Although Newfoundland had had a small resident population since the early 16th century, it was not until the 1790s that the Island experienced any significant migration of immigrants. During the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Europe from 1793 to 1815, the Island's population increased from 11,382 persons in 1797 to a total of 40,568 in 1815. From approximately 43% of all shipping trade to Newfoundland in 1790, in 1805 St. John's share of shipping had increased to 63% and to 78% in 1811. For St. John's, the largest town and the colony's political, military, and commercial centre, the number of people rose from 3,244 in 1794 to a total of 10,018 in 1815. This population growth resulted in the development of a large resident fishery, whose growth had been stimulated by the increased demand in Europe for Newfoundland fish because of war conditions. The change in St. John's can be seen in a description written in 1804 by Governor Sir Erasmus Gower. He wrote:
"this Harbour is no longer a mere fishing
station, built round with temporary Flakes,
Stages, and Huts of trifling value, but...it
is a port of extensive Commerce...importing
nearly two thirds of the supplies for the
whole Island, and furnished with extensive
Store-Houses and Wharfs for trade, containing
a quantity of Provisions, Stores for the
Fishery, British Manufacturers and West Indian
Produce, as well as Fish and Oil ready for
exportation, which together with the Buildings
is computed to be worth more than half a
million Sterling."
Consequently, by 1815 the centuries-old migratory fishery
carried on by fishermen from the West of England had ceased to
exist to any great extent. After 1800, the development of a seal
fishery along the island's northeast coast and of a cod fishery in
Labrador, also helped to strengthen the Newfoundland resident
fishery and to spread the growth of settlement along the
northeastern coast. Its growth was most pronounced after 1815. In
1829 there was a reported harvest of 280,000 seals worth over
100,000 pounds to the Newfoundland economy, while the following
year there were 554,000 seals harvested. As historian Shannon Ryan
has noted, the seal fishery provided extensive employment to the
Conception Bay and St. John's areas in particular and its existence
in the first decades of the 19th century enabled residents to
survive slumps in the cod fishery. Moreover, the seal fishery
played a crucial role in the development of the Labrador cod
fishery, for the same crews and sailing ships prosecuted both
fisheries. The seal fishery was also a factor in spreading
settlement along the northeastern coast of the island as residents
during the 19th century left Conception, Trinity, and Bonavista
Bays in search of better fishing grounds in Notre Dame Bay and
further northward.
While it is true that in 1817 Newfoundland had no form of
elective government, yet, there did exist an informal and
voluntarist structure of government beneath the system of naval
governors which had been first instituted in 1729. While the
governor only lived in Newfoundland during the summer fishing
season, there was in place a permanent system of resident
magistrates, surrogates, sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, constables, a
collector of customs and his deputies, other officials, plus a
large military garrison situated in St. John's (Patrick
O'Flaherty--Francis Forbes in Newfoundland, lecture to the
Newfoundland Historical Society, 1985). Law and order was also
maintained through the considerable influence the Roman Catholic
clergy exerted over its flock. Indeed, one anonymous writer from
St. John's observed in November 1817 that "the priests are our
police officers--we are taught to believe that we are more indebted
to the Catholic priests for our safety than to any other class of
men on the Island; hence, there are sometimes pompous addresses to
them for their services and aids in the administration of
government" (Cyril Byrne, ed., Gentlemen-Bishops and Faction
Fighters, St. John's, 1984, p. 25). In addition, the Grand Jury of
the Supreme Court served as a formal airing of local grievances and
suggestions for public improvements; other channels of public
expression were the St. John's Merchants Society, the St. John's
newspapers, and the support of sympathetic members of the British
House of Commons.
Although the call for a colonial legislature for Newfoundland
had been heard since at least the early 1800s--especially from such
voices as the Scottish-born doctor, William Carson (17701843) and
the Irish-born merchant James McBraire--it was not until the 1820s
that a vigorous political agitation arose to achieve this goal.
Among its chief leaders were Carson and Patrick Morris, another
Irish-born merchant. According to D.W. Prowse in his History of
Newfoundland (1895), the two men were opposites in political
temperament--the former being a "stiff-mannered, pedantic old
gentleman, dogmatic, self-opinionated, and independent, a very
clever man...." Recent scholarship by Patrick O'Flaherty has
described Carson as a "man of restless energy and driving ambition.
