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and classes of religionists, belovefillikay Iblaita-
rians and Unitarians, by Jews and Christians, and,
above all, so devotedlyattached to British rule, as the
Right Rev. Thomas L. Conolly,Archbishopof Hali-
fax. Foremost in all good works, the Archbishop has
been pre-eminent in lending his name, his talents, his
time, and his influence in support of the proposed
union of the colonies—a union which he recommends
not solely because it is the wish of Great
Britain, without whose protecting shield the colony
could not exist for a day, except as an addendum to
the United States ; but because he sees in union the
foundation and inevitable growth of a new and
noble nationality on the North American Continent
—possessing within itself all the elements of pros-
perity and progress ; greater guarantees for the per,
petuatiou of true freedom than the United Sta
have shown themselves willing or likely to aff.)rd ;
and, above all, destined to enjoy these solid r.elvan-
tages without any admixture of hatred or jealousy
of, or antagonism to, the beloved mother-land to
which the new nation mould owe its existence. The
Archbishop is so beloved that he can proselytise in
politics where he never could proselytise in religion,
and stands in the colony as a tower of streng,'„li
among all parties, irrespective of religious faith, who
desire the continuance of British connection as the
best, if not the only, guarantee of the welfare of
these noble provinces.
In St. John, New Brunswick, where the Roman
Catholic clergy, if not the Bishop individually, lo,ok
with indifference or disfavour on the Quebec scheme,
the Irish municipal vote is not given in support of
confederation. In Halifax, in consequence of the
well-known views of the Archbishop, the case is
different, and the Irish vote is almost unanimously
in favour of candidates for municipal offices who
have rendered themselves conspicuous for their ad-
vocacy of colonial union. At the annual election
for mayor and aldermen, on Tuesday last, the 3rd
inst., the late mayor, kr. Richey, a strong sup-
porter of confederation, carried the day by a majo-
rity of 214 against his anti-confederate opponent,
Mr. Tobin, the numbers being—for Richey, 623 ;
for Tobin, 409. The same gentlemen contested the
office in 1864, when the question of confederation
was not in dispute. Mr. Richey polled 374 votes,
and Mr. Tobin 304. The figures show that in the
present year 357 citizens who did not vote in the
year previous were induced to take part in the con-
test, and that nearly the whole of them went for the
Confederate candidate. In the six wards of the city
the same result was exhibited, in every ease a Con-
federate alderman being retained in office or elected
over an anti-Confederate opponent.

PRICE 4d,
STAMPED 51:

tricts of this province, be it great or small,on the
increase or the decrease, does not, except in rare
instances, extend to the principle. It only busies
itself with the details, against which it carps with-
out suggesting any great or essential improve-
ment. Long before the project of union with
Canada was promulgated the people of the mari-
time provinces had expressed themselves in favour
of a legislative union of New Brunswick, Nova
Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and, if need were, of
Newfoundland. Even at the present day, when a
larger scheme has found favour with the Canadian
and been approved of by the Imperial Government,
many Nova Scotians look with affection on the
smaller project, and hint that they would cheerfully
waive all objections to union if Canada were ex-
cluded. Others, who do not go so far as this, ex-
press their preference for a legislative union of the
maritime provinces, as the best and safest pre-
liminary to a Federal union with Canada, be-
lieving that by entering the Union as a unit, and
forming one of three co-equal States with Upper
and Lower Canada, the commercial or political in-
terests of the maritime provinces would be more
certainly promoted than they would be under the
scheme of the Quebec Conference. This idea finds
especial favour in Halifax, which under such an
arrangement would become the legislative capital of
three provinces, and attract to itself the legal and
Parliamentary business now transacted in New
Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
The antipathy to the Canadians—which is not,
however, entertained by leading politicians or edu-
cated professional classes, though widely diffused
among the rural and industrial as well as mercantile
population—is difficult to be accounted for. When-
ever a New Brunswick or Nova-Scotian Anti-Con-
federate orator wishes to make a point that is sure
to hit the popular taste, he has but to declare that
the politicians of Canada are notoriously corrupt—
that the people are " Yankees," or something worse,
and that Canadian finance is so mismanaged as to
be certain to end in bankruptcy. Some Nova
Scotians even go so far as to assert that they
would prefer the withdrawal by the British Go-
vernment of the right of self-government ac-
corded to the colonies to a union with Canada,
which in their estimation can only lead to the esta-
blishment of an ultra-Republican form of govern-
ment, antagonistic to British ideas, and incom-
patible with allegiance to a Constitutional Monarchy,
if it would not be a stepping-stone to that colonial
independence which in its turn would be a stepping-
stone to incorporation with the United States.
This hostility to Canada continually betrays itself.
The last time the question of Confederation came
before the House of Assembly, immediately prior
to the adjournment of the Legislature, Mr.
Le Vesconte, formerly Financial Secretary, de-
clared that " Nova Scotia would never con-
sent to be a dependency of Canada" that
" three hundred thousand Nova Scotians, after
their country was annexed to Canada, would have
no chance of obtaining justice in the matter of
taxation against the overpowering influence of three
millions of Canadians ;" and that, in short, the pro-
ject of Confederation was an unholy compact, in-
tended to barter away the rights and liberties of the
Nova Scotian people." Of course all this was the
merest moonshine, but was none the less acceptable
to those whose prejudices it flattered. It is not my
purpose to defend Canada and her statesmen from
such attacks as these, but only to record the state of
feeling that exists, and endeavour, if I can, to ac-
count for it. The main source of the jealousy en-
tertained of Canada appears to be ignorance. At
the reading rooms and places of public resort in St.
John and Halifax the Canadian newspapers are
rarely seen. The New York papers can be purchased
at the booksellers' shops, but the journals of To-
ronto, Montreal, or Quebec, are not to be obtained,
except by those who have so much need for them as

