d
excise duties, it became necessary to make up in some way a sum
sufficient to enable them to carry on those services which were still
left to the provincial legislatures. It was arranged that this sum
should be eighty cents a head of the population of the provinces as
established by the census of 1861, which would give to New Brunswick
something more than two hundred thousand dollars. This feature of the
confederation scheme was eagerly seized upon as being a convenient club
with which to strike it down. The cry was at once raised that the people
of New Brunswick were asked to sell themselves to Canada for the sum of
eighty cents a head, and this parrot-like cry was repeated with
variations throughout the whole of the election campaign which followed
in New Brunswick. It has often been found that a cry of this kind, which
is absolutely meaningless, is more effective than the most weighty
arguments, for the purpose of influencing men's minds, and this proved
to be the case in New Brunswick, when the question of confederation was
placed before the people. It was conveniently forgotten by those who
attacked the scheme in this fashion that, if the people of New Brunswick
were selling themselves to Canada for the sum of eighty cents a head,
the people of Canada were likewise selling themselves to New Brunswick
for the same sum, because the amount set apart for the provincial
legislatures was precisely the same in each case. It would not, however,
have suited the enemies of the confederation scheme to view the matter
in this light; what was wanted was a cry which would be effective for
the purpose of injuring the scheme and making it distasteful to the
people who were asked to vote upon it.

{OPPONENTS OF CONFEDERATION}

It is not necessary to assume that those who opposed confederation were
all influenced by sinister motives. Many honest and good men, whose
attachment to British institutions could not be questioned, were
opposed to it because their minds were of a conservative turn, and
because they looked with distrust upon such a radical change that would
alter the relations which existed between the province and the mother
country. Many, for reasons which it is not easy to understand, were
distrustful of the politicians of Canada, whom they looked upon as of
less sterling honesty than their own, and some actually professed to
believe that the Canadians expected to make up their financial deficits
by drawing on the man