There was in him an instinctive revulsion at the exercise of
arbitrary power, together with an equally strong urge to confront
such power, expose it, and defeat it. These were combined with a
supreme confidence in the rightness of his own Whig views, a
devastating frankness of expression, and a will of iron...he was by
nature a partisan, was never inclined to compromise, and was
prepared to follow his beliefs with absolute conviction into
political action. He was the most radical and influential of the
early Newfoundland reformers.... As a legislator, he tried to
provide Newfoundland with useful social institutions and to
preserve what he thought to be the rights and privileges of the
House of Assembly" (Patrick O'Flaherty, "William Carson."
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. VII). Morris, Prowse wrote,
had "all the qualities of a popular tribune; you can see both in
his writings and his speeches that he was an impetuous Irishman;
everything was done with a rush; in place of the doctor's calm
reasoning and carefully polished periods, his pamphlets are full of
go, flashes of Irish wit and sarcasm,...." Morris was the leading
Irish layman in St. John's and had the necessary "restless energy,
driving ambition, and business acumen" to be a successful merchant
in an intensely competitive economy dominated by Protestant British
merchants (see John Mannion, "Patrick Morris," Dictionary of
Canadian Biography, vol. VII). Both Carson and Morris had a strong
sense of grievance against imperial policies in Newfoundland, both
past and present, and shared a strong belief in the vast
agricultural potential the Island had to offer. All that was
needed for Newfoundland to achieve greater prosperity, they
believed, was the establishment of a local legislature. What
agriculture there was in the 19th century was subsistence farming
by fishermen along the northeast coast of the island as well as
small market gardens in the St. John's area (see Patrick
O'Flaherty, The Rock Observed, Toronto, 1979, pp. 5559; Richard
MacKinnon, "Farming the Rock: The Evolution of Commercial
Agriculture around St. John's, Newfoundland, to 1945," Acadiensis,
vol. XX, Spring 1992, pp. 3261; and Sean Cadigan, "The Staple
Model Reconsidered: The Case of Agricultural Policy in Northeast
Newfoundland, 17851855," Acadiensis, vol. XXI, Spring 1992, pp.
4871).
There was strong support from the St. John's mercantile
community and outport residents for a local legislature and they
were greatly assisted in the British House of Commons by a number
of Whig politicians such as Joseph Hume and George Robinson who
were sympathetic to the Newfoundland cause. Robinson was also one
of several British M.P.s who had close business and family ties to
the Newfoundland fish trade. The political agitation successfully
accumulated in 1832 with the British Parliament granting
Representative government to Newfoundland, on the same day that the
British Parliamentary gave third reading to the Reform Act that
broadened the franchise for parliament.
The traditional view on the establishment of a legislature in
1832 was that it was a struggle by Newfoundland patriots against an
alliance of the Imperial government and the West of England
merchants with their long fishing interests in Newfoundland. In
1977 historian Keith Matthews disagreed with this view presented in
1895 in D.W. Prowse's A History of Newfoundland, arguing that
reform triumph in 1832 was simply the victory of the St. John's
elite over the apathy of the local population and the Imperial
government. To Matthews, they were foreign-born reformers with
traditional Whig and British/Irish middle class interests and
values who would have supported political reform, no matter where
they lived in the British Empire. In 1988 Patrick O'Flaherty took
exception with Matthews arguing that the seeds of reform were
native to political and economic conditions in Newfoundland
(O'Flaherty, "The Seeds of Reform: Newfoundland, 180018," Journal
of Canadian Studies, vol. 23, Fall 1988, pp. 3956). In an
unpublished paper entitled, "Beyond the Myths of Colonial Reform:
The Campaign for Representative government in Newfoundland" (paper
presented to the Canadian Historical Association in June 1994),
Jerry Bannister claims that by the late 1820s a strong political
coalition had emerged that encompassed the interests of all
segments of local society. For Bannister, victory was possible
because the reformers "could utilize diverse and sometimes
contradictory arguments because their movement focussed on a
single, simple goal: the achievement of a local legislature.
Contentious issues surrounding how to govern the Colony remained
outside the political discourse. Without an assembly in which to
debate such issues, the reform movement could attract and maintain
a relatively broad base of support among the propertied classes"
(p. 29).
