NEW BRUNSWICK, at the time ol its. separation from Nova Scotia, contained about 10,000 inhabitants, of whom 12,000 were Loyalists. Of the remainder about 2,500 were old inhabitants, most of them from the old colonies, and 1,500 French. With regard to the latter there are no accurate figures except with respect to the St. John River, where the Commissioners found sixty French families, numbering 354 persons. But these were all settled on the lower one hundred miles of the river, and there were no doubt many French above, of whom no account was taken. It is impossible to give even a satisfactory guess, of the number of French in the Chignecto district and on the North Shore. Probably the estimate of 1,500 for the total French population is much too low but there is no better available. The total population of the Province was but that of a small town, and the people were mostly so poor that they had to depend on the government for their food, for few of them were in the way of making a living. The country was without roads or bridges or any of those means of communication, which older countries possessed, so that it was necessary for the people to settle on the banks of the rivers, which were capable of being navigated by boats or canoes. The poverty of the people, who had been stripped of all their property, prevented them from advancing except by slow degrees, and for many years the inhabitants of the province had to maintain a struggle, under the most adverse circumstances, against the rugged might of nature and the lack of means. Nor can it be said that the antecedents of many of the settlers fitted them for the work they had to undertake. Some of them were members of the learned professions, who had never done any hard work m their lives and were, of all men, the least capable of making a living on new farms. Others were tradesmen of various kinds and small shop keepers, who were hardly more capable than the professional men, of making homes for themselves in the forest..

Many were soldiers, whose long service in the army had unfitted them for habits of steady industry, while even among the farmers, who formed a majority of the loyalists, there were many who were quite unaccustomed to the rough life they had now to undertake, having come from long settled farms in the older colonies. Thus the new population of New Brunswick was much less potential for effective work, than an equal number of men accustomed to life in the forest would have been.

Thomas Carleton, the governor of the new province, who continued to fill the position for more than thirty years, and who actually resided in the province for eighteen years, was a younger brother of Sir Guy Carleton. He began his military life in 1753, in the 20th Regiment of foot, and during the next twenty years, saw a good deal of service in Europe. He went to Canada in 1770 and was appointed quarter master general of the Northern Army, and he continued to serve m Canada until the end of the war. After thirty years active service he had attained the rank of Colonel, so that there was apparently nothing brilliant ia his military career. The same is true of his tenure of office as Governor of New Brunswick. His abilities appear to have been very moderate, and his views of government, those of the Tories of his time. He dreaded all innovations on the old order of things. He distrusted the people, and while he was willing to give them the semblance of power, would have denied them the reality. As a consequence of this frame of mind, he surrounded himself with men of reactionary views, whose opinions on public affairs were similar to his own and who in their capacity as members of the Council, got into numerous conflicts with the representatives of the people. As a result, the Governor became unpopular, and, weary of his position, returned to England, leaving a succession of administrators to do the work that he was paid for performing. When he died fourteen years afterwards, still Governor of New Brunswick, the people of the province had almost forgotten him, and the news of his death was received with as little emotion as that of a mandarin in the Chinese Empire.

Governor Carleton, set out for his new province very soon after his appointment, but he did not reach Halifax until Oct. 30th, after a passage of fifty-eight days, and it was the 21st of November before he got to Parrtown. There he met with a very hearty reception from the loyalists, who believed that all their difficulties were due to Governor Parr. The state of their feelings was shown by the terms of their address to Governor Carleton, in which they called themselves a number of oppressed and insulted Loyalists, adding that they were formerly freemen, and again hoped to be under his government. Carleton, immediately after his arrival, published his commission and issued a proclamation announcing the boundaries of the new province and authorizing the civil and military officers to continue in the execution of their duties. Before leaving England, the Secretary of State had directed his attention to certain instructions in his commission which it was deemed important for him to keep in view. Until an Assembly could be called, he and his Council were authorized to make ordinances, but, except in matters of regulation, he should not often exercise that power, as the existing population would at least enable him to lay the foundation of an Assembly. He was to issue a proclamation directing the registering of grants to be made, and the Assembly, when called, was to pass laws on the subject, The declaration of the supremacy of the British Parliament was not to extend to the power of taxation, which had been surrendered.

