Following the establishment of representative government in 1832, the first meeting of the House of Assembly in January 1833 inaugurated a century of limited political independence for Newfoundland. This independence culminated in 1934 in the suspension of dominion status and the establishment for fifteen years of political rule by a British-appointed commission of government. In 1949 Newfoundland willingly voted to become part of the Canadian Confederation as that Dominion's tenth province, thus fulfilling Canada's first Prime Minister's - Sir John A. MacDonald - vision of one British North American nation from sea to sea.

The 1832 system of government in Newfoundland generally followed the outlines of constitutional development elsewhere in British North America and provided for a bicameral legislature consisting of an appointed upper house, known as the Legislative Council, and an elected House of Assembly of fifteen members. The head of government wee the British-appointed Governor who chose his advisers from an appointed Executive Council whose members also sat in the Legislative Council. The franchise for selecting the members of the House of Assembly MHAs, for short - in effect was given to nearly all adult male householders over the age of twenty-one years in the colony. The British Government imposed such a broad franchise because there was not available a sizable propertied middle class to form the basis of an electorate. Morever, Imperial authorities sought to prevent the domination by St. John's residents of the Assembly by giving the vote to outport fishermen, many of whom, however, held little valuable landed property.

The use of a broad franchise in colonial elections resulted in the emergence of serious tensions in the political system based on economic and religious differences. Economically, nineteenth century Newfoundland was a society dependent on the fishery carried on in hundreds of small communities or outports scattered along the island's rugged coasts. This fishery involved mainly the catching and curing of cod for export to markets in southern Europe and the West Indies. For those fishermen resident on the east and northeast coasts, the summer cod fishery was supplemented by the spring harvest of seals, whose oil in the nineteenth century was a valuable heating and lighting resource. The Newfoundland fishing economy was essentially controlled by a small group of merchants living in St. John's, the merchants acquiring the fish from outport fishermen through the exchange of fishery supplies and provisions. Consequently, outpost fishermen had very little cash in hand, except for what small earnings they made at the spring seal fishery, and were generally caught up in perpetual indebtedness to their merchants. This, in essence, was the credit system, which formed the basis of merchant-fisherman relations well into the mid-twentieth century.

Compounding the economic and class differences was the fact that Roman Catholics, who in the mid-nineteenth century made up nearly 50 percent of the island's population, were fishermen whereas many major merchants were Protestant. Adding to these divisions, furthermore, was the monopoly of political power and patronage in the hands of Anglicans, a situation the Roman Catholic Church, imbued with Irish nationalism in the person of Michael Fleming, Bishop of St. John's from 1830 to 1850, much resented.

The resultant political tensions eventually led to the suspension in August 1842 of the 1832 constitution and its temporary replacement for a four-year period by a combined "Amalgamated Legislature" consisting of ten nominated and fifteen elected members. Under Governor Sir John Harvey, an experienced administrator who had been transferred from New Brunswick the pervious year and who knew how to placate political factions with patronage, this new constitutional arrangement operated very well. For example, he successfully persuaded Bishop Fleming from publicly intervening in colonial politics, something a British requested Papal reprimand in 1838 only temporarily succeeded in doing. In return, Harvey had agreed to administer the government on an impartial basis by giving positions to Catholics and to divide the annual legislative grant for education, according to Fleming's wishes, between Protestants and Catholics. This division gave Fleming control of his educational system and settled a long-standing contentious issue among Catholics.

Despite this success, local pressure in the mid-1840s arose for responsible government, but Britain dealt with the new political situation by simply restoring the 1832 constitution with one important change. That was the maintenance of high property qualifications for voters and electors which had been a feature of the 1842 constitutional change. Yet, such calls for responsible government could only be delayed and not denied in response to a Roman Catholic-Methodist political alliance in the early 1850s.

The Methodists had grown in numbers during the 1840s and similarly resented the Anglican monopoly of public office and patronage. By 1857 the number of Methodists stood at 20,144, while the figures for the Roman Catholics and Anglicans were 55,309 and 42,638 respectively. Hence, the Methodist importance lay in the fact that they played a pivotal role in several electoral seats where neither the Catholics nor Anglicans formed a majority of voters. Faced with this political pressure in Newfoundland, the Imperial Government agreed to the establishment in 1855 of Responsible Government. This concession, moreover, it could no longer deny Newfoundland since this constitutional boon had already been granted to all of the other colonial in British North America.