to subscribe for them in advance. Canadian affairs
receive about as little attention from thenewspapers
of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as those of New
Zealand or the Cape of Good Hope. The trade be-
tween the provinces is small, and the amount of
travel is proportionate. One little steamer, with
scanty accommodation for passengers and not much
capacity for freight, making a fortnightly trip dur-
ing the summer months from Shediac to Quebec
through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and stopping at
almost every little village and ferry on the way,
suffices or is made to suffice for all the wants created
by the intercolonial business that does not flow west-
ward to St. John, New Brunswick. This imperfect
knowledge produces misapprehension. The Canadian
rebellion of 1837 is the main incident of Canadian
history which remains indelibly imprinted on the
minds of the eminently loyal people of Nova Scotia,
who never rebelled against their lawful Sovereign or
dreamed of perpetuating a crime so heinous. One
ground of the covert dislike entertained against the
Canadians is their allegedtendency to what is called°
" Yankeeism," and in the case of the Lower Ca-

nadians the difference of race, language, and creed,
which, as they have already acted as disturbing
influences in Canadian politics, would, it is calcu-
lated, act in a similarly prejudicial manner upon the
politics of the Confederation. The principle of re-
presentation by population embodied in the Quebec
scheme is also distasteful on account of the over-
shadowing preponderance which its adoption would
give to the Canadians in the general Government of
the Confederacy. For a similar reason the Nova
Scotians look with disfavour on the project, so dear
to the President of the Car ldian Council and the.
Toronto Globe, of purchasing out of the general re-
_

venues of the Confederacy the rights of the Hud-
son's Bay Company over the North-Western tern-

tory, which the anti-Confederates persist in calling
the " North Pole," as a scheme that can be but of

nominal advantage to Canada, while it will be of
very remote, if any advantage whatever, to the
maritime colonies ; and still mere strongly as against
Canada, though not as against the Imperial

, -
Government, the dilatoriness of the Canadians in

the matter of the intercolonial railway, acts as a

damper on Confederation. Were the construction
of that line fairly commenced, and its completion

within a reasonable time guaranteed—not by a
Canadian Administration, that is in office to-day
and may be out of office to-morrow—but by the
British Government, many of the small objections
of the Nova Scotians and New Brunswickers would
lose their force and be gradually dropped out of dis-
cussion. But a fear that Confederationmay be forced
upon them without the railway, and that, by some
hocus-pocus of party politics in Canada or in Eng-
land, this immense boon to the maritime provinces
may even yet be withheld, lies at the bottom of an
opposition that takes many other shapes and names,
and uses many other and apparently less selfish cries
to keep itself before the public.
As far as my means of observation enable me to
judge, the opposition of Nova Scotia to union with
the other provinces is neither obstinate nor general.
It goes to the detail rather than to the principle,

and owes what little bitterness it may possess en-
tirely to the exigencies of party warfare in a small

colony, where personal considerations have more
weight than matters of public policy. Many Nova
Scotians—perhaps the majority—think they have
been dictated to ; that an attempt has been made
to thrust the scheme down their throats, whether

they approve it or not ; and that, at all events, they
have not been allowed sufficient time to study it out

:n all possible and probable effects upon their local
interests. But in none of the complaints that are

made is a single word of dissatisfaction expressed

against the Imperial Government. Even the Irish,
who in Canada and New Brunswick; under anti-
British leaders and agitators, find abundant reason
to oppose Confederation in the fact that the British
Government supports it, have not in Nova Scotia a
single objection to raise against it on this pretence,
or any other that is not advocated by their Anglo-
Saxon fellow-subjects. In this respect the province
is highly fortunate in having at the head of the