180 HISTORY or PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.
Whelan, seconded by the solicitor general (the Honorable T. H. Haviland, now a senator of the Dominion), to the efiect that there should be no vote passed by the legislature as to the confederation of the provinces until the people should be first afforded an opportunity of pronouncing their judgment on the question at a general election. Mr. Pope’s motion was carried by twenty-one votes to seven for the amendment. An address to Her Majesty the Queen, based on the action of the assembly, was subsequently adopted by the assembly and forwarded for presentation at the foot of the throne.
In the autumn of 1866, IVIr. J. C. Pope went to England, and an informal offer was made through him by the delegates from the other provinces, then in London settling the terms of confederation, to grant the island eight hundred thousand dollars, as indemnity for the loss of territorial revenue, and for the purchase of the proprietors’ estates, on condition of the island entering the confederation. But the people were not at this time in a temper to entertain the proposition for a moment.
In the autumn of 1869, the island was visited by Sir John Young, the governor-general of British North America. He was accompanied by several of his ministers, who discussed informally, with members of the government, the subject of
a union of the island with the Dominion of Canada. On the eighteenth of December, 1869, the governor-general trans—
mitted to Sir Robert Hodgson, the administrator of the government of Prince Edward Island, a minute of the privy council of Canada, relating to the question of a political union of the island with the Dominion. That minute was based on a memorandum dated the eleventh of December, 1869, from Sir George Cartier and Messrs. Tilley and Kenny, who took part in the informal discussion just alluded