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NO CONFEDERATION !

Reduced (not Increased) Taxation!!

Let us keep our Fisheries to Ourselves! -- Let us keep our Lands, Mines and Minerals to Ourselves!! -- Let us keep our Revenue to Ourselves!!!

Newfoundland for the Newfoundlanders

NO REWARDS FOR TRAITORS

No Militia Laws for Our Young Men

No Drafting for Our Sailors.
Let us Stick to our Old Mother Country, Great Britain, the TRUE Land of the Brave and Home of the Free!!
Let us Never Change the Union Jack for the Canadian Beaver!!
Never give to Canada the Right of Taxing Us.

WHAT IS CONFEDERATION?

It is Taxation without limit upon our imports, our Exports, and upon all kinds of property to be levied--not by our people but by Canadians, residing more than a thousand miles from us, and who know nothing of our resources or requirements, and care less.

It is the giving up of all control over our valuable Fisheries, vesting the management of them in the hands of the Canadians to be disposed of as they deem proper.

It is the giving up to Canada all our Lands, our Timber, our Mines and our Minerals, for a petty and insufficient consideration.

It is the sending of our Revenue to Canada to aid the people of that country in paying the interest of their Debts, in building Railroads, Canals, and other Public Works, from which Newfoundland can receive no benefit. We should spend our money amongst ourselves, in giving employment to our people, in the making and repairing of our own roads, and other necessary improvements.

It is the appointment of Canadians to our public offices, instead of the people of the country.

It is the giving good fat berths to a few lawyers and many loafers, who have by their bad Governments brought the people to the verge of starvation, and their children to nakedness and want.

It is the giving of fat offices, under the Canadian Government, to those who are endeavouring to sell the country and its people.

Under the Canadian Government the young men of the country will be subject to the Militia Laws of the Dominion and our young fishermen will be pressed to man their Ships of War.

It is the severing of our connection with Great Britain--the strongest, the most prosperous and most generous nation in the world. And for what? To join an incongruous and hybrid people, in whom we have no interests whatever, and never can have.

Under consideration our shipping would have to hand down the proud old British Ensign, and sail under the hybrid flag of Canada.

If the people of this Colony join the Dominion, they give to Canada the power of taxing them " by all and every mode or system of taxation." [These are the words of the Act of Union.] Will our people consent to this?

Let it be understood that the Anti-Confederates of the country are strong and mean to contest every District. Messrs. C.P. Bennett, Walter Grieve, and other Gentlemen, have been North and will shortly visit the South and Western Districts. Let the people make no promises until they hear what these gentlemen have to say on the subject.

The elections will be held November 13th next and the people should remember that if the measure of Confederation be carried, they can NEVER afterwards, retrace the step they take. If we go into Confederation, we go in not for one, ten or a hundred years but--FOREVER! No matter to what extent we may be taxed--once in we must stay in.

It is the duty therefore of every man to consider this matter carefully. If he values his liberty he will vote with the Anti-Confederates against increased taxes and Irresponsible Government.

The price fixed by the Confederates on the people is four shillings per head--the price of a sheepskin--at which price they have offered to sell them to Canada. Are our people willing to be sold with their Lands and Privilege of Self-Government, like the Negro or Russian [...] to their inferior neighbours, the unprincipled and reckless political gamblers who conduct the government of Canada and who have within the last ten years increased the debt of that country from Fifteen to One Hundred Millions of Dollars?

Are they willing that any portion of their Revenue should be sent to Canada to be spent in that country, when it is so badly wanted here to feed our own poor, to provide for Education and our present half-paid schoolmasters, to make and repair our own Roads, and to encourage our own Agriculture? Let those who pay the taxes, our Fishermen and Planters, decide this question--for it is the Fish, which the fishermen catch, and the planters corn that pays all the taxes, and not the Lawyers and those other bloodsuckers that have been so long living and fattening on the vitals of the people. The interest lies in completing the bargain sought to be made, so that they may pocket the price to be paid them for their perfidy

Let the electors remember the fact that should we go into Confederation, the act of Union gives the privilege to the Dominion Government to alter any stipulations they may have made with us and the other Provinces; and that however disadvantageous those arrangements may be, we shall not have the power of releasing ourselves from them. Once in, as we before said, we are in forever.

At this time there is scarcely one individual among us who cannot exercise some influence over the taxations, its approbation and other Legislative Affairs of the Colony, but when our Legislature is gone from us and we are ruled by the Canadian Parliament let the people ask themselves what influence the most influential man among them could exercise over the Parliament of Canada, and what chance any Newfoundlander would have of filling any public office in it.