184 HISTORY OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

for objects for which the ordinary revenue had hithertc enabled them to provide. The resolution further proposed to authorise the lieutenant-governor to appoint delegates to proceed to Ottawa to confer with the government of the Dominion on the subject.

To this resolution, the Honorable David Laird moved an amendment, which was seconded by the Honorable B. Davies, to the effect that the house should appoint a committee of seven to prepare an address to the Queen, praying Her Majesty in council to pass an order in council, in conformity with the one hundred and forty-sixth section of the British North America Act, uniting Prince Edward Island with the Dominion of Canada, on the terms and conditions approved of in the minute of the privy council of Canada, on the tenth of March, 1873. The question having been put, the origi- nal resolution was carried by sixteen to ten votes.

Messrs. James C. Pope, T. H. Haviland, and George W. Howlan having been appointed delegates by the lieutenant- governor, proceeded to Ottawa for the purpose of conferring with the Dominion government on the subject of the proposed union. On the seventh of May they had an interview with the governor-general on the subject of their mission, and immediately afterwards they attended a formal meeting of the privy council. A committee of the council, consisting of Sir John A. McDonald, the Honorablcs Messieurs Tilley, Tupper, and Langevin were then appointed to confer with the delegates, who had drawn up a memorandum which they submitted to the committee. In that memorandum the delegates proposed to accept, as the basis of union, the offer made in 1869 by the Dominion government, namely, two hundred and forty-one thousand dollars a year for revenue, provided the Dominion government would assume the cost of the railway, as well as that of the proposed branch