" A general legislative union would elevate and gratify the hopes of able and aspiring men.

They would no longer look with envy and wonder at the great arena of the bordering federation, but see the means of satisfying every legitimate ambition in the high offices of the judicature and executive government of their own union.

"Nor would an union of the various provinces be less advantageous in facilitating a co-operation for various common purposes, of which the want is now very seriously felt There is hardly a department of the business of government which does not require, or would not be better performed, by being carried on under the superintendence of a general govern- ment: and when we consider the political and com- mercial interests that are common to these provinces, it appears difficult to account for their having ever been divided into separate governments, since they have all been portions of the same empire, subject to the same crown, governed by nearly the same laws and constitutional customs, inhabited, with one ex- ception, by the same race, contiguous and immedi- ately adjacent to each other, and bounded along their whole frontier by the territories of the same powerful and rival state.

It would appear that every motive that has induced the union of various provinces into a single state, exists for the consolidation of these colonies under a common legislature and executive.

They have the same common relation to the mother country ; the same relation to foreign nations "When one is at war, the others are at war; and the hos- tilities that are caused by an attack on one, must seriously compromise the welfare of the rest.