Part 5 (2/2)
”At this distressing crisis you afforded us from His Majesty's store a supply in aid of our then alarming and terrible wants. You then, with patriotic feeling, placed the company of the s.h.i.+p which you command on reduced allowance, and yielded to the public distress every alleviation which such means afforded.”
The lean years were still further saddened by the terrible fire of 1817, which left more than a thousand persons houseless, in the full severity of winter. The wooden houses and narrow streets of St. John's made resistance hopeless, when the flames had once gained a hold. It was estimated that the fire caused a loss of 125,000. The wealthier inhabitants and the home Government gave what relief was possible, and in 1818 the crisis yielded before brighter prospects.
Pickmore was the first Governor to reside continuously in the island (where he also died), for his predecessors had sailed away with the fishermen in October to reappear with the beginning of summer. In 1817 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was specially appointed to consider the situation of Newfoundland. The merchants, full as ever of vicious political economy, had two remedies to propose for the admitted distresses. One was the concession of bounties to place them on a level with French and American compet.i.tion; the other was the removal of the population (then numbering 17,000) to Nova Scotia or Canada. Determined to omit nothing which might make them the derision of history, they added an emphatic opinion that agriculture could never thrive on the island.
On the appointment of Governor Pickmore, Lord Bathurst had given him the following instructions:
”As the colony has of late years, from the rapid increase of the population, a.s.sumed a character totally different from that under which it had been usual previously to consider it, I am most desirious of receiving from you your opinion as to the propriety of introducing any and what change into the system of government which has heretofore prevailed.”
The seeds sown by Carson were beginning to bear fruit, and from 1821 onwards the desire for local government in the island grew continuously stronger. As against the arguments of the opposition, it was urged that all the British colonies, even the small Bermuda, had a local government; that Nova Scotia was granted it as far back as the middle of the eighteenth century; that the older American colonies had always enjoyed self-government; and that the time had now come for the extension of the same privilege to Newfoundland. The authority of Governor Cochrane, who was appointed in 1825, and whose term of office lasted till 1834, was limited by the appointment of a Council, consisting of the Chief Justice, the two a.s.sistant Judges, and the Military Commander at St. John's. Under this Governor roads were for the first time laid out in the island. The irritation of the merchants at home was intense, and the name of Peter Ougier, a west country merchant, ought to go down to posterity. In his evidence before the committee, he protested with real emotion: ”They are making roads in Newfoundland: next thing they will be having carriages and driving about.” Sir Thomas Cochrane was regarded as the best Governor ever sent to Newfoundland. He was ”the first real administrator and ruler of the colony. An eminently practical man, he not only organized improvements, he personally superintended their execution. His activity was unbounded; in the early mornings he was out on horseback inspecting the roads, directing his workmen, laying out the grounds at Virginia, having interviews with the farmers, giving them practical hints about agriculture; everywhere he impressed his strong personality on colonial affairs. He was very sociable, and his hospitality was unstinted.” Indeed, the historian of the island can point to only one mistake committed by the Governor, the bad taste shown in the erection of Government House, which ”looks more like a prison than the Vice-regal residence ... it is a huge pile of unredeemed ugliness.”[35]
In England, in the early thirties, reform was in the air. The blow was struck at the right time, and in 1832--the year of the great Reform Bill--Parliament pa.s.sed a measure creating in Newfoundland a representative a.s.sembly. The island was divided into nine electoral divisions, each of which was to have one or more representatives, according to population. There were, in fact, fifteen members. The first election pa.s.sed off quietly in the autumn of the same year. Dr.
Carson, the father of Home Rule, stood for St. John's, and Mr Justice Prowse has usefully noted that he was defeated. The fickleness and ingrat.i.tude of the people were never more dramatically ill.u.s.trated.
