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Date: 1865-03-07
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “Confederation in New Brunswick”, The Montreal Herald (7 March, 1865)
Other formats: TBA
CONFEDERATION IN NEW BRUNSWICK.
—The Quebec Daily News of Saturday has some intelligence from New Brunswick, which appears to be fuller than that of the other papers of the Province, and says that the first sixteen members of the Legislature elected in that Province are all opposed to Confederation. We do not, however, quite understand how the sixteen are made out from the somewhat confused account furnished by our contemporary. He states that the City and County of St. Johns returns six members, and that York and Westmoreland, the other two Counties where elections have been held, send four members each. This, however, would make only fourteen instead of sixteen. The list of the defeated includes men of mark—the Premier; Mr. Tilley; the Postmaster General; Col. Gray, who was one of the most eloquent of the members of the Quebec Conference, Mr. Charles Fisher, once Attorney General, and no doubt marked out as an available member for a new Cabinet. On the other hand Mr. Hathaway who resigned his seat in the Cabinet because he was opposed to Confederation, has been elected. The House of Assembly of New Brunswick is said to contain forty-one members, so that if sixteen Anti-Confederation members are elected at the first blow, there requires but five more to make a majority against the measure. The railroad question being an important element in the judgment which the people of New Brunswick are likely to form upon it, one is naturally curious to know something of the localities in which these elections have taken place, especially as Mr. McGee stated in the House of Assembly that local interests connected with a coast road to connect the Province with Portland, had much to do with the ill-success of the government candidates. We see no evidence whatever of this kind in the facts, except as regards St. Johns County and City. York is an inland county of an oblong shape, of which only one corner, abuts upon the Province line; the body of the County being projected in a Northwest direction into the heart of the Province. It is the County in which Fredericton—the Capital—is situated, and if the road follows the course of the St John on the lower part of that river, it must go very close to that place. On the other hand Westmoreland is a North Shore county in the shape of a horse-shoe, one of its limbs abutting upon the short line across the Peninsular which joins Nova Scotia to New Brunswick. Any intercolonial road must go through a portion of this County, and a road to the North Shore would go through a very large part of it. Except, therefore, the Counties lying very near the Canadian border, as Restigouche, or Northumberland, we see no part of the country that would have a more special interest in the making of the railroad than the County of Westmoreland, to say nothing of York. A day or two more will decide the character of the legislative majority in the Province of New Brunswick; but we can hardly suppose, if our present accounts are correct, that there can be any question as to the complexion of the new Parliament. It usually happens that a Ministry selects for the first elections the constituencies in which they find themselves to be the strongest, and if that rule has been followed in the present case, they must be frightfully weak in the counties which have yet to elect. There is one, Charlotte, lying immediately upon the American line, which, if it be influenced by particular interests in one railway system more than another, must, we suppose, have its special interest in connecting with the Maine railroads. Charlotte, in which the town of St. Andrews is situated, is one of the counties which return four members, so that, supposing sixteen anti-Confederation men are really returned, that single county, if she follows what would seem to be her special railway interest, will probably make within one of a majority hostile to the scheme. There is one thing which one cannot fail to notice in this affair. It is the manner in which the usual organs for the expression of public opinion have been for weeks trumpeting forth an opinion which the electors have since shown to be utterly opposed to that which they entertain. We believe that there was but one out of several journals in the town of St. John—that published by Mr. Anglin—which opposed the plan of Confederation. Ministers had virtually joined leading members of the opposition to themselves, so as to put an end to the ordinary party machinry for opposition, and one newspaper, which at first was strongly opposed to it, had, after its editor had been a few weeks at Quebec, seen new light and became a warm supporter of the project. In the same way, we had meeting after meeting in which it was said that the persons present declared for Confederation, yet the town and county in which these journals were printed and these meetings held, have gone, apparently with a sweep, against the proposed Constitutional changes. We fully believe that a similar test in Canada would disclose almost as great a variance between the true state of public opinion and that which has been made to pass for it from the apathy of some; the helplessness of of others; and the noisy activity of partizans.