Under the government system, responsible which retained a bicameral legislature but doubled the number of seats in the Assembly from fifteen to thirty, Newfoundland, like the colonies in British North America, remained subordinate to British policy and the British Parliament. The Governor continued to represent imperial policies and interests as well as act as a channel of communication between the Newfoundland Government and the Colonial Office. Under his instructions, he could reject his ministers' advice, dissolve the legislature, and reserve bills passed by the local legislature for the legal opinion of the Colonial Office. The Imperial Government still had the power to disallow any local legislation, which it did, for instance, when the legislature passed a land tenure act imposing assessments on the St. John's property of imperial subjects not residing in Newfoundland.

The responsible system of government lasted until 16 February 1934 when a British-appointed commission of government assumed office. In 1934 Newfoundland was still predominantly a society of small fishing outports; there were 1,292 settlements along the coast, only 100 of them with populations of more than 500. St. John's, the capital, had 39,886 inhabitants in 1935. Although the value of fish exports had declined sharply as a proportion of total exports - from 81 percent in 1910 to 25 percent in 1936 - the fishery still employed 40 percent of the male labour force. Wage labour was found in the paper-making towns of Grand Palls and Corner Brook; in the mining centres of Bell Island, Buchans and St. Lawrence; and in St. John's where there was a small civil service, some secondary manufacturing, and a sizable labour force involved in marine-related industries. A high birth rate was offset by a high mortality rate, a function of the island's poverty. In 1934 the death rate was 12.1 per thousand of population, compared to 9.5 in Canada.

The world depression, beginning in 1929, struck hard. Total exports fell in value from $40 million in 1930 to $23 million in 1933. The value of fishery products alone fell from 516 million in 1928 to $6.5 million in 1932. The number of people receiving "the dole", or able-bodied relief, of six cents a day rose sharply. During the winter of 1932-33, one quarter of the population depended on the government for the necessities of tea, flour, pork and molasses.

Decreased revenues and increased expenditures on relief created a debt crisis for the government. In 1933, for instance, about 65 percent of government revenues went to pay the annual interest charge on the debt. The debt had grown rapidly since 1920 because of borrowing to finance public works and services and Newfoundland's involvement in the First World War. From $43 million in 1920-21, it had risen to $101 million in 1933.

Thus, the constitutional change in 1934 had grown out of the financial problems Newfoundland had found itself in the 1930s when it was unable to meet the interest payments on the public debt. When retrenchments in the civil service (including a reduction in the size in representation in the House of Assembly from 40 to 27 seats) failed to help, in 1932 the Administration of Frederick Alderdice agreed to a British-Canadian suggestion that a royal commission be established to suggest ways for the island to meet its debt obligations and to plan its economic reorganization. The result was a recommendation from the subsequent Newfoundland Royal Commission chaired by Lord Amulree, a Scottish lawyer and former labour politician, that the 1855 constitution be suspended. What Newfoundland needed, the Commission reported on 4 October 1933 to the British House of Commons, was a respite from parliamentary politics until it was again self-supporting. Faced with the alternative of default, on 28 November 1933 the Dominion of Newfoundland asked the British Government to replace the existing elected government by an appointed commission. For Newfoundlanders, the alternative was financial bankruptcy.

The charge by the Amulree Commission that Newfoundland politics were corrupt was highly unfair; they were no more so than Canadian politics (if that was any consolation for the Newfoundland people). But in corruption, the inquiry had found an easy justification for the suspension of democracy. Had the inquiry focussed more closely on the real cause of Newfoundland's economic problems - the international depression - its case for the abolition of responsible government would have been harder to make out.

Upon assuming office on 16 February 1934, the Commission of Government consisted of three British and three Newfoundland appointees with the governor serving as chairman. The Commission was answerable to the British Government through the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs. The Commissioners saw their main task to be the provision of efficient government and imposed the standards of the British civil service upon its Newfoundland counterpart. This they achieved through dropping old political and religious criteria in the hiring and promotion of civil servants, the importing of British functionaries, and the recruiting of young Newfoundlanders with professional training.

The Commission made its greatest strides in the educational and public-health fields, but by 1939 public disillusionment with the Commission was strong, as hopes for economic development and a substantially higher standard of living had not been realized. Administratively, the Commission had taken measures to bring greater order to the licensing, exporting and marketing of Newfoundland fish and had laid down guidelines for setting the minimum prices fishermen would receive for their fish as well as ensuring some quality control over the fish to be exported. Despite these improvements, the fishing industry continued to perform poorly during the 1930s, largely because of economic and political problems in some of the main export markets as Spain and Italy. In 1938, for instance, the value of salt cod exports was lower than at any other time during the century. Consequently, there was an increase in the number of people on "the dole." Between 1934 and 1940, the average monthly number of people receiving The dole. rose from 31,899 to 39,802, with 85,000 on the relief rolls during the winter of 1938.