The first Council was held on the 22nd November, and on that occasion, George Duncan Ludlow, James Putnam, Abijah Willard. Gabriel G. Ludlow, Isaac Allen, William Hazen, and Jonathan Odell, were sworn and took their seats as members of the Council, and a day or two later, Gilfred Studholme, and Edward Winslow. All the members o£ this body were Loyalists, except Major Studholme and William Hazen, who represented the old inhabitants. The only member who was likely to be personally obnoxious to the people was Abijah Willard, who was one of the famous fifty-five petitioners, who each had asked for 5,000 acres ol land. Of the other members George I). Ludlow, was the Chief Justice of the Province, and James Putnam, and Isaac Allen were puisne judges. Jonathan Odell, was the Secretary of the Province, and Winslow, Surrogate General. The third puisne judge, Joshua Upham, was not sworn a member of the Council until nearly two years later. The selection of members of the Council was made in England, lor the members sworn in were all named in the King's instructions to Governor Carleton. Some of them were men of first class .ability, and all were men of merit, Putnam was a very great lawyer, at one time rated as the ablest in America. George I). Ludlow bad been a judge prior to the Revolution. Isaac Allen and Gabriel G. Ludlow, had served the Crown as Colonels of Loyalist Regiments. Winslow had been Muster Master General of the Loyalist forces during the War. Odell had been a Military Chaplain. Both Winslow and Odell were men of considerable literary ability. Studholme had been a faithful and efficient officer in command of the garrison at St. John for many years, and Hazen, although not nominally a Loyalist, had remained loyal at a time when hardly any person on the St.. John River, with the exception of his partners and himself, adhered to the cause of the Crown. As a whole, the Council represented the respectability and talent of the province fairly well, but its members were too much alike in their views on public questions, and the common people looked upon it as an aristocratic body, so that it soon became unpopular.

There was plenty of work for the Governor and his Council to do in placing the affairs of the new province upon a satisfactory footing. To provide lor the people and place them on their farms, seemed to be the business that was the most urgent, and to this Governor Carleton immediately directed his attention. As a preliminary step, a proclamation was issued requiring all persons, who claimed land within the province under grants from the Governor of Nova Scotia, to exhibit and register them in the proper offices in this province. This measure got rid of a large number of grants, the owners of which had never taken any steps to carry out the conditions on which they had been granted, and saved the trouble of resorting to the tedious process of escheat. It was, however, an extreme exercise of power and only to be justified by public necessity. The measure did not originate with Governor Carleton, but was suggested in the instructions of the Secretary of State. At the first session of the Legislature in 1780, an act on the same lines was passed, requiring the registration of all Nova Scotia grants within one year, and voiding all grants that were not so registered. The passing of this act without any reference to the proclamation, would seem to show that the latter was not regarded as effectual.

Soon alter Governor Carleton's arrival, a set of regulations were drawn up for the guidance of those requiring land. These provided that applicants for land should draw their farms by lot from the surveyed lands, and limited the size of a grant to two hundred acres, except in certain special cases. For the first year after the establishment of the province, a large part of the work of the Council consisted of dealing with applications for land, and in that time hundreds of claims were disposed of, and farms granted, not only to Loyalists and members of the disbanded provincial regiments, but to old inhabitants who had been disturbed in the possession of the lands upon which they had been living, and also to black men who had come with the Loyalists, many of them slaves who had escaped from their masters lit the Southern Colonies.

The regulation of the commerce of the province was another matter which required and received the attention of the Governor and Council. The laws then in force which dated back to the time of Oliver Cromwell, prohibited the importation into the United Kingdom and its dependencies, of any goods the produce of Asia, Africa or America except from the places of its production, and in ships of which British subjects should be the proprietors and right owners, and of which the masters and three-fourths of the mariners, should be British subjects. This law was being much disregarded at the time Governor Carleton arrived in the province, and most of the trade of the country was being done by vessels which belonged to citizens of the United States. One of the first acts of

Governor Carleton was therefore to put a stop to this illicit trade, which had grown up largely as a result of peculiar circumstances, and had continued to flourish because there were not sufficient officers to prevent it. It became necessary for the Governor to relax the stringency of the law in certain special cases, and to allow goods to be imported into the Province in foreign vessels where settlers were bringing in their effects from the United States.

