[boueinot] builders OF NOVA SCOTIA 81 



powerful as his humour was catching and his pathos melting. Indeed he 

 had a sense of humour and a capacity for wit which has never been 

 equalled by any piiblic man I have ever met in public life. Among his 

 compeers, at a dinner or supper table, this humour was at times a " little 

 robust," to use the expressive phrase given me by a former governor- 

 general of Canada. He was like Sir John Macdonald in this jDarticular, 

 though far superior to him in originality of wit and power to tell a good 

 story, Howe's sense of humour, his personal magnetism, and his 

 contempt for all humbugs, his sympathy for human weaknesses and frail- 

 ties, added to his earnest advocacy of popular liberties, deservedly won 

 for him a place in the people's hearts, never held before or after him by a 

 public man in Nova Scotia. He was the most magnetic speaker who 

 ever stood on the public platform in the Dominion : he could sway thou- 

 sands by his flights of eloquence, and lead them to follow him as if he 

 were the shepherd of a flock of political sheep. Even his opponents 

 loved to listen to him in his palmy days in a province where there has 

 been always a great deal of political bitterness. In the homes of the 

 people he was always welcome, the children loved to hear his stories, and 

 the girls never objected to be kissed by him. He was vain of his jDopu- 

 larity, but his vanity was that peculiar to all great men and never obtru- 

 sively displayed. It was the vanity that spurs men to greater efforts 

 and to make the best use of their abilities. He was always a loyal sub- 

 ject of the crown, and when Papineau and Lyon McKenzie were luring 

 their " patriot bands " to certain ruin, Howe was urging counsels of mod- 

 eration, and was not ready to go beyond lawful constitutional agitation 

 to force the Imperial authorities to grant Nova Scotians a larger mea- 

 sure of self-government In taking this course he was animated by the 

 same loyal sentiments which distinguished his father and other loyalists 

 who were not prepared to resort to the arbitrament of war but honestly 

 believed that all vexed questions between the mother country and her 

 recalcitrant colonies could be eventually settled by legitimate constitu- 

 tional methods. During the movement for confederation he found him- 

 self in the unfortunate position of opposing a union to the advocacy of 

 which his most eloquent address had been mainly devoted many years 

 previously. It was most unfortunate for the success of this great national 

 measure that so powerful an orator and leader of the peojjle should have 

 thought it his public duty to assume an attitude of hostility which even- 

 tually brought the province to the very verge of revolution. 



Howe was never in his heart opposed to union in principle as I know 

 from conversations I had with him in later times, but he thought the 

 policy pursued by the promoters of confederation was injurious to the 

 cause itself — that so radical a change in the constitution of the province 

 should have first been submitted to the people at the polls, and that the 

 terms arranged at Quebec were inadequate in the main. In one respect 



Sec. II., 1899. 6. 