Whether the British Government would have retained the commission system of government after 1939, given the growing public discontent to the Commission, is a moot point. What did happen, however, was that the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 diverted people's attention from their own domestic problems to the prosecuting of war itself. Strategically located in the North Atlantic, Newfoundland became an important defence base in the Allied war effort and both the Canadians and Americans in the early 1940s constructed several large bases on the island. At its height in September 1942, the Canadian and American construction boom employed 19,752 Newfoundlanders. They earned an average annual income of $1,500 - considerably more than the $333 to be had in the fishery in 1941. There were jobs now for all who wished to work. Increased exports and foreign military expenditures during the early 1940s finally ended the Commission's budget deficits, which peaked at $4.8 million in the 1939-40 fiscal year. Thereafter, budget surpluses enabled the government to make $12.3 million in interest-free loans to Britain while continuing to make improvements at home, notably in the fields of education, health, housing and local government.

As was the case before 1832, after 1934 the focus for the parliamentary debate of Newfoundland concerns had shifted to the British House of Commons where they remained, in part, until September 1946. In that month 45 delegates, elected earlier in June of that year from all parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, met in the National Convention to consider the economic and political situation and to recommend constitutional alternatives to the British Government that might be submitted to the public in a referendum.

On 3 June 1948, the people of Newfoundland were presented with three options on the referendum ballot: The restoration of Responsible Government Confederation with Canada; and retention of the existing system of Government by Commission. Since no option received a majority of the ballots cast, the Commission option having the lowest vote number was dropped from the second referendum, which wee held on 22 July 1948 to settle the issue. Fifty-two point three per cent of the voters chose Confederation, versus 47.7 per cent for a return to the pre-1934 system.

On 31 March 1949 Newfoundland officially became a Province of Canada, and on the following day, the Confederate leader, Joseph Joseph (Joey) Smallwood, a journalist and former popular radio host, was sworn in as the first Premier. Finally, after rejecting confederation in 1869 and keeping the "Canadian wolf" at bay for close to a century, Newfoundland had thrown in its lot with Canada. Smallwood would remain Premier and leader of the Liberal Party until his resignation in January 1972.

Confederation since 1949 has brought the people great improvements in the standard of living and the benefits of the Canadian welfare state. Economically, today Newfoundland remains shielded by Federal transfer payments while its export-oriented economy is still susceptible to a volatile international market place. As was the case in the nineteenth century, the fishery is still the basis for the survival of many outport communities and the mainstay of employment in them.

The second part of this presentation will briefly examine several themes prevalent in much of the Island's political history. The first, and one which probably goes to the very heart of Newfoundland society, is denominationalism. For much of the 19th century religious and class differences have been the primary considerations in the formation of political parties. Until 1855, Roman Catholics focussed their political efforts to attain a separate school system and a fair share of public office and patronage to reflect the proportion of the island's population that their numbers warranted. The former they achieved, as noted earlier, in the early 1840s when Governor Harvey gave them this right in return for their political support.

The latter would be achieved in 1855. In 1855 and 1858 a Roman Catholic-Methodist alliance won the general elections, but this alliance proved short-lived. Methodist disaffection with Catholic favouritism in the dispensing of public positions and patronage, combined with the arbitrary action of Governor Sir Alexander Bannerman in 1861 in dismissing the Liberal Administration of Premier John Kent on the grounds that Kent was morally unfit to govern, led to the loss of political power by Roman Catholics in 1861.

Following considerable sectarian animosity and violence in a general election later in 1861, the Conservative Party took office through the combined electoral support of Anglicans and Methodists. However, the experience of 1861 convinced both the Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops, Thomas Mullock and Edward Feild respectively, that they must remain aloof from active politics; the St. John's elite also realized that some compromise and accommodation was necessary to prevent further violent animosities.

The result was what has become known as the principle of "denominational representation in government and the civil service." Under this arrangement, historian Ian McDonald has observed, it was agreed that "all patronage and government jobs should be distributed upon a perfectly fair denominational basis with the amount of patronage given to each denomination representing their share of the population." It was also acknowledged by political and religious leaders of the day that "there would be no interference with the denominational system of education and that candidates should only contest districts of their own religion." While there were exceptions, of course, in which politicians won election in districts where their co-religionists never formed the majority of voters, nevertheless, the effect of this compromise was to remove religion as an issue from politics and thus provide religious harmony on the island.

