convictions of the people, but it sufficed to overwhelm the government. All the Cabinet ministers, including Tilley, were beaten. And so it happened that, when the Canadian ministers were in the full tide of parliamentary success at home, the startling news arrived that New Brunswick had rejected federation, and that in a House of forty-one members only six supporters of the scheme had been returned from the polls. Equally alarming was the prospect in Nova Scotia. On arriving home from Quebec, Dr Tupper and his fellow-delegates found a situation which required careful handling. 'When the delegates returned to the Province,' says a pamphlet of the time, 'they did not meet with a very flattering reception. They had no ovation; and no illuminations, bonfires, and other demonstrations of felicitous welcome hailed their return. They were not escorted to their homes with torches and banners, and through triumphal arches; no cannon thundered forth a noisy welcome. They were received in solemn, sullen and ominous silence. {100} No happy smiles greeted them; but they entered the Province as into the house of mourning.'[1] And in Nova Scotia the hostility was not, as in New Brunswick, merely a passing wave of surprise and discontent. It lasted for years. Nor was it, as many think, the sole creation of the ambitious Joseph Howe. It doubtless owed much to his power as a leader of men and his influence over the masses of the Nova Scotians. But there is testimony that this proud and spirited people, with traditions which their origin and history fully warranted them in cherishing, regarded with aversion the prospect of a constitutional revolution, especially one which menaced their political identity. Robert Haliburton has related the results of his observations before the issue had been fairly disclosed and before Howe had emerged from seclusion to take a hand in the game.