Anti-Confederation Party
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Anti-Confederation Party
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| Leader | Joseph Howe |
| Founded | 1867 |
| Dissolved | 1870 |
| Ideology | |
Anti-Confederation was the name used in what is now Atlantic Canada by several parties opposed to Canadian Confederation. The Anti-Confederation parties were accordingly opposed by the Confederation Party.
In 1867 in Nova Scotia, Anti-Confederates won 36 out of 38 seats in the provincial legislature, and formed a government under William Annand (See 24th General Assembly of Nova Scotia). The Anti-Confederation Party was opposed by the Confederation Party of Charles Tupper. Prominent Anti-confederates included the noted shipbuilder William D. Lawrence, Alfred William Savary and the wealthy merchant Enos Collins.
Federally, in the 1867 federal election, the Anti-Confederate party won 18 of Nova Scotia's 19 seats in the Canadian House of Commons. Howe won the federal seat in Hants County, Nova Scotia, while William D. Lawrence won the Hants County provincial seat. Britain, however, refused to allow Nova Scotia to secede.
While many anti-confederationists threatened to secede and join the United States, Howe was a pragmatist and ultimately accepted Confederation as a fact. He was soon persuaded to join the Cabinet of Sir John A. Macdonald, leading to the movement's collapse (1869).
"...the scheme [confederation with Canada] by them assented to would, if adopted, deprive the people [of Nova Scotia] of the inestimable privilege of self-government, and of their rights, liberty and independence, rob them of their revenue, take from them the regulation of trade and taxation, expose them to arbitrary taxation by a legislature over which they have no control, and in which they would possess but a nominal and entirely ineffective representation; deprive them of their invaluable fisheries, railways, and other property, and reduce this hitherto free, happy, and self-governed province to a degraded condition of a servile dependency of Canada."
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