The boundary between New Brunswick and the United States was another question which demanded immediate attention. Scarcely was the ink dry upon the Treaty of Peace which defined the boundary, before the Americans began to make claims with regard to it, which were afterwards shown to be utterly baseless. The American contention was that the Magaguadavic was the St. Croix referred to in the treaty, a contention which, if it had been made good, would have deprived this province of a very large territory. Governor Parr, had the year previous, urged the settlement of the eastern bank of the St. Croix so that the British claim might be supported by actual occupation, and as a result of his efforts, a considerable number of loyalists located themselves in the Passamaquoddy district. Some of these people had been warned against settling at St. Andrews by John Allan, who professed to be acting 011 behalf of the-legislature of Massachusetts, and who claimed that, the eastern bank of the St. Croix was a part of the United States. In 1784 the Massachusetts legislature appointed a committee of three to investigate the boundary question, and these gentlemen reported that the Magaguadavic was the original St. Croix. Thin opinion was fortified by that of John Adams, one of the negotiators of the Treaty. Under these circumstances, the Governor of Massachusetts wrote to Governor Parr, claiming the district west of the Magaguadavic as American territory, and asking Parr to remove from it British subjects who had settled there. This communication was replied to by Governor Carleton, who maintained the claim of Great Britain to the territory east of the St. Croix, and stated that, agreeably to that claim, the town of St. Andrews had been built by the loyalists after the peace. Here the matter rested for several years.

Governor Carleton does not appear to have been satisfied with Parr Town as the capital of the province and proceeded to look about him for another site for the future metropolis. During the winter he visited the principal settlements on the St. John river, and m a despatch to Lord Sydney dated the 25th April, 1785, he announces that he has fixed upon St. Anne's Point as the future seat of the Provincial Government. He stated that it had the advantage of being nearly the. centre of the province and within a few miles of the head of navigation for vessels of any size. He added that as a mark of respect for the Pidie of York, he had named it Fredericktown. It does not appear what influenced the Governor's choice at that time, but certainly it was not a wise one. As St. John was more accessible to a majority of the people of the province than any other place that could be, chosen, there did not seem to be any good reason for changing the site of the capital just then. But if it was necessary to place the seat of government up the river, the mouth of the Cromocto was a much better place being at the head of deep water, and at the junction of a navigable river Besides, the land being higher at Cromocto than St. Anne's Point, it was better suited to be the site of a city, and there is little doubt but for this unfortunate choice, the provincial capital would today be a much larger city than it is at present. The choice of St. Anne's Point made the Governor very unpopular in Parr Town, and this unpopularity had afterwards some unpleasant consequences.

Perhaps it was to conciliate the Parr Town people and compensate them for their disappointment with regard to the capital, that Governor Carleton in May of the same year, gave that town a charter of incorporation as a city and changed its name to St. John. This was done without reference to the home authorities and the governor was censured by tliem for granting the charter without consulting them. No doubt the act was a wise one and for it the governor deserves praise. It gave St. John an importance, which it did not before possess and encouraged its inhabitants to make greater efforts for its advancement, The charter in most respects resembled the Colonial charter of the City of New York, the aldermen, assistants and constables being elected by the people and the Mayor, Sheriff, Recorder and Clerk being appointed by the government. This charter continued in force for many years, but it was amended in many material respects by more recent enactments. It was practically superseded by the Act of 1889. which took in the territory north of St. John, which had also "become a city under the name of Portland.

During the year 1785, the work of settlement went on rapidly and most of those who had arrived in the province were placed on their farms. The population of St. John, which had been much larger than the condition of the province warranted, had become much reduced by these means, and towards the end of the year probably did not exceed two thousand. But the city contained a large proportion of the energy and intelligence of the province, and especially of men who held liberal views on public questions. These people viewed with impatience, the delay in the organization of the province by calling a House of Assembly, and they did not look with favor on the ordinances which the governor was from time to time making public for the settlement of questions, which they thought ought to have been disposed of by a legislature. A year elapsed after the arrival of Governor Carleton before New Brunswick possessed a House of Assembly. He stated *n a letter to the Secretary of State, the reason for this delay was, that he was anxious to finish everything respecting the organization of the province, that properly belonged to the Royal prerogative, before a meeting of the representatives chosen by the people. He thought these representatives would be most usefully employed in adapting the laws to a government already formed. He added " I think on all accounts it will be best that the American spirit of innovation, should not be nursed among the Royal Refugees, by the introduction of acts of the legislature for purposes to winch, by the common law and the practice of the "best regulated colonies, the crown alone is acknowdedged to he competent." Governor Carleton did not inform the Secretary of State which colonies he considered to he the "best regulated," but as thirteen of Great Britain's fairest colonies had just been lost by a persistence in the methods he was imposing on New Brunswick, it is surprising that he should not have taken the lesson more to heart. In concluding this remarkable letter the governor, referring to the differences between the constitution of New Brunswick and that of Nova Scotia, said—"There everything originated according to the custom of New England,, with the Assembly, but here, where a great proportion of the people have emigrated from New York and the provinces to the Southward, it was thought most prudent to take an early advantage of their better habits and, by strengthening the executive powers of government, discountenance its leaning so much on the popular part of the constitution. "

