Document Information

Date: 1865-06-08
By: New Brunswick (House of Assembly)
Citation: New Brunswick, House of Assembly, Reports of the Debates of The House of Assembly of the Province of New Brunswick, During the Session of 1865 at 149.
Other formats: Click here to view the original document (PDF).

Click here to view the rest of New Brunswick’s Confederation Debates for 1865.

• (p.149)

[…]

At six o’clock, p.m., His Excellency summoned the House to the Legislative Council Chamber; he then assented to the Bills passed during the Session, and delivered to the Legislature the following

SPEECH

Mr. President and Hon. Gentlemen of the Legislative Council.

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Assembly.

The state of the public business enables me to relieve you from further attendance to your legislative duties, the prolongation of which at the present season must, I fear, have pressed upon many of you with considerable hardship.

The restoration of peace in the United States has, no doubt, been witnessed by you with unmingled pleasure, and that the neighboring Republic may long re main undisturbed by any renewal of civil strife, and may speedily recover from the effects of the late contest, is, I am sure, your earnest hope, as it is mine.

It is with much satisfaction that I have given my assent to the Bill relating to the Militia. I recognize in its provisions an evidence of the loyalty by which this Province has ever been distinguished, and I doubt not that the liabilities it imposes will be cheerfully and readily discharged by those on whom they fall. The assiduity with which you have attended to your legislative duties demand my commendation.

The numerous measures which you have passed, if not generally of a class to excite deep and general public interest, are yet, in many cases, of eminent practical utility and advantage.

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Assembly:

I thank you for the readiness with which you have provided for the exigencies of the public service. The supplies voted by you will be expended with a strict regard to economy. I shall not fail to transmit to Her Majesty’s Government the resolutions which you have adopted with reference to the proposed Federal Union of the British North American Provinces.

Mr. President and Honorable Gentlemen of the Legislative Council:

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Assembly:

You are now about to return to your respective Counties, there to resume your ordinary avocations—different indeed in character, but not less honorable or important than those from which you have been discharged.

It is on the spirit in which the institutions of a state are administered, as much as on their letter, that its well being depends; and so long as licence and turbulence are feared by the people, and law and order clear to them, so long as those who will exercise the power entrusted to them with moderation and equity, so long as good faith and fair dealing are the basis of our public transactions, we need not fear that any serious check will impede that social and material progress which this Province may, with the blessing of the Almighty, reasonably anticipate.