hey might have the pelf if he had
the power. Proposals that did not emanate from himself got scant
justice in council or caucus. This egoism, which long feeding on
popular applause had developed into a vanity almost incomprehensible in
one so strong, was not {141} known to the outside world. But now, in
his hour of trial, his sin had found him out. The real reason of his
opposition was given in his savage words to a friend: 'I will not play
second fiddle to that d----d Tupper.'

But the egoist was also 'a bonny fighter.' He flung himself into the
fray as wild with excitement as any soldier on a stricken field. With
every artifice of the orator he wrought the people of Nova Scotia to
madness. It was poor stuff, most of it; coarse jokes, recrimination,
crowd-catching claptrap. Eighty cents per head of population was,
according to the agreement, to be the subsidy from the federal to the
provincial government. 'We are sold for the price of a sheep-skin,'
was Howe's slogan on a hundred platforms. Dr Tupper had passed a
measure, instituting compulsory primary education, based on direct
local assessment. In his heart of hearts Howe knew that it was a noble
measure, such as he himself had wished to introduce but dared not; yet
he did not scruple to play upon the hatred of the farmer against direct
taxation. Instead of rousing, as of old, their love of Nova Scotia
till it included all British North America and widened ever outward
till the whole Empire was within, he made {142} of it a bitter, selfish
thing, localism and provincialism incarnate. Yet as an orator he was
supreme.

Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel.

When the ablest speakers on behalf of federation met him on the
platform, they were swept away in the blast of his ridicule and his
passion.

In the midst of it his nobler self shone out again. The Reciprocity
Treaty between Canada and the United States, negotiated by Lord Elgin
in 1854, had been denounced by the government of the United States. To
discuss this action, a great convention of representatives of the
Boards of Trade and other commercial bodies of the northern and western
States met in Detroit in August 1865, and was visited by Canadian
delegates, of whom Howe was one. On the 14th of August he spoke as the
representative of the British North American provinces. The audience
at first was hostile. Gradually the skill and fire of the orator
warmed them. At t