Edward Blake and the Compact Theory of Confederation

At Queen's Park in Toronto, he went further, breaking radically new ground. "Our province [Ontario] agreed to part with a certain part of its jurisdiction upon certain conditions," he said, and these conditions were embodied into an Imperial act that gave us security, "a charter of our rights." He concluded precisely, "This compact under which we have surrendered so much of our rights is not alterable except by the power that made it."... Blake was the first to advance the concept of Confederation as a "compact" between the provinces, which had got together to create a federal government to fulfill certain common functions.

--Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald; His Life, Our Times (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2012), 69.