No one can look into futurity and say what will be the destiny of this country. Changes come over peoples and nations in the course of ages. But so far as we can legislate, we provide that for all time to come the sovereign of Great Britain shall be the sovereign of British North America. And he went on to predict that the measure would not tend towards independence, but that the country, as it grew in wealth and population, would grow also in attachment to the crown and seek to preserve it. This prophecy, as we know, has proved true. {89} The fear of annexation to the United States figured likewise in the debate, but the condition of the Republic, so recently in the throes of civil war, was not such as to give rise to serious apprehension on that score. The national sentiment, however, which would naturally arise when the new state was constituted, was a proper subject for consideration, since it might easily result in a complete, if peaceful, revolution. There were other uncertain factors in the situation which gave the opponents of Confederation an opportunity for destructive criticism. The measure was subjected to the closest scrutiny by critics who were well qualified to rouse any hostile feeling in the country if such existed. Weighty attacks came from dissentient Liberals like Dorion, Holton, and Sandfield Macdonald. A formidable opponent, too, was Christopher Dunkin, an independent Conservative, inspired, it may be supposed, by the distrust of constitutional change entertained by his immediate fellow-countrymen, the English minority in Lower Canada. Brown bore the brunt of the attack from erstwhile allies and faced it in this fashion: No constitution ever framed was without defect; no act of human wisdom was ever {90} free from imperfection.... To assert then that our scheme is without fault, would be folly. It was necessarily the work of concession; not one of the thirty-three framers but had on some points to yield his opinions; and, for myself, I freely admit that I struggled earnestly, for days together, to have portions of the scheme amended. This was reasonable ground to take and drew some of the sting from the criticism.