48 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



silenced Seymour's opposition.^ His earliest despatch mentioned this 

 factor as one which would induce him to support the project, and yet, 

 as I have endeavoured to show, for two years thereafter he was found 

 always upon the opposing side. No hint is to be found in any of the 

 correspondence or in any of the hundreds of newspaper art icles on the 

 question to give the slightest colour to the suggestion that Seymour's 

 views ever changed. The intense interest of the public in the question 

 especially during its later stages, would have caused the vaguest 

 hint of such a change in the Governor's attitude to be proclaimed 

 from the housetops. 



The letter written by Sir John A. Macdonald in 1869 correctly 

 states the position of Seymour even to the time of his death. In that 

 letter the Premier wrote: "I enclose a letter from a newspaper man 

 [H. E. Seelye] in British Columbia to Mr. Tilley, giving, Î fancy, an 

 accurate account of affairs in that colony. It corroborates the state- 

 ments of Mr. Carrall, whose letter I enclosed you some time ago. It 

 is quite clear that no time should be lost by Lord Granville in putting 

 the screws on at Vancouver Island, and the first thing to be done 

 will be to recall Governor Seymour, if his time is not out. Now that 

 the Hudson's Bay Company has succumbed, and it is their interest 

 to make things pleasant with the Canadian Government, they will, I 

 have no doubt, instruct their people to change their anti-Confederate 

 tone. We shall then have to fight only the Yankee adventurers, and 

 the annexation party proper, which there will be no difficulty in doing, 

 if we have a good man at the helm."^ 



Perhaps the strongest proof of Seymour's influence in blocking 

 Confederation is to be found in that fact that the same Legislative 

 Council, which in 1869 under his guidance voted overwhelmingly 

 against it, in 1870 under the guidance of Governor Musgrave voted 

 unanimously in its favour. As complete a volte face as history records. 

 But that, as Kipling would say, is another story. 



I have now given you the facts with the manifest inferences. May 

 I now be allowed to theorize? When the resolution of 1867 was 

 introduced Seymour had formed no opinion upon the question. He 

 wrote first to the Hudson's Bay Company, perhaps at the suggestion 

 of some of its officials. The Company's answer raised the question 

 of its rights in Rupert's Land. This afforded a reason for inaction 

 which the Governor at once seized upon. The suggestion of Imperial 

 aid to communication with Eastern Canada, he must have known 

 from the earlier experience of the colony, would afford an extra 



^ Coats and Gosnell, Sir James Douglas, p. 312. 



2 Pope's Life of Sir John A. Macdonald, vol. 2, p. 143. 



