A CRITICAL ELECTION
In the county of York, the Hon. George L. Hatheway, who was then chief commissioner of the board of works, appeared in the field as an Opposition candidate, in company with John C. Allen, John J. Fraser and William H. Needham. Mr. Hatheway deserted the government in its hour of need, apparently because he judged from the cries that were raised against confederation that the current of public opinion was strongly adverse to the Quebec scheme. Having left Mr. Tilley in the lurch on the eve of the confederation contest, he deserted the Smith government sixteen months later, when the second confederation election came to be run, thereby inflicting upon them a blow from which it was impossible they could recover. William H. Needham, whose name has already appeared in this volume, did not lay claim to any high political principles; but having retired some time before to private life, he found in the confederation struggle a good opportunity of getting into the legislature. He was a man of very considerable ability, and had his principles been only equal to his knowledge and talents, he might have risen to the highest position in the province. But his course on many occasions made the public distrustful of him, and he died without having enjoyed any of those honours which men of far less ability have obtained. John James Fraser, afterwards governor of New Brunswick, was a man of a different stamp, and seems to have been a sincere opponent of confederation from conviction. The same may be said of John C. Allen, afterwards chief-justice of the province, a man whose sterling honesty has never been questioned.
CHAPTER VIII
DEFEAT OF CONFEDERATION
The result of the election was the most overwhelming defeat that ever overtook any political party in the province of New Brunswick. Out of forty-one members, the friends of confederation succeeded in returning only six, the Hon. John McMillan and Alexander C. DesBrisay, for the county of Restigouche; Abner R. McClelan and John Lewis for the county of Albert; and William Lindsay and Charles Connell for the county of Carleton. Every member of the government who held a seat in the House of Assembly, with the exception of the Hon. John McMillan, the surveyor-general, was defeated. The majorities against the confederation candidates in some of the counties were so large it seemed hopeless to expect that any future election would reverse the verdict. Both the city and county of St. John, and the county of York, made a clean sweep, and returned solid delegations of anti-confederates. With the exception of the two Carleton members, the entire block of counties on the River St. John and the county of Charlotte, forming the most populous and best settled part of the province, declared against the Quebec scheme. On the north shore, Westmorland, Kent, Northumberland and Gloucester pronounced the same verdict, and, on the day after the election, the strongest friends of confederation must have felt that nothing but a miracle could ever bring about a change in the opinion which had been pronounced with such emphasis and by so overwhelming a majority. Yet fifteen months later the verdict of March, 1865, was completely reversed, and the anti-confederates were beaten almost as badly as the advocates of confederation had been in the first election; such are the mutations of public opinion.
Mr. Tilley and his colleagues resigned immediately after the result of the elections became known, and the Hon. Albert J. Smith was called upon to form a new government. Mr. Smith had been attorney-general in Mr. Tilley's government up to the year 1862, when he resigned in consequence of a difference with his colleagues in regard to the negotiations which were being carried on for the construction of the Intercolonial Railway. He was a fine speaker, and a man of ability. At a later period, when confederation had been established, he became a cabinet minister in the government of the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie. His powerful influence was largely responsible for the manner in which the North Shore counties declared against confederation, and he also did much to discredit the Quebec scheme by his speeches delivered in the city of St. John. Mr. Smith did not take the office of attorney-general in the new government, but contented himself with the position of president of the council, the Hon. John C. Allen, of York, becoming attorney-general, and the Hon. A. H. Gillmor, of Charlotte, provincial secretary. The Hon. Bliss Botsford, of Westmorland, was made surveyor-general; and the Hon. George L. Hatheway retained his old office as the chief commissioner of the board of works. The other members of the government were the Hon. Robert Duncan Wilmot, of Sunbury, the Hon. T. W. Anglin, of St. John, and the Hon. Richard Hutchinson, of Miramichi.
THE NEW GOVERNMENT
The new government looked strong and imposing, and seemed to be secure against the assaults of its enemies, yet it was far from being as compact and powerful as it appeared to the outward observer. In the first place, it had the demerit of being founded solely on a negative, and upon opposition to a single line of policy. The reason why these men were assembled together in council as a government was that they were opposed to confederation, and, this question having been disposed of, they were free to differ upon all other points which might arise. Some of the men who thus found themselves sitting together at the same council board had all their lives been politically opposed to each other. The Hon. R. D. Wilmot, an old Conservative, could have little or no sympathy with Mr. A. H. Gillmor, a very strong Liberal. The Hon. A. J. Smith, also a Liberal, had little in common with his attorney-general, Mr. Allen, who was a Conservative. Mr. Odell, the postmaster-general, represented the old Family Compact more thoroughly than any other man who could have been chosen to fill a public office in New Brunswick, for his father and grandfather had held the office of provincial secretary for the long term of sixty years. As he was a man of no particular capacity, and had no qualification for high office, and as he was, moreover, a member of the legislative council, his appointment to such a position was extremely distasteful to many who were strongly opposed to confederation. The Hon. Bliss Botsford, of Moncton, who became surveyor-general, was another individual who added no strength to the government. In a cabinet consisting of four men in the government who might be classed as Liberals, and five who might be properly described as Conservatives, room was left for many differences and quarrels over points of policy, to say nothing of patronage, after the great question of confederation had been disposed of. Local feelings also were awakened by the make-up of the government, for the North Shore people could not but feel that their interests were in danger of being neglected, as instead of having the attorney-generalship and the surveyor-generalship, which had been theirs in the previous government, they had to be content with a single member in the government, without office, in the person of Mr. Richard Hutchinson, who, as the representative of Gilmour, Rankine & Co., the great lumber house of the North Shore, was extremely unpopular, even in the county which had elected him. The Hon. Robert Duncan Wilmot was perhaps the most dissatisfied man of any, with the new cabinet in which he found himself. He had not been a fortnight in the government before he began to realize the fact that his influence in it was quite overshadowed by that of Mr. Smith and Mr. Anglin, although neither of them held any office. Mr. Wilmot was a man of ability, and of strong and resolute will, so that this condition of affairs became very distasteful to him and his friends, and led to consequences of a highly important character.
DISSENSIONS IN THE GOVERNMENT