CHAPTER II
ELECTED TO THE LEGISLATURE
SHORTLY after the general election, Chief-Justice Chipman, who had been in infirm health, resigned his office, and a vacancy was thus left on the bench of the supreme court of the province. In the natural course, this office ought to have gone to the attorney-general, Mr. L. A. Wilmot, but this appointment was not made. The council were unable to unite in any recommendation to the governor, who consequently laid all the facts before the home government and in reply received instructions to give the chief-justiceship to Judge Carter and to offer the puisne judgeship to Mr. Wilmot, or, if he should refuse it, to Mr. Kinnear, the solicitor-general. The executive council complained that the appointment of Mr. Wilmot to a seat on the bench by the authority of the secretary of state without the advice or recommendation of the responsible executive within the province, was at variance with the principles of responsible government which were understood to be in force. They, however, had only themselves to thank for this, for they were continually appealing to Downing Street. As a majority of the House had been elected as opponents of the government, it was supposed there would be no difficulty in bringing about a change of administration. Mr. Simonds, of St. John, who was reputed to be a Liberal, was elected speaker without opposition, and at an early day in the session Mr. Ritchie, of St. John, moved, as an amendment to the address, a want-of-confidence resolution. This resolution, instead of being carried by a large majority as was expected, was lost by a vote of fifteen to twenty-two, Messrs. Alexander Rankine and John T. Williston, of Northumberland, Messrs. Robert Gordon and Joseph Reed, of Gloucester, Mr. A. Barbarie, of Restigouche, and Mr. Francis McPhelim, of Kent, having deserted their Liberal allies. Had they proved faithful, the government would have been defeated, and the province would have been spared another three years of an incompetent administration.
In this division, Tilley and Needham, who represented the city of St. John, and Messrs. R. D. Wilmot and Gray, two of the county members, voted for Ritchie's amendment. As Wilmot and Gray showed by their votes that they had no confidence in the government in February, 1851, it was with much surprise that the people of St. John, in the August following, learned that they had become members of the administration which they had so warmly condemned a few months before. Their secession from the Liberal party destroyed whatever chance had before existed of ousting the government. Mr. Fisher had seceded from the government in consequence of their action in reference to the judicial appointments, and John Ambrose Street, who was a member for Northumberland, became attorney-general in place of Robert Parker, appointed a judge. Mr. Street was a ready debater and a strong Conservative, and his entrance into the government at that time showed that a Conservative policy was to be maintained.
RAILWAY LEGISLATION
Mr. Street, as leader of the government in the assembly, presented a long programme of measures for the consideration of the legislature, none of which proved to be of any particular value. The municipal corporation bill was passed, but it was a permissive measure, and was not taken advantage of by any of the counties. A bill to make the legislative council elective, which was also passed in the Lower House at the instance of the government, was defeated in the Upper Chamber. The bill appointing commissioners on law reform was carried, and resulted in the production of the three volumes of the revised statutes issued in 1854. The most important bill of the session, introduced by the government, was one in aid of the construction of a railroad from St. John to Shediac. This bill provided that the government should give a company two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling, to assist in the construction of the line referred to. There was also a bill to assist the St. Andrews and Quebec Railroad to the extent of fifty thousand pounds, and a bonus or subvention to the Shediac line amounting to upwards of eleven thousand dollars a mile, for which sum a very good railway could be constructed at the present time. It may be stated here that, although the company was formed and undertook to build a railway to Shediac under the terms offered by the government, the province had eventually to build the road at a cost of forty thousand dollars a mile, or fully double what a similar road could be constructed for now.