These extracts from Governor Carleton's letter show with what ideas of government he conducted the affairs of this province. He viewed with alarm,, the participation of the people in the administration of public affairs. It was necessary to have a House' of Assembly, but he desired this branch of the legislature to be shorn of its power as much as possible. He was willing that the House should have the appearance of exercising authority, without the reality. He believed any attempt on its part to curb his power would be wrong, and that the-people should not lean on the popular part of the constitution, hut on him and his Council. Holding such views it is not surprising that a conflict soon arose between the House of Assembly, and the Governor and his Council, a conflict in which almost every successive Governor became more or less involved, for more than half a century.

On the 13th Oct. 1785, writs were issued for the. election of members to serve in a General Assembly. The province had been divided into eight counties, and the number of members to be returned was twenty-six. St. John, was alloted six members: York. Westmorland, and Charlotte, four each, and Kings, Queens. Northumberland, and Simbnry, two each. The right to vote was given to all males of full age, who had been inhabitants of the Province for three months. The object of the franchise being settled in this way, was to enable industrious and meritorious settlers who were improving their lands, but had not received their grants, to have the right to vote. The election was held in November, and lasted fifteen days. Such was the custom at that period, when open voting prevailed, and the poll was shifted from place to place, to accommodate the voters. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that elections in those flays were frequently attended with much disorder. It was the custom of the age to keep open houses where the voters were supplied with food and drink, and this led to drunkenness and rioting. In most parts of the province the elections proceeded quietly enough, but it was otherwise in St. John. There a regular opposition ticket had been formed and the contest was between the Aristocratic and the Democratic elements. The election was sharply-contested, and there was some rioting, but no one seems to have been seriously hurt. The Governor thought the occasion justified him in calling out the troops and the riot was speedily suppressed. A few persons who were supposed to be ringleaders, were arrested, and some of them were afterwards tried and punished by fine and imprisonment.

If this had been the whole story of the election, it would not have been worthy of any special mention. But it happened that among the six government candidates were Jonathan Bliss, the Attorney General, and Ward Chipman, the Solicitor General Their friends discovered, wdth dismay, that they and the whole government ticket, were likely to be defeated, and before the close of the poll a scrutiny was demanded. The sheriff, William Sandford Oliver, who seems to have been a willing tool in the hands of the government candidates, granted the scrutiny forthwith, and proceeded to strike off enough votes of those who had voted for the opposition candidates, to give the government candidates the majority. The whole number of votes thus struck off appears to have been eighty-two, which, in a small constituency was quite sufficient to change the result of the election. No doubt the sheriff would have struck off more names if it had been necessary. No reason was offered for this wholesale proceeding, and the voters were given no opportunity of justifying their votes, which apparently, were perfectly good. Yet when the matter came before the House of Assembly and justice was demanded, the candidates who had been cheated out of their election, and the voters who were robbed of their franchise, were coolly told that having neglected at the scrutiny before the Sheriff to justify their votes struck off, they could not afterwards be admitted to prove the votes good.

This was an extremely discreditable transaction, and it ought to re-assure those who are disposed to believe that the standard of political morality has declined since the days of the founders of this province. The blame for it, must justly rest on Attorney General Bliss, and Solicitor General Chipman, men learned in the law, who profited by it. Sheriff Oliver no doubt, acted under their instructions. But the House of Assembly, was also greatly to blame for allowing a technical objection to outweigh right and justice. As there was no law for the guidance of the sheriff, and he acted simply on his own responsibility, the House should certainly have exercised its undoubted power of revising his return. But the determination of the Governor's friends to obtain a majority in the House, was so strong as to cause them to disregard every other consideration. The result was very unfortunate, for it caused a majority of the people of St. John to lose all faith in the Governor and his advisers. They felt that they had been grossly wronged bv men making high professions, and claiming to be superior to their fellow men. Even the persons who profited by the fraud, were losers in the end, for Ward Chipman was never again able to secure his election in St. John, while Bliss only succeeded in doing so after the lapse of many years.