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 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 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.