KING'S COLLEGE
One of the measures brought forward by the government at this session was with reference to the schools of the province. The idea of taxing the property of the county for the support of public schools had not then found any general acceptance in New Brunswick; indeed, it was not till the year 1872 that the measure embodying this principle was passed by the legislature. The government school bill of 1851 provided that the teachers were to be paid in money, or board and lodging, by the district to the amount of ten pounds for six months, in addition to the government allowance. This bill was a very slight improvement on the Act then in force, and as the government left it to the House to deal with, and did not press it as a government measure, it was not passed. A private member, Mr. Gilbert, of Queens, at this session proposed to convert King's College into an agricultural school, with a model farm attached. King's College had been established by an Act passed in 1829, and had received a large endowment from the province, but it never was a popular institution because of its connection with a single Church. The original charter of the college made the bishop of the diocese the visitor, and required the president to be always a clergyman of the Church of England; and, although this had been changed in 1845 by the legislature, the number of students who attended it was always small, and it was shown in the course of debate that it had failed to fulfil the object for which it was created. The college council consisted of fifteen members, of whom ten were Episcopalians; and the visitor, the chancellor, the president, the principal, five out of seven of the professors and teachers, and the two examiners were members of the same Church. The services in the college chapel were required to be attended by all resident students, and of the eighteen students then in the college, sixteen were Episcopalians. It was felt that this college required to be placed on a different footing, and Mr. Gilbert's bill, although it provoked much hostile comment at the time, certainly would have been more beneficial to the educational interests of the country, if it had passed, than the state of affairs which resulted from the continuance of the old system. An agricultural school was the very thing the province required, while, judging from the limited attendance at the college at that time, the people of this province were not greatly impressed with the value of a classical education. In 1851, however, any one who proposed to replace a college for the teaching of Greek and Latin with a college of agriculture, and the sciences allied to it, was looked upon as a Philistine. Then youths were taught to compose Latin and to read Greek who never, to the day of their death, had a competent knowledge of their own language; and agricultural studies, which were of the highest importance to more than one-half of the people of the province, were totally neglected. Mr. Gilbert's bill was defeated, as it was certain to be in a legislature which was still under the domination of old ideas. Had it passed, New Brunswick might at this time have had a large body of scientific farmers capable of cultivating the soil in the most efficient manner, and increasing its productiveness to an extent hardly dreamed of by those who only consider it in the light of the present system of cultivation.
During this session, Mr. Ritchie of St. John moved a series of resolutions condemning the government, and complaining of the colonial office and of the conduct of the governor. These resolutions declared: first, that the House was entitled to full copies of all despatches addressed to or received from the colonial office, and that it was not enough merely to send extracts from a despatch which had been received by the governor. They declared that the power of making appointments to offices was vested in the governor by and with the advice of the executive council, and that the appointment of the chief-justice and a puisne judge by the governor, contrary to the advice of his council, was inconsistent with the principles of responsible government. They complained that the salaries were excessive, and condemned the refusal of the British government to allow the colonies to grant bounties for the development of their resources. These resolutions, after being debated for about a week, were rejected by a vote of twenty-one to nineteen, the smallness of the majority against them at the time being looked upon as virtually a Liberal victory. If the nineteen had been made up of men who could be relied on to stand by their colours in all emergencies, it would have been a Liberal triumph, but, unfortunately, among the nineteen there were some who afterwards deserted their party for the sake of offices and power.
A POLITICAL SURPRISE
Early in August it was announced that John H. Gray and R. D. Wilmot, two of the Liberal members for the county of St. John, had abandoned their party and their principles and become members of the government. The Liberals of St. John, who had elected these gentlemen by a substantial majority, were naturally chagrined at such a proof of their faithlessness, and their colleagues were likewise greatly annoyed. Messrs. Gray and Wilmot made the usual excuses of all deserters for their conduct, the principal one being that they thought they could serve the interests of the constituency and of the province better by being in the government than out of it. The friends of the four members who still remained faithful, Messrs. Tilley, Simonds, Ritchie and Needham, held a meeting at which these gentlemen were present, and it was agreed that they should join in an address to their constituents condemning the course of Messrs. Wilmot and Gray, and calling on the constituency to pronounce judgment upon it. As Wilmot, who had been appointed to the office of surveyor-general, had to return to his constituency for reëlection, the voice of the constituency could only be ascertained by placing a candidate in the field in opposition to him. This was done, and Mr. Allan McLean was elected to oppose Mr. Wilmot. The result seemed to show that the people of St. John had condoned the offence, for Wilmot was reëlected by a majority of two hundred and seventy-three. As this appeared to be a proof that they had lost the confidence of their constituents, Messrs. Simonds, Ritchie and Tilley at once resigned their seats and did not offer for reëlection. This act was, at the time, thought by many to indicate an excess of sensitiveness, and Needham refused to follow their example, thereby forfeiting the regard of most of those who had formerly supported him. The sequel proved that the three resigning members were right, for they won much more in public respect by their conduct than they lost by their temporary exclusion from the House of Assembly.
