousand dollars, rich natural
resources and important industries. Among these he dwelt at length on
the shipping of the Maritime Provinces. These were the days of the
wooden ship, and Mr. Brown claimed that federated Canada would be the
third maritime power in the world. Confederation would give a new
impetus to immigration and settlement. Communication with the west
would be opened up, as soon as the state of the finances permitted.
Negotiations had been carried on with the imperial government for the
addition of the North-West Territories to Canada; and when those
fertile plains were opened for settlement, there would be an immense
addition to the products of Canada. The establishment of free trade
between Canada and the Maritime Provinces would be some compensation
for the loss of trade with the United States, should the reciprocity
treaty be abrogated. It would enable the country to assume a larger
share of the burden of defence. The time had come when the people of
the United Kingdom would insist on a reconsideration of the military
relations of Canada to the empire, and that demand was just. Union
would facilitate common defence. "The Civil War in the neighbouring
republic--the possibility of war between Great Britain and the United
States; the threatened repeal of the reciprocity treaty; the
threatened abolition of the American bonding system for goods in
transit to and from these provinces; the unsettled position of the
Hudson's Bay Company; the changed feeling of England as to the
relations of Canada to the parent state; all combine at this moment to
arrest the earnest attention to the gravity of the situa