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 \vhich 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 governments 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.
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
fine 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.
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.
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 reelection, 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 reelected 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 reelection. 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 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.
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. |