THE ST. JOHN ELECTION
The gentlemen returned for the three seats in St. John which had been vacated by the resigning members were James A. Harding, John Goddard and John Johnson. Mr. Harding, who ran for the city, was opposed by S. K. Foster. Harding was a Liberal, but this fact does not seem to have been kept in view when he was elected. The net result of the whole affair was that the constituency of St. John could not be relied upon to support a Liberal principle, or any kind of principle as against men. That has always been a peculiarity of the St. John constituencies, men being more important than measures, and frequently a mere transient feeling being set off against the most important considerations of general policy.
Tilley was not in the House of Assembly during the sessions of 1852, 1853 and 1854; that period was one, however, of development in political matters and of substantial progress. The governor's speech at the opening of the session of 1852 was largely devoted to railways, and it expressed the opinion that a railroad connecting Canada and Nova Scotia, and a connection with a line from St. John to the United States, would produce an abundant return to the province, and that by this means millions of tons of timber, then standing worthless in the forest, would find a profitable market. It was during this session that Messrs. Peto, Brassy and Betts proposed to construct the European and North American Railway, on certain conditions. The subsidies offered by the province at this time were twenty thousand pounds a year for twenty years, and a million acres of land for the European and North American Railway, as the line to the United States was termed; and for the Quebec line, twenty-two thousand pounds sterling for twenty years, and two million acres of land. A new company, which included Mr. Jackson, M. P., offered to build the New Brunswick section of both railroads, upon the province granting them a subsidy of twenty thousand pounds a year for twenty years, and four million acres of land. Attorney-General Street introduced a series of railway resolutions favouring the building of the Intercolonial Railway jointly by the three provinces, according to terms which had been agreed upon by the delegates of each. The arrangement was that the Intercolonial Railway should be built through the valley of the St. John, and for favouring resolutions in the House confirming this arrangement, Mr. Street's Northumberland constituents called upon him to resign his seat, a step which he refused to take.
INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY
The government railway resolutions were carried by a large majority. During the recess Mr. Chandler, as a representative of New Brunswick, and Mr. Hincks, a representative of Canada, went to London to endeavour to obtain from the British government a sum sufficient to build the Intercolonial Railway. The request of the delegates was refused on the ground that such a work had to be one of military necessity, and that the route which had been selected, by the valley of the St. John, was not a proper one for military purposes. As Mr. Chandler could not obtain what he wished from the British government, he applied to Messrs. Peto, Brassy and Betts, who said they were prepared to build all the railroads that New Brunswick might require, upon the most advantageous terms. Mr. Jackson visited the province in September of the same year, and it was agreed that his company should build a railway from St. John to Amherst, and from St. John to the United States frontier, the distance being then estimated at two hundred and fourteen miles, for the sum of sixty-five hundred pounds sterling per mile. The province was to take stock to the extent of twelve hundred pounds per mile, and to lend its bonds to the company for one thousand eight hundred pounds additional per mile. The completion of this arrangement caused great rejoicing in the province, especially in St. John, a special session of the legislature being called on October 21st for the express purpose of amending the Railway Act so that it might conform to the new conditions. As both branches of the legislature were strongly in favour of the railway policy of the government, the necessary bills were speedily passed and the legislature was prorogued after a session of eight days.
