438 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
public mind upon that point. I was absent from Nova Scotia seven months in 
1865, and ten weeks of last winter was at Washington. On returning home this 
Spring I found the Lieutenant-Governors acting like partizans,* and violating all 
constitutional principle in order to carry the policy of the convention. I was re- 
luctant to go back into political controversies and asked my old friend Archibald to 
relieve me from the necessity by giving me an assurance that any measure that might 
be proposed should be sent for ratification or rejection by the people. He declined 
to do this and it was, only, when satisfied that the gentlemen who had prepared this 
scheme intended to seek shelter from all responsibility under an act of parliament, 
that I took the field in opposition. 
2. You know Halifax well and know what weight to attach to the fact when 
I tell you that, along a mercantile frontage of more than two miles of Wharfs and 
Stores, hardly seven merchants are in favour of the Scheme. That in Yarmouth the 
second Seaport in the Province, there are not twenty persons of any position in busi- 
ness or social life who approve of it—that, so strong is the feeling, that Enos Collins®* 
who is now ninety years of age, and the wealthiest man in British America, declares 
that, if he was twenty years younger, he would take up his rifle and resist it—that, 
in all parts of the Province, political parties are broken up and a new one formed 
the sole object of which is to protect the interests and institutions of the Country. 
3. You know that Mather Almon, Andrew Uniacke, Alfred Jones, T. C. Kinnear, 
James Moren, Wm. Prior, the Cogswell’s® and men of that Stamp were conservatives. 
They are now co-operating with the leading liberals bankers and merchants to de- 
feat this measure. 
4. You seemed to think that four millions of people would make a respectable 
nation and that fear-of taxation would keep us from joining the United States. But 
balance this matter fairly and you will see that our only chance of remaining British 
is to preserve our old institutions and stay within the Empire. You would not take 
a Ten Gun Brig into action against an Eighty Gun Ship and you would be dismissed 
the service, for wasting men’s lives, if you did. Yet it seems to be thought fair to 
launch us into a hopeless national life that England, by the sacrifice, may buy her 
peace with the Republic. When this is done do not call us Cowards if we refuse to 
fight and do not suppose, for a moment, that fear of American taxation will ever 
induce us to attempt to maintain a position in which we must be crushed and finan- 
cially ruined by three months of war. I am a dear lover of old England and to save 
her would blow Nova Scotia into the air or scuttle her like an old ship. But when 
driven out of the Empire, absolved from my allegience, and told that the Mother 
Country will run no risk to maintain old relations, how can it be supposed that when 
a peaceful frontier and full fraternity with a great British Community, who have an 
army and navy and are afraid of nobody, are offered to me that I would be such an 

62 He contributed a series of letters to the Morning Chronicle, Halifax, in January, 1865, entitled 
“The Botheration Scheme.’’ See also his letter to Lord John Russell, January 19, 1865, Speeches, II. 
63 He was then Fishery Commissioner for the Imperial Government. 
64Sir William Fenwick Williams in Nova Scotia; Arthur Hamilton Gordon in New Brunswick. 
Gordon was a son of the Earl of Aberdeen. Both were acting under instructions from the Imperial 
Government. Pope, Memoirs, I, 298. 
64a Enos Collins was born about 1776; had stirring adventures as a privateersman; made a fortune 
in New York real estate; added to it in Nova Scotia; and died about 1870. 
6 Mather Byles Almon. Delegate for Nova Scotia with James W. Johnston, James B. Uniacke, 
and William Young, to confer with Lord Durham at Quebec in 1838. Appointed to Executive and 
Legislative Councils, 1843. He was still a member of the Legislative Council in 1866. Andrew M. 
Uniacke represented Halifax in N.S. Legislature in 1845. Alfred Gilpin Jones (1824-1906) represented : 
Halifax in the House of Commons 1867-72, 1874-78; 1887-91, Minister of Militia, 1878; Lieutenant- 
Governor Nova Scotia, 1900-6. 
