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 regime 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.
{DISSOLUTION OF LEGISLATURE}
The election which followed in July, 1856, was perhaps the most hotly
contested that has ever taken place in the province. In St. John,
especially, the conflict was fierce and bitter, because it was in this
city that the liquor interest was strongest and most influential. All
over the province, however, the people became interested in the
struggle, as they had not been in any previous campaign.
By the Liberals and friends of the government, the action of Governor
Sutton was denounced as tyrannical, unjust and entirely contrary to the
principles of responsible government. On the other hand, the friends of
the governor and of the liquor interest declared that his action was
right, and the cry of "Support the governor," was raised in every
county. At this day it is easy enough to discern that there was a good
deal of unnecessary violence injected into the campaign, and that
neither party was inclined to do full justice to the other.