but in 1864 returned to power with Tupper as premier. In 1864–1865 he forced through, against the opposition of ill-educated farmers and of Roman Catholic supporters of separate schools, the effective system of education which is still in force, with free primary schools supported by compulsory assessment. In 1864 he organized a conference at Charlottetown to consider a maritime union of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. This was soon merged in the larger project of Canadian confederation, and Tupper was the chief Nova Scotian delegate at the Quebec conference in October 1864. While here, he formed a political and personal alliance with Sir John Alexander Macdonald [q.v.], which grew ever closer till Macdonald's death. Fierce opposition to federation soon developed in Nova Scotia, led by Howe and financed by the Halifax merchants, who feared for their monopoly of the provincial trade. Howe had long been an advocate of a larger union, and his inconsistency was apparently due to his egotism. ‘I will not play second fiddle to that d—d Tupper’, he said. Tupper faced his opponents aggressively. The Roman Catholic archbishop offered him the votes of his flock in return for separate schools, but Tupper was obdurate. The opposition clamoured with much justice for an appeal to the electorate, but this Tupper refused, and he held together his majority in the house by Walpolean methods. In 1866–1867 he was a prominent figure at the conference in London with the imperial authorities, in which the details were worked out of the British North America Act.
When Sir John Macdonald formed the first government of federated Canada (1867), sectional and religious claims had to be placated, and Tupper unselfishly stood aside, in company with the Irish-Canadian, Thomas D'Arcy McGee [q.v.]. Meanwhile Nova Scotia had become all but unanimous in favour of the repeal of the British North America Act. Of nineteen members in the federal house Tupper was the only federationist, and of thirty-eight in the local house he had but two supporters. His private savings had been exhausted in the struggle for federation, but he refused to withdraw from public life though offered the chairmanship of the board of commissioners for constructing the Intercolonial Railway. In 1868 he went to London to counter the repeal agitation of Howe, and was so completely successful that he actually induced Howe, by the promise of financial ‘better terms’ for Nova Scotia, to enter the federal Cabinet. On 21 June 1870 he himself entered the Cabinet as president of the council; he was transferred on 2 July 1872 to the department of inland revenue, and on 22 February 1873 to that of customs, which post he held till the defeat of the government in the autumn of that year on the ‘Pacific scandal’ [see Macdonald, Sir John Alexander].
In opposition Tupper was the chief financial critic of government measures, and did more than any other man to commit his own party to the ‘national policy’ of protection. On the return of the conservatives to power in October 1878 after a general election, Tupper accepted the ministry of public works in the Cabinet of Sir John Macdonald; in 1879 this post was divided into two, and Tupper became the first minister of railways and canals. In this office he reorganized and enlarged the inter-colonial railway between the maritime provinces and Quebec, and was largely concerned in changing the former policy of government construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway to that of construction by a private company with government aid. In May 1884 he suddenly and unexpectedly retired from the Cabinet in order to succeed Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt [q.v.] as Canadian high commissioner in London. This office he held till January 1896, when he resigned to enter the conservative Cabinet of Sir Mackenzie Bowell as secretary of state. As high commissioner he was vigour personified, and gave new importance to the office. Through him Canada obtained a larger influence in the making of all treaties which concerned her interests. He was an early advocate of imperial preference, and of fast inter-imperial steamship services both on the Atlantic and the Pacific; but he disliked the political activities of the Imperial Federation League, and was largely responsible for its disbanding in 1893. During his tenure of the high commissionership he returned to Canada in 1887 and 1891 to take part in the general elections, and was on each occasion Sir John Macdonald's chief assistant. For a few months of 1887–1888 he was also finance minister, and from November 1887 to February 1888 he was the Canadian representative at Washington in the negotiations for settling the fisheries imbroglio with the United States, the British representatives being Mr. Joseph Chamberlain [q.v.] and Sir Lionel Sackville-West (afterwards Baron Sackville, q.v.).
On 27 April 1896 Sir Mackenzie Bowell
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