THE QUESTION OF CONFEDERATION. 183 terms and conditions mutually agreed to was finally drawn up. On the twelfth of March the governor-general sent a tele¬ graphic despatch, evidently for the purpose of confirming the report of Messrs. Haythorne and Laird, intimating his minis¬ ters' opinion,—in which he expressed his own concurrence,— that "no additional concession would have any chance of being accepted by the parliament of Canada ." On the seventh of March the lieutenant-governor dissolved the house of assembly ; and on the twenty-seventh of April the new house met, when the lieutenant-governor, in his opening speech, said that papers relative to the proposed union of the island with the Dominion of Canada would be laid before the house. Having dissolved the house in order that this important question might be submitted to the people at the polls, he now invited the representatives of the people to bestow on the question their careful consideration, expressing the earnest hope of the imperial government, that the island would not lose this opportunity of union with her sister provinces. On the twenty-eighth of April the question was vigorously discussed by Mr. J. C. Pope and Mr. Laird ; and on the second day of May, Mr. A. C. McDonald reported, that the com¬ mittee had come to a resolution to the effect that the terms and conditions proposed did not secure to the island a sum sufficient to defray the indispensable requirements of its local government; that the strong objections hitherto entertained by the people of the island to confederation having been much modified, and the present house of assembly, feeling anxious to meet the desire of the imperial government to unite under one government all the British possessions iu America, was willing to merge the interests of the island with those of the Dominion on terms just and reasonable,—■ such as would not involve the people in direct local taxation