In his history of the local seal fishery to 1914, Shannon Ryan
presents the thesis that a local legislature was the natural result
of the spring seal fishery in the early 19th century when merchants
found it necessary to reside year-round in Newfoundland to manage
their sealing operations. Between the 1820s and 1850s seal oil was
in great demand in Britain, while the markets for local saltfish
were less reliable and profitable. As opposed to the traditional
saltfish merchants living in Britain, sealing merchants saw no
reason why local government should be kept from Newfoundland. They
became actively involved in the reform movement (see Ryan, The Ice
Hunters: A History of Newfoundland Sealing to 1914, St. John's
1994). What should be kept in mind, therefore, is that these
individual interpretations are not exclusive of each other.
The Island's constitution was similar to the model then
operating in the other British North American colonies. It
provided for a bicameral legislature consisting of an appointed
upper house, or Legislative Council, and an elected House of
Assembly of fifteen members chosen from nine electoral districts.
The head of the government was the governor who was advised by an
appointed Executive Council whose members also sat in the
Legislative Council. The franchise for selecting the members of
the House of Assembly (MHA) was given to adult male householders in
the colony.
The first election for the selection of members to the House
of Assembly was in the autumn of 1832. In the outport districts,
most seats went uncontested with the MHAs being returned mainly
either outport merchants or St. John's professional people. In the
three-member St. John's district, four candidates ran for the three
seats. This contest is noteworthy not only for the failure of
Carson to win election, but also for the active intervention in the
campaign of the Roman Catholic Bishop, Michael Fleming, in support
of the 26-year-old John Kent, his future brother-in-law. Detail on
this election campaign can be found in the Lahey article in your
Book of Readings. With the active support of Fleming, Kent won one
of the three seats, but, in doing so, the ensuing political debate
of the 1830s between Fleming, Kent and Winton of the conservative
Public Ledger has been seen by many historians as casting divisions
in Newfoundland politics for the next fifty years along religious
lines--Liberals being regarded as predominantly Roman Catholics and
Tories (or Conservatives) as being mainly Anglicans. This is an
interpretation which Conservative politicians of the 1830s used to
explain the strong political divisions and animosities of that
period.
However, this explanation of 19th century Newfoundland political alignments ignores the real social and economic differences which existed between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Conservative politicians and their spokesmen like Winton had supported the campaign for a local legislature and in the late 1820s had favoured giving Roman Catholics in Newfoundland religious freedom in keeping with the recent emancipation for their counterparts in Britain. What Winton objected to after 1832 was that the extensive franchise was too liberal, that it was an "egregious error" which would endanger the peace and prosperity of the colony. According to Winton's biographer, Patrick O'Flaherty, the subsequent election of Liberal candidates only confirmed this view in his eyes.
His opinion was that only truly independent
men should have the vote; those who could not
think for themselves, such as the mass of the
Catholics in St. John's, who appeared to him
to be mentally enslaved by their clergy,
should be excluded. These voters were merely
tools in a clerical conspiracy to gain control
of the House of Assembly.
The Roman Catholics must be understood in terms of their
Irishness and their desire to have an influence in Newfoundland
government, the civil-service, and society, which reflected their
majority composition of the Island's population. During the early
1830s they resented the fact that Anglicans had a monopoly on
positions in government and the civil service. Moreover, the
Catholic Church through Bishop Fleming saw itself as the guardian
of the educational and political rights of Irish Roman Catholics
against an Anglican, English establishment in Newfoundland and
considered and used the Liberal Party as its political vehicle.
Fleming was a "man of strong opinions and uncompromising character,
completely convinced of his own cause," educational historian
Phillip McCann has written, and that "once his course of action was
decided upon, he pursued it with unremitting energy and vigour. He
was an impassioned defender of the Catholic religion, a devoted
follower of the Irish nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell, and a
champion of the poor Irish immigrants of Newfoundland." To the
officials at the Colonial Office, Fleming was "an inveterate enemy
of the public peace and an incendiary priest" whom two governors,
Cochrane and Prescott, tried to have removed from the island for
its own good (McCann, "Bishop Fleming and the Politicization of the
Irish Roman Catholics in Newfoundland, 18301850," in Terrence
Murphy and Cyril J. Byrne, eds. Religion and Identity: The
Experience of Irish and Scottish Catholics in Atlantic Canada, St.
