18 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
a condition of colonial pupilage, until by a quarter of a century after the 
union of 1841, these committees possessed full control over their trade and 
commerce, and were able even to enter into a treaty of reciprocity with 
the United States that provided for a free interchange of the natural 
products of the respective countries. The customs, the post offices, and 
other matters were handed over to the jurisdiction of the provinces, and 
the English government exercised only the supervision over Canada that 
is the constitutional and necessary sequence of imperial supremacy. 
When the legislative union of 1841 became unequal to the political con- 
ditions of the Canadas, and it was expedient to afford greater facilities 
for commercial intercourse between the provinces, give unity to the 
isolated British American communities that stretched from the Atlantic 
to Lake Superior, establish additional guarantees for the protection of 
the rights and privileges of the French Canadian nationality, and at the 
same time erect a barrier against the ambition of the great federal repub- 
lic that had just subdued the south, the statesmen of British America 
assembled in conference and gave expression to the popular sentiment in 
favour of alarger sphere of political action. They succeeded in forming 
a federal union, which originally consisted of only four provinces—Nova 
Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebee,—but extended its authority, 
in the course of a few years, over the fertile island of Prince Edward in 
the east, added an immense territory in the northwest, out of which 
was immediately carved a new province, and finally reached the Pacific 
shores by the addition of British Columbia, with its stupendous range of 
mountains. and the picturesque island of Vancouver, placed as a sentinel 
to guard the approaches to the western shores of a Dominion whose laws 
are executed over nearly half the continent. 
VAE 
The federal union was the inevitable sequence of the self-government 
that was the immediate result of the liberal colonial policy adopted 
towards the colonies soon after the present queen ascended the throne, 
and with which the names of Durham, Russell, Grey and Gladstone must 
be always associated in the history of the empire. The constitution of 
Canada, which is known as the British North America Act of 1867— 
embodying the resolutions of the Quebec conference of 1864—only 
enlarged the area of political sovereignty of the provinces, and gaye 
greater scope to their political energy, already stimulated for years pre- 
viously by the influence of responsible government. The federal consti- 
tution has left the provinces in the possession of the essential features of 
that local government which they had fairly won from the parent state 
since Acadia and Canada were wrested from France, and representative 
institutions were formally established throughout British North America 
