THE GROWTH OF CANADA 271 



ican history and institutions were as sedulously 

 searched as those of the mother-country for 

 precedent and for warning. Despite the un 

 friendly feelings in which the Dominion took 

 its rise, its constitution is in the fullest sense an 

 embodiment of the combined experience of all 

 three of the great English-speaking peoples of 

 the day. 



In the project for the union of the British 

 provinces was involved the larger project of a 

 national consolidation of the whole of the Brit 

 ish territory in America north of the United 

 States. In correspondence with the expansion 

 of the republic across the continent to the 

 Pacific, the new Dominion was to include the 

 whole vast region westward to the ocean and the 

 Russian boundary. Nor was the slow and pain 

 ful process through which the United States had 

 acquired its western area to be duplicated. The 

 course of the imperial government was defi 

 nitely agreed upon before the British North 

 America Act was passed. In 1868 the rights 

 of the Hudson s Bay Company, in whom up to 

 1859 the sole control of most of the region had 

 for generations been vested, were taken over 

 by the Dominion. Three years later the prov 

 ince of Manitoba was organized on part of this 