John's, 1987, pp. 8197). Fleming found it difficult to accept
opposition to his policies from among his fellow co-religionists
because a unified Catholic front under his guidance was necessary
to protect and promote the interests of the church (see Raymond J.
Lahey, "Michael Anthony Fleming," Dictionary of Canadian Biography,
vol. VII).
The Liberal Party was not exclusively an Irish Roman Catholic
Party, as can easily be seen by the identification of prominent
Protestant radicals like William Carson and Robert J. Parsons in
its ranks. Nevertheless, the party owed its electoral success to
the leadership of the Irish-born Fleming and the clergy and their
influence over their flock. Thus, in a by-election in late 1833 in
St. John's, Carson won election to the Assembly because of
Fleming's strong endorsement. In turn, Carson became the leader
and chief spokesman for the Liberal cause in the legislature.
During the life of the first House of Assembly from 1832 to
1836, Carson and his minority radicals in the House encountered
strong opposition from Conservative officials who sat in both the
Executive and Legislative Councils. In 1833 Chief Justice Richard
Tucker, who had opposed the institution of Representative
government in the early 1830s, used his influence in the
Legislative Council to reject a revenue bill the Assembly had
passed. He had informed his colleagues on the Council that, if
they did not disallow the bill, then he would disallow it in his
capacity as Chief Justice. Protests to the Colonial office by the
Assembly subsequently resulted in its view being sustained and
Tucker being replaced. Tucker's successor as Chief Justice was an
individual equally as conservative in his views on democratic
institutions--Henry John Boulton from Upper Canada. In his History
of Newfoundland, Prowse wrote that Boulton was the "worst possible
selection for both the Council and the Bench. His views, both of
law and legislation, were most illiberal; ...his harsh sentences,
his indecent party spirit, and his personal meanness caused him to
be hated as no one else was ever hated in this country."
Boulton's subsequent actions confirmed Liberal suspicions that
there was an apparent Tory conspiracy to destroy Representative
government in Newfoundland. Among his many controversial actions
were changes in the rules for the selection of Supreme Court juries
to exclude Irish Roman Catholic radicals. Other changes were a new
criminal code empowering judges to use their own discretion in
handing out harsh sentences. He also altered the laws concerning
the traditional relationship between fisherman and merchant.
Hence, the current mercantile supplier would no longer have first
claim on a fisherman's catch for that year. Instead, the
fisherman's past debts must first be settled before the current
supplier could be paid, thus making it difficult for a fisherman to
find a supplier willing to take a risk without having a first claim
on the catch of a new year. Boulton further infuriated Liberals
when he convicted Parsons, the editor of the radical Patriot
newspaper, for libel against the Bench. However, the Imperial
government had Governor Prescott release Parsons from jail because
of Boulton's unusual handling of the case in which he acted as
prosecutor, judge, and jury.
In the colony's second election held in 1836, the Liberals
sought to exploit both the class tensions created between fishermen
and merchants by Boulton's actions and the frustrations of Roman
Catholics because of their exclusion from most public offices.
With this strategy and the help of the strong influence of the
Roman Catholic clergy, the Liberals won eleven of the fifteen seats
and thus had a majority in the new Assembly. During the election
campaign, the Liberals in St. John's used the threat of physical
violence to force their Conservative opponents to withdraw from the
race; a similar experience happened in Harbour Grace. The Liberal
victory was hollow for the election had to be disallowed, once it
was discovered that the official seal authorizing the election
writs had been left off them. A new election took place the
following year and the Conservatives decided, for the most part,
not to contest those districts where they had no chance of winning.
In those districts which they could win, their strategy was to put
up weak candidates. Consequently, the Liberals elected 13 of the
15 members to the Assembly, thereby giving them complete control of
the lower House.
For the next four years the Liberal-dominated Assembly and the
Conservative Legislative Council constantly disagreed over the
Assembly's claim for control of the expenditure of public funds.
