Nothing prevents the dividend from being offered upfront. It would be trivial for most governments to finance this.
Ask someone living paycheck to paycheck if they'd take $500 now in exchange for higher (but less than the $500 they get) costs on certain items. Most people living paycheck-to-paycheck are not the biggest consumers.
At a nominal price of $20/ton, a few things will go way up in price, but almost everything else will see at best a blip, with an added incentive to the producers to reduce the carbon content because that matters at industrial scale (company saves $3m over 30m units by switching to a non-petroleum glue whatever) not to an individual consumer (who would see a cost increase of 10¢).
They are a northern climate. There are no mass protests. Carbon emissions are going down.
Instead of asking people how they feel about a theoretical scenario, you can look at reality.
Rapid price inflation for staple goods will likely cause civil unrest either way. The only way to make a carbon tax politically feasible will be to slowly phase it in over many years so that people have time to adjust.
It might balance out in the big scheme of things, but it isn't going to be doing any favors to people who are already precariously balanced and lack the savings to make personal adjustments. You can be sure there will be mass protests if the price of gas, food, and electricity double (esp food in northern climates where transportation and refrigeration add a lot to produce and frozen goods as well as meats).