preservation of their special institutions.  But there were in the convention other men of much greater political force, more deeply versed in constitutional knowledge, more capable of framing a plan of union than the esteemed and discreet president.  Most prominent among these was Mr., afterwards Sir, John A. Macdonald, who had been for years one of the most conspicuous figures in Canadian politics, and had been able to win to a remarkable degree the confidence not only or the great majority of the French Canadians but also of a powerful minority in the western province where his able antagonist, Mr. Brown, until 1864 held the vantage ground by his persistency in urging its claims to greater weight in the administration of public affairs.  Mr. Macdonald had a great knowledge of men and did not hesitate to avail himself of their weaknesses in order to strengthen his political power.  His greatest faults were those of a politician anxious for the success of his party.  His strength lay largely in his ability to understand the working of British institutions, and in his recognition of the necessity of carrying on the government in a country of diverse nationalities, on principles of justice and compromise.  He had a happy faculty of adapting himself to the decided current of public opinion even at the risk of leaving himself open to a charge of inconsistency, and he was just as ready to adopt the measures of his opponents as he was willing to enter their ranks and steal away some prominent men whose support he thought necessary to his political success.

So early as 1861 he had emphatically expressed himself on the floor of the assembly in favour of the main principles of just such a federal union as was initiated at Quebec.  The moment he found that the question of union was likely to be something more than a mere subject for academic discussion or eloquent expression in legislative halls, he recognised immediately the great advantages it offered, not only for the solution of the difficulties of his own party, but also for the consolidation of British American as well as imperial interests on the continent of North America From the hour when he became convinced of this fact he devoted his consummate ability not merely as a party leader, but as a statesman of broad national views, to the perfection of a measure which promised so much for the welfare and security of the British provinces.  It was his good fortune, after the establishment of the federation, to be the first premier of the new Dominion and to mould its destinies with a firm and capable hand.  He saw it extended to the Pacific shores long before he died, amid the regrets of all classes and creeds and races of a country he loved and in whose future he had the most perfect confidence.