In particular, they disputed the road and poor relief appropriation
bills, the Assembly claiming for itself the right to name the
individuals to be responsible for dispensing these funds. On the
other hand, the Legislative Council asserted that this right
belonged solely to the Governor. Feelings ran so high that, during
the 1837 session, the Council passed only 10 of the 32 bills
approved by the House of Assembly. Consequently, in January 1838
the Assembly sent a delegation to the Colonial Office to present
its views on the disputes with the Council and to have Boulton
removed as Chief Justice. Consisting of Patrick Morris and John
Kent, the two delegates pointed out to Colonial officials the
inequity Roman Catholics suffered under the existing political
system. They presented a list showing that, out of 100 offices in
the colony, Roman Catholics held only three of them. The only
action the Imperial government decided to take in response to the
visit was to remove Boulton from office because of his strong
partisan activities. Since the government was awaiting the report
of Lord Durham on the state of political conditions generally in
British North America and the need for constitutional change in the
colonies, its position towards the Newfoundland Delegation of 1838
must be seen in this context. The Imperial government also got the
Vatican in September 1838 to reprimand Bishop Fleming for his
political activities since 1832, especially his strong efforts to
silence any criticism among independent-minded Roman Catholics (who
were known as "Mad Dogs"). This reprimand had the effect of
keeping Fleming out of public politics for the next few years.
Yet, tensions between Liberals and Conservatives in 1838
worsened, mainly as a result of the famous "Kielley v. Carson
Affair." This incident involved an attempt by the Assembly and its
Speaker, William Carson, to have Edward Kielley, a surgeon at the
government hospital, censured before the House for a gross breach
of the privileges of the House. Kielley was charged with allegedly
striking John Kent in the streets of St. John's. Kielley refused
to apologize to the House and Carson ordered him incarcerated.
Judge Lilly of the Supreme Court ruled that the Speaker had no
authority to take such an action and had Kielley released, noting
that the local Assembly never had the same powers as the British
Parliament. Concerned over a loss of face in the matter, the
Assembly had both Lilly and Kielley placed under house arrest.
Having decided that the matter had gone far enough, Governor
Prescott closed the Assembly and had both men freed. Kielley then
launched a suit in the Supreme Court against Carson for false
imprisonment. That Court upheld the actions of the Assembly and
Kielley appealed to the Privy Council, which in 1843 overturned the
decision of the Newfoundland court. The Council's decision, that
no colonial assembly enjoyed the same rights and privileges as the
British Parliament, became a landmark decision in the
constitutional development of British colonies.
However, the effect of the Kielley-Carson Affair on
Newfoundland politics after 1838 was to strengthen the fears of
Conservatives that the Liberals were out to stifle free speech in
the colony and to establish a Roman Catholic hegemony over the
Island. With their ability to dominate the Assembly, Conservatives
regarded the establishment of Representative government in 1832 as
a mistake and began to work actively for its repeal, or, at least,
some modification of the 1832 system to lessen the influence of the
Liberals in the legislature. The disputes between the Assembly and
the Legislative Council over money bills only served to confirm the
Conservative view that the Assembly sought to increase its
authority at the expense of the Governor and his Executive Council.
In 1840 Bishop Fleming broke his public silence on political
affairs when he intervened in a St. John's by-election campaign.
The Liberals had put up a Presbyterian, James Douglas, to contest
the vacant seat. Douglas had the support of prominent Roman
Catholic politicians such as John Kent, Lawrence O'Brien, and John
Nugent, and the endorsement of the Patriot. Fleming disagreed with
the choice of Douglas and insisted that O'Brien run instead,
presumably because O'Brien would be more amenable to the Bishop's
wishes. The result was a split in Liberal ranks, the clergy
supporting O'Brien, the Patriot favouring Douglas. The town's
merchants, who jumped at the opportunity to criticize the priest-ridden O'Brien candidacy did likewise. Frequent brawls and street
fights broke out between the two factions, which ultimately saw
O'Brien prevail over Douglas on polling day.
The 1840 by-election in St. John's, in fact, signalled the
beginnings of a growing split in the Liberal Party between clerical
and anti-clerical supporters, and native-born and Irish-born
leaders, a split that would become more pronounced in the 1850s.