The meeting of the legislature in 1853 derived its principal importance from the fact that much of its time was taken up with the discussion of the question of a reciprocity treaty with the United States of America. The discussion disclosed a strong disinclination on the part of many members to any arrangement by which the fisheries would be surrendered. An address to the queen was agreed to by both branches of the legislature in which it was stated that the exclusive use of the fisheries by the inhabitants of British North America would be much more advantageous and satisfactory than anything which the United States could offer as an equivalent. It was also stated that no reciprocity treaty with that country would be satisfactory to New Brunswick which did not embrace the free exchange of raw materials and natural products and the admission of colonial built vessels to registry in American ports. The tone of the discussions on this subject, both in 1853 and 1854, shows that reciprocity with the United States was not generally regarded as being an equivalent for the giving of the fisheries to our neighbours, and it is quite clear that, so far as New Brunswick was concerned, the reciprocity treaty would not have been agreed to had it not been that the matter was in the hands of the British government, and that the legislature of the province was not disposed to resist strenuously any arrangement which that government thought it wise to make.
CHAPTER III
THE PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW
THE House which had been elected in 1850 was dissolved after the prorogation in 1854, and the election came on in the month of July. It was a memorable occasion, because it was certain that the topics discussed by the House then to be elected would be of the very highest importance. One of these subjects was the reciprocity treaty, which at that time had been arranged with the United States through the British government. This treaty provided for the free interchange of certain natural products between the great republic and the several provinces which later formed the Dominion of Canada, and it had been brought about through the efforts of Lord Elgin, who at that time was governor-general of Canada. The treaty was agreed to on June 5th, and was subject to ratification by the imperial parliament and the legislatures of the British North American colonies which were affected by it. In the St. John constituencies there was at that time a strong feeling in favour of a protection policy, but this did not interfere with the desire to effect the interchange of raw material with the United States on advantageous terms. Tilley had been originally nominated as a protectionist, and still held views favourable to the encouragement and protection of native industries by means of the tariff, but he was also favourable to reciprocity with the United States if it could be obtained in such a manner as to be beneficial to the province. At the general election he led the poll in the city of St. John, his colleague being James A. Harding, who had been elected at a bye-election to the previous House. For the county, Mr. William J. Ritchie was one of the successful candidates, and the only Liberal returned for that constituency. The other members for the county were the Hon. John R. Partelow, Robert D. Wilmot and John H. Gray.
The new House was called together on October 19th for the purpose of ratifying the reciprocity treaty, and the Hon. D. L. Hanington was elected speaker by a vote of twenty-three to thirteen. This gave the opposition an earlier opportunity of defeating the Street-Partelow administration than would, under ordinary circumstances, have been possible. An amendment to the address was moved by the Hon. Charles Fisher, which was an indictment of the government for their various shortcomings and offences. The amendment was to expunge the whole of the fifth paragraph and substitute for it the following:—
"It is with feelings of loyalty and attachment to Her Majesty's person and government that we recognize, in that provision of the treaty which requires the concurrence of this legislature, a distinct avowal by the imperial government of their determination to preserve inviolate the principles of self-government, and to regard the constitution of the province as sacred as that of the parent state. We regret that the conduct of the administration during the last few years has not been in accordance with these principles, and we feel constrained thus early to state to your Excellency that your constitutional advisers have not conducted the government of the province in the true spirit of our colonial constitution." This amendment was debated for six days, and was carried by a vote of twenty-seven to twelve.
QUESTION OF THE JUDGES REVIVED
The general ground of accusation against the government, and the one most strongly insisted upon, was that it had yielded to the influence of the colonial office in the appointment of Judge Wilmot. It was well known that the government at that time, or at least a majority of them, did not consider it necessary to appoint another judge; at all events, they took no steps to bring about another appointment; but they yielded to the colonial office, and the pressure put upon them by Sir Edmund Head, the lieutenant-governor, so far as to acquiesce in the appointment of Judge Carter as chief-justice, and the elevation of Mr. Wilmot to the bench. This was a fair ground of attack, because it was clear that if the executive council of New Brunswick was under the orders of the home government, representative institutions and responsible government did not exist.
