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History {since Confederation). The four provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Hew Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were confederated as the Dominion of Canada in 1867. At the request of the Dominion parliament the territory ruled by the Hudson Bay Company was ceded to Canada by the imperial Government in 1870, on the payment of $300,000 to satisfy the Company’s claims. From a portion of this territory the province of Manitoba was immediately formed, though it became necessary to quell by military force a rebellion among the half-breeds of the Red River district before the Dominion could finally take possession of the country. In the following year (1871) British Columbia joined the Dominion, the chief condition of the union being that a railway should be built within ten years to connect the Pacific coast with the eastern provinces. In 1873 Prince Edward Island entered the confederation. The Nelson River country to the west of Hudson Bay was in 1876 formed into the district of Keewatin. In the year 1880 all the remaining British possessions on the continent, except Newfoundland and the dependent district of Labrador, were formally annexed to Canada. Two years later the provisional districts of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Athabasca were created, and Regina was fixed upon as their capital. It was not till 1895 that the great unorganized tract to the north and west was divided into four districts —Ungava, Franklin, Mackenzie, and Yukon. The problems with which the statesmen of confederated Canada have had to deal in connexion with the vast territory thus brought under their control have been numerous and of varied character. Immediately after confederation a serious agitation for repeal of the union arose in Nova Scotia, which had been brought into confederation by a vote of the Legislature, without direct appeal to the people ; this danger was only averted after much negotiation, and considerable modification of the terms on which that province entered the Dominion. Much friction has arisen in defining accurately the division of power between the Federal and provincial Governments. The founders of confederation had, in the troubles of the United States, an object-lesson on the necessity of strengthening the central authority. The American constitution, after clearly defining the powers of the Federal Government, leaves all unstated authority to the sovereign states. Canada adopted the opposite course. While the range of legislative control for the province was clearly defined, the residuum of undelegated authority was given to the Federal Government. On this point several differences have arisen, the Dominion sometimes disclaiming, sometimes asserting, a right to interfere. When, in 1871, the New Brunswick legislature passed a Bill making public education non-sectarian, the opposition, on behalf of the Roman Catholic minority, appealed to the Ottawa Government to disallow the Act. This it refused to do, asserting that the province had acted within its rights. A similar policy was followed in 1888, when the Quebec legislature granted to the Jesuit order a sum of $400,000 in compensation for property forfeited to the Crown. The Dominion Government, urged to disallow this Act, ruled that it did not come within its jurisdiction. A difference of long standing was settled in 1898 by the Privy Council, which ruled that in the question of the control of fisheries, while the Dominion had exclusive power to make regulations, the issue of licenses and the collection of revenues from this source belong to the provinces, except in the case of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, where no prior rights existed. In 1878 the Federal Government passed the Scott Act, empowering municipalities to deal with the traffic in liquor. The right of the Federal parliament to pass this Act was questioned
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as an infringement of provincial powers, but on appeal to the Privy Council the right was maintained. It seems probable that most of the possible questions of difference between federal and provincial authority have now been settled by these and similar judicial decisions, and that Canadian experience in adapting a federal system to British methods of government will prove extremely useful in further applications of the federal idea to other parts of the empire, or to the empire itself. In this connexion it may be noted that dual representation, or the privilege of representing a constituency in the Dominion parliament and in a provincial assembly at the same time, was tried in the early years of confederation, but was abolished in 1872 as unsatisfactory. Among matters demanding constructive legislation in the organization of the new state the following may be noted :—In 1871 a uniform system of decimal currency'w&s established for the whole Dominion. The creation of a Supreme C'owrtf, after engaging the attention of the Canadian parliament for several years, was finally accomplished in 1876. This court is presided over by a chief justice and five puisne judges, and has appellate civil and criminal jurisdiction for the Dominion. By an Act passed in 1891 the Government has power to refer to the Supreme Court any important question of law affecting the public interest. The right of appeal from the Supreme Court thus constituted to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council marks, in questions judicial, Canada’s place as a part of the British empire. The appointment, first made in 1897, of the chief justices of Canada, Cape Colony, and South Australia, as colonial members of the Judicial Committee, still further established the position of that body as the final court of appeal for British people. The British North America Act of 1867 provided that the control of elections for the Dominion parliament should rest with the various provinces. This measure was necessary owing to the lack of machinery at the time for managing federal matters. This clause was superseded in 1885 by a franchise Bill, which provided for uniformity of suffrage and recognized property qualification as determining the right to vote. A later Act, passed in 1898, restored the provincial franchise as the basis for federal elections, thus reintroducing an element of variety in the qualifications of voters. Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island have practically manhood suffrage; in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick a property qualification is required. A general election law was passed in 1874, which provided for vote by ballot, the holding of elections simultaneously throughout the Dominion, and the abolition of property qualification for members of parliament. In the North-West Territories, however, elections were held by open voting until 1885. In a country of vast distances with great areas to be opened for settlement, railway development was necessarily from the first a leading question of public policy. Two great national lines were projected as an essential part of confederation: the Intercolonial, built to connect the Maritime Provinces with the provinces on the St Lawrence; the Canadian Pacific to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts of the Dominion. The first of these was completed in 1876 ; with the various extensions since built it now includes 1511 miles of road, and remains entirely under the control of the Government. The construction of the Canadian Pacific was entrusted to a private company, which received large subsidies of land, money, and completed railway. This system has grown to be one of the greatest in the world ; it owns more than 7000 miles of road and controls about 3000 more; in its various ramifications it touches the most important points of Canada; it has established steamship communication with Japan and along the great lakes. The railway mileage of the whole Dominion