”He had been the pioneer of the new movement, had suffered in the people's cause, and yet the public, 'that many-headed monster thing--the mob,' were the first to cast aside their leader in the fight for Home Rule, and to give their votes and support to a new and untried man.” It was said, however, that the defeat was due to an electioneering trick, whereby a false report was spread as to the att.i.tude of the veteran in the liberal cause.[36] ”The House of a.s.sembly of 1833 was the youngest const.i.tuent body in America, but it was not one whit behind any of them in stately parliamentary pageant and grandiloquent language. H.B. (Doyle) in London caricatured it as the 'Bow-wow Parliament' with a big Newfoundland dog in wig and bands as Speaker putting the motion: 'As many as are of that opinion say--bow; of the contrary--wow; the bows have it.'”[37]
A nominated Legislative Council had been provided by the Const.i.tution of the Colony. The relations of the Chambers have always been delicate in the British colonies, and in Newfoundland friction soon arose. The Legislative Council, under Chief Justice Boulton--who improperly called himself the Speaker instead of the President--set itself to thwart and discredit the popular Chamber. On both sides the controversies were petty, and were conducted in a petty spirit. The popular a.s.sembly described itself as ”the Commons House of a.s.sembly in Parliament a.s.sembled”; whereupon it was ordered forthwith to strike out the word ”Parliament.” The Legislative Council appears to have been the more cantankerous, and the less p.r.o.ne to compromise. At last matters reached an _impa.s.se_, for the Council began to throw out Supply and Revenue Bills. In the first year of the Queen's reign, when Canada was already full of trouble, delegates from the Newfoundland House of a.s.sembly arrived in London. Their mission was in the main successful. The Council was recommended to adopt the Appropriation Bill, and Chief Justice Boulton was summarily dismissed. ”Boulton,”
says Mr Justice Prowse, ”had undoubted ability, but he was the worst possible selection for both the Council and the Bench. His views, both of law and legislation, were most illiberal; as a technical lawyer he was mostly right and sublimely independent, but his harsh sentences, his indecent party spirit, and his personal manners caused him to be hated as no one else was ever hated in this colony.”[38]
In 1838 occurred the Kielly affair, which has added a leading case to English const.i.tutional law. Dr. Kielly a.s.saulted, or was said to have a.s.saulted, Mr John Kent, who was a member of the a.s.sembly. Mr Kent brought the matter before the a.s.sembly as a breach of privilege. The House refused to hear witnesses on Kielly's behalf, treated the charge as proved, and demanded that he should apologize at the bar of the House. Kielly refused, adding that Kent was a liar and a coward. Then followed an interlude of comic opera. Kielly was committed, whereupon Mr Justice Lilly granted a writ of _habeas corpus_. This was not to be borne by the imperious a.s.sembly, and the Speaker promptly issued his warrant for the re-arrest of Kielly, the arrest of the High Sheriff, and of Judge Lilly. Nothing like it had been seen since the heyday of the Wilkes litigation in England, when the House of Commons committed the Sheriff of Middles.e.x to prison for carrying out the orders of the Court of King's Bench.
In the unruffled atmosphere of the Privy Council the legal question found its decision.[39] It was laid down that the Crown, by its prerogative, can create a Legislative a.s.sembly in a settled colony, with the government of its inhabitants: but that it is highly doubtful whether the Crown could, if it wished, bestow upon such an a.s.sembly an authority, such as that of committing for contempt, not incidental to it by law. ”The House of a.s.sembly of Newfoundland,” said Chief Baron Parke, ”have not, what they erroneously supposed themselves to possess, the same exclusive privileges which the ancient law of England has annexed to the Houses of Parliament.”
In 1838 the members of the a.s.sembly were elected for four years, and this term has continued ever since.
The colony was destined to pa.s.s now through bitter trials. Having secured freedom, after much suffering and oppression, it soon learnt that freedom without common sense and moderation degenerates into licence, and becomes a menace and a terror. The election of representatives was accompanied by scenes of turbulence and disorder: the sense of toleration and compromise was absent. Half of the population were Roman Catholics of Irish descent, in whom rankled memories of ancient wrongs; the other half were Protestants of English descent, long used to ascendency, who were headed by a wealthy commercial cla.s.s. With the introduction of the new regime old distrusts and hostilities were rekindled, and an unscrupulous press fanned the flames. Religion became mixed up with the political contention; and the evil pa.s.sions that were aroused, and the outrages that were committed held back for some time the progress of the community and the political development of the colony.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] See _infra_, chap. x.
[35] D.W. Prowse, ”History of Newfoundland,” second edition (London, 1896), pp. 424, 425, 426.
[36] Prowse, _op. cit._, pp. 429, 430.
[37] _Ibid._, p. 431.
[38] Prowse, _op. cit._, p. 434.
[39] Kielly _v._ Carson (1842), Moore's Privy Council Cases, vol. iv., pp. 63, 88.
CHAPTER VII
SELF-GOVERNMENT
The political faculty in Newfoundland was so rudimentary at this period that from 1841 to 1843 it became necessary to suspend the Const.i.tution. In the autumn of 1840 an election riot at Carbonear occurred, which was of such a serious character that the sympathies of the British ministry with Newfoundland affairs were alienated, and the Governor was ordered to dissolve the Legislature. He did this on April 26th, 1841, and in his speech pointed out the reason for such drastic action: ”As a Committee of the House of Commons has been appointed to enquire into the state of Newfoundland, before which Committee I shall have to appear, I will on the present occasion confine myself to the expression of my regret that such a proceeding should have become indispensably necessary to the tranquillity and welfare of the colony.” Until 1849 the government was carried on by a General a.s.sembly--a makes.h.i.+ft a.s.sembly--in which members of the House of a.s.sembly sat side by side with members of the Council, the latter losing their distinctive functions.
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