Thus the Street-Partelow government fell, and with it disappeared, at once and forever, the old Conservative régime which had existed in the province from its foundation, and which, unavoidably no doubt, had presided over the early political life of the colony, but the undue continuance of which was wholly incompatible with the full development of representative institutions and responsible government. It was a great triumph for the cause of Liberalism that the Conservatives of that period were not only defeated, but swept altogether out of existence. After that a government of men who called themselves Conservatives might go into power, but the old state of affairs, under which the lieutenant-governor could exercise almost despotic powers, had departed forever, and could no more be revived than the heptarchy. All that a Conservative government could do after that was to fall into line with the policy of the men they had displaced, and proceed, less rapidly perhaps, but none the less surely, along the path of political progress.
The new government which was formed as the result of this vote had for its premier the Hon. Charles Fisher, who took the office of attorney-general; Mr. Tilley became provincial secretary; Mr. James Brown, a few weeks later, received the office of surveyor-general; J. M. Johnson, one of the members for Northumberland, became solicitor-general; and William J. Ritchie, Albert J. Smith and William H. Steeves were members of the government without office.
The bill to give effect to the reciprocity treaty passed its third reading on November 2d, only five members voting against it. On motion of the Hon. Mr. Ritchie, one of the members of the new government, it was resolved that it was desirable and expedient that the surveyor-general, who was a political officer, should hold a seat in the House of Assembly, and that the government should carry out the wishes of the House in this respect. Before the House again met the wishes of the House had been complied with, and Mr. Brown, of Charlotte, became surveyor-general.
SESSION OF 1855
The House met again on February 1st, 1855, and then the real work of legislative and administrative reform began. In the speech from the throne it was stated that the Customs Act would expire in the course of a year, and that it was necessary that a new Act should be passed. A better system of auditing the public accounts was also recommended, and a better system of electing members to the legislature. On March 5th, correspondence was brought down, dated the previous 15th of August, announcing, on the part of the imperial government, the withdrawal of the imperial customs establishment, which was considered to be no longer necessary, and stating that as the duties of these offices were now mainly in connection with the registration of vessels in the colonies, and the granting of certificates of the origin of colonial products, this work would hereafter be performed by the colonial officers. A letter addressed to the comptrollers and other customs officers had informed them that their services would be discontinued after January 5th, 1855. So disappeared the last remnant of the old imperial custom-house system, which had been the cause of so many difficulties in all the colonies and which had done more than anything else to bring about the revolution which separated the thirteen colonies from the mother country.
The great measure of the session of 1855 was the law to prevent the importation, manufacture or selling of liquor. This bill was brought in by Mr. Tilley as a private member, and not on behalf of the government. It was introduced on March 3d. Considering its importance and the fact that it led to a crisis in the affairs of the government and the temporary defeat of the Liberal party, it went through the House with comparatively little difficulty. It was first considered on March 19th, and a motion to postpone its further consideration for three months was lost by a vote of seventeen to twenty-one. The final division on the third reading was taken on March 27th, and the vote was twenty-one to eighteen, so that every member of the House, with one exception, voted yea or nay. The closeness of this last division should have warned the advocate of the measure that it was likely to produce difficulty, for it is clear that all laws which are intended to regulate the personal habits of men must be ineffectual unless they have the support of a large majority of the people affected by them. That this was not the case with the prohibitory liquor law was shown by the vote in the legislature, and it was still more clearly shown after the law came into operation on January 1st, 1856.
