Canada's Big Spender

Direct taxation was a liberal project of governance: it tended to produce small government and vigilant, engaged tax payers who closely scrutinized government spending.... as Andrew Smith has observed, opponents of Confederation across British North America recognized that the scheme was likely to lead to inflated federal taxes and it would not only perpetuate, but expand Macdonald's high-spending ways.

--E. A. Heaman, "Macdonald and Fiscal Realpolitik," in Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies, ed. Patrice Dutil and Roger Hall (Toronto: Dundurn, 2014), 198.