The growing divisions between the clerical and anti-clerical wings
of the party were also evident in the outports. In a by-election
in Carbonear in late 1840, two Roman Catholic candidates contested
the seat, with one of them, James Pendergast, representing the
anti-clerical faction. Tensions ran high during the campaign which
eventually culminated in a riot in Carbonear and some people being
wounded. Consequently, no candidate was declared elected for the
district and a temporary garrison of troops was dispatched to the
town to maintain law and order. The election showed the tensions
existing between native-born and foreign politicians, the former
having earlier in the year formed themselves into the Newfoundland
Natives' Society. The society agitated for the placement of
natives, both protestants and catholics, in political and public
office. By the mid-1840s the society had quickly disappeared from
the public view after it suffered heavy financial losses in the St.
John's fire of 1846 and as natives began to have a greater
participation in the public life of the colony (see Patrick
O'Flaherty, "Natives' Society," Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and
Labrador, vol. 4).
It was against this background that in September 1841
Newfoundland received its new governor, Sir John Harvey, who had
been transferred from New Brunswick. His arrival coincided with a
Select Committee of Enquiry the Colonial Office was undertaking
into the Newfoundland political situation. In written
correspondence to the Committee, the Liberals replied to
Conservative opposition to Representative government by stating
that, since the Conservatives could not control the Assembly, they
wanted to abolish it. As for Governor Harvey, his suggestion to
the Colonial Office was for the abolition of the Legislative
Council and the amalgamation of the councillors in one chamber with
the elected members. This proposal found favour with the Colonial
Office, and on August 12, 1842 the British Parliament adopted a new
constitution for Newfoundland.
The new constitution provided for one legislative body
consisting of ten nominated and fifteen elected members. It also
provided for tighter property qualifications for both candidates
and voters and for money bills to originate with the Governor and
his Executive Council. Given his past administrative experience in
other colonies of being able to reconcile various conflicting
political factions, Harvey was a good choice to oversee the
implementation of the new constitution, which was a temporary
measure to remain in force until 1846. He sought to end sectarian
conflicts by attempting to conciliate Roman Catholics and Bishop
Fleming, from whom he secured a promise to refrain from politics,
which the Bishop kept. In return, Harvey agreed to administer the
government on an impartial basis and make Roman Catholics part of
the governing process through appointment to the civil service. He
also convinced leading Liberals such as Carson, Morris, and O'Brien
to serve on his Executive Council, which was equally composed of
Catholics and Protestants. While he controlled the introduction of
money bills in the Amalgamated Legislature, he allowed the
legislators considerable input as to how the funds should be
distributed, a concession the Liberals readily accepted and which
provided for a more harmonious legislature. Harvey also permitted
the annual legislative grant for education to be split, according
to Bishop Fleming's wishes, between Protestants and Roman
Catholics, thereby giving the Bishop control of his educational
system and settling a contentious issue among Roman Catholics (see
Jones "Religion, Education, and Politics in Newfoundland,
18361875").
While the new political system worked efficiently, there were some politicians such as Liberal John Kent who wanted Responsible government introduced into Newfoundland. With the 1842 constitution about to end in 1846, Kent brought forward proposals in that year based on similar proposals elsewhere in British North America for the establishment of Responsible government. The Kent proposals passed by one vote in the legislature and Harvey forwarded them to the Colonial Office, with the recommendation that Newfoundland should return to its former 1832 constitution as a four-year experiment. Involved in its own domestic problems, the Imperial government decided simply to deal with Newfoundland's political situation by simply extending the life of the Amalgamated Legislature by one year to September 1847. Any possible protest from Newfoundland politicians, however, was soon lost in the work of rebuilding St. John's following a fire in June 1846 which destroyed much of the town. When the Imperial government finally got around to the Newfoundland problem the following year, in June 1847 it decided to restore the 1832 constitution with a couple of changes. These were the retainment of the property qualifications for voters and electors and the origination of money bills with the crown. These had been features of the 1842 constitution. Otherwise, Newfoundland once more would have a combined bicameral legislature consisting of an appointed Legislative Council and an elected House of Assembly. However, the Colonial Office considered the restoration of the 1832 constitution only to be a temporary measure; eventually, Newfoundland, like the other British North American colonies which recently had been given Responsible government too would have to be given Responsible government. Source: Melvin Baker, "History 3120 Manual: Newfoundland History, 1815-1972", Division of Continuing Studies, Memorial University, 1994, revision of 1986 edition)