PROHIBITORY LIQUOR ACT
The passage of the prohibitory law was a bold experiment, and, as the sequel showed, more bold than wise. The temperance movement in New Brunswick, at that time, was hardly more than twenty years old, and New Brunswick had always been a province in which the consumption of liquor was large in proportion to its population. When it was first settled by the Loyalists, and for many years afterwards, the use of liquor was considered necessary to happiness, if not to actual existence. Every person consumed spirits, which generally came to the province in the form of Jamaica rum, from the West Indies, and as this rum was supposed to be an infallible cure for nearly every ill that flesh is heir to, nothing could be done at that time without its use. Large quantities of rum were taken into the woods for the lumbermen, to give them sufficient strength to perform the laborious work in which they were engaged, and if it had been suggested that a time would come when the same work would be done without any more powerful stimulant than tea, the person who ventured to make such a suggestion would have been regarded as foolish. Experience has shown that more and better work can be done, not only in the woods, but everywhere else, without the use of stimulants than with them; but no one could be persuaded to believe this sixty years ago. Every kind of work connected with the farm then had to be performed by the aid of liquor. Every house-raising, every ploughing match, every meeting at which farmers congregated, had unlimited quantities of rum as one of its leading features. It was also used by almost every man as a part of his regular diet; the old stagers had their eleven-o'clock dram and their nip before dinner; their regular series of drinks in the afternoon and evening; and they actually believed that without them life would not be worth living. Some idea of the extent of the spirit-drinking of the province may be gathered from the fact that, in 1838, when the population did not exceed 120,000, 312,298 gallons of rum, gin and whiskey, and 64,579 gallons of brandy were consumed in New Brunswick. Spirits, especially rum, were very cheap, and, the duty being only thirty cents a gallon, every one could afford to drink it if disposed to do so.
It was at midnight on December 31st, 1855, when the bells rang out a merry peal to announce the advent of the New Year, that this law went into force. This meant little less than a revolution in the views, feelings and ideas of the people of the province, and, to a large extent, in their business relations. The liquor trade, both wholesale and retail, employed large numbers of men, and occupied many buildings which brought in large rents to their owners. The number of taverns in St. John and its suburb, Portland, was not less than two hundred, and every one of these establishments had to be closed. There were probably at least twenty men who sold liquor at wholesale, and who extended their business to every section of the province, as well as to parts of Nova Scotia, and their operations also had to come to an end. It was not to be supposed that these people would consent to be deprived suddenly of their means of living, especially in view of the fact that it was by no means certain that the sentiment in favour of prohibition was as strong in the country as it appeared to be in the legislature. It has always been understood that many men voted for prohibition in the House of Assembly who themselves were not total abstainers, but who thought they might make political capital by taking that course, and who relied on the legislative council to throw out the bill. No men were more disgusted and disappointed than they when the council passed the bill.
PROHIBITORY ACT UNPOPULAR
The result of the attempt to enforce prohibition was what might have been expected. The law was resisted, liquor continued to be sold, and when attempts were made to prevent the violation of the law, and the violators of the law were brought before the courts, able lawyers were employed to defend them, while the sale of liquor by the same parties was continued, thus setting the law at defiance. This state of confusion lasted for several months, but it is unnecessary to go into details. In the city of St. John, especially, the conflict became bitter to the last degree, and it was evident that, however admirable prohibition might be of itself, the people of that city were not then prepared to accept it. At this juncture came the astounding news that the lieutenant-governor, the Hon. H. T. Manners-Sutton, had dissolved the House of Assembly against the advice of his council. This governor, who had been appointed the year previous, was a member of an old Conservative family, one of whom was speaker of the British House of Commons for a great many years. The traditions of this family were all opposed to such a radical measure as the prohibitory law, and, therefore, it was not to be expected that Manners-Sutton, who drank wine at his own table, and who considered that its use was proper and necessary, would be favourable to the law. But even if he had been disposed to favour it originally, or to regard it without prejudice, the confusion which it caused in the province when the attempt was made to enforce it, would naturally incline him to look upon it as an evil. At all events, he came to the conclusion that the people should have another opportunity of pronouncing upon it, and, as the result of this view of the situation, resolved to dissolve the legislature, which had been elected only a little more than a year, and had still three years to run.