Editor and owner of the Novascotian, then leader of the Reformers' party, Joseph Howe in 1848 obtained for Nova Scotia status as the first British colony to achieve responsible government. He became Liberal party premier of the province's government from 1860 to 1863, a federal cabinet minister under Sir John A. Macdonald in 1869, and Lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia in 1873, just prior to his death. Although he began preparing his poems and essays before then, his family brought them to publication a year late.