That is not to say that politicians have never used the cry of sectarianism to their advantage. One has only to take a cursory glance at the anti-confederate campaigns of the late 1860s and the late 1940s, for instance, to see how powerful the identification of political and economic issues with religious groupings can be in dividing the Newfoundland people along denominational lines.

And as late as 1955 Premier Smallwood observed, during parliamentary debate on electoral legislation, that the number of seats in an expanded House of Assembly should be distributed equally among the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and the Non-Conformists. To do otherwise, he believed "would be causing sectarianism." Moreover, as historian Peter Neary wrote in 1969, religious affiliation itself had been a significant factor in cabinet selection by Smallwood in the period 1949 to 1971.

That religious affiliation is still a subtle factor in Newfoundland politics is apparently evident in recent backroom debate in the ruling Progressive Conservative party over the selection of a new Senator from Newfoundland. According to a recent newspaper account, there is strong support in the Newfoundland Government for the appointment of a Roman Catholic candidate. However, since a Roman Catholic had been appointed to the previous Senate vacancy from Newfoundland, it is the view of one veteran Conservative fund raiser that "it is the United Church's time. It is not a Roman Catholic's turn right now. It's just that simple."

Until 1934 the civil service was strongly tinged with a sectarian flavour. Each year, in fact, the government of the day would publish a list showing a detailed distribution of staff in the various departments by religion. As the late James G. Channing, one of the many educated recruits to the civil service in the 1930s by the Commission of Government and a former Clerk of the Executive Council, has noted in his excellent book on the civil service, "the minister in charge of a department was expected, almost as a matter of course, to show special consideration for members of his own denomination without regard to their qualifications for the position they had applied for."

A change in government invariably meant a change in the composition of the civil service, as supporters of the outgoing ministry were replaced by supporters of the incoming one. Following the condemnation of the spoils system in 1933 by the Newfoundland Royal Commission, the Commission of Government set as one of its primary goals the restoration of public morality through the creation of a meritorious, non-sectarian civil service. And, in this regard, at least, the Commission succeeded admirably and a thoroughly efficient civil service was one of the most important legacies it left to post-1949 Newfoundland.

Another feature of Newfoundland's political system has been its highly-centralized nature, at St. John's the capital. There were no elected municipal institutions until 1888 when the legislature imposed a municipal council on the capital; outside St. John's the first town council was in 1942 in Windsor, when the Commission of Government made the spread of elected local government a major priority to educate Newfoundlanders in the practices of democracy.

Indeed, many of the witnesses in 1933 before the Newfoundland Royal Commission considered the absence of a strong tradition of elected local government outside St. John's a critical factor in the political problems being faced by Newfoundland. Typical of that response, perhaps, was Dr. H.M. Mosdell, the Deputy Minister of Public Health and a veteran political observer and sometime backroom participant, who told the Royal Commissioners: "we had set up a system of responsible government that did not bring responsibility to the average man. When I say the average man I mean the voter. He has never been put in a position where he has had to carry a full measure of responsibility of citizenship. Once every four years he goes to the polls at a General Election, and he votes for a particular candidate, and then all further interest or further connection with practical affairs ceases... in my opinion you will have to organize this country from the bottom up before you remedy a condition that exists and prevent a recurrence of that condition again." Mosdell recommended the solution lay in the setting up of local government boards or councils, as was the case in Canada to promote community spirit and a sense of political responsibility, because the people would then realize that the money governments spent came out of their own pockets.

What had existed in place of a strong tradition of local government was a political system in which the local MHA played, as S.J.R. Noel has noted in his seminal Politics in Newfoundland (1971), the "crucial function of intermediary between the government at St. John's and the people of his district." In the Legislature, he was the guardian and spokesman of local interests, the sole liaison between the governors and the governed. In addition," Noel continued, "he was customarily expected to perform a multitude of local duties that made him, for practical purposes, an unofficial mayor and councillors rolled into one; and at the same time he was looked upon by his constituents as the provider of free legal advice and other welfare services of every kind." This role has had to be fulfilled by all MHAs, no matter what their political ideologies.

Today, despite the proliferation of elected town councils and elected school boards, chambers of commerce, and rural development associations, the MHA who ignores the demands of his constituents does so at his peril. With the high levels of unemployment in the outposts, he (or she) is more than ever, especially if the MBA sits to the Speaker's left, expected to deliver the goods. For those unfamiliar with parliamentary tradition in Newfoundland, since 1850 the practice has been that the government members sit to the left of the Speaker's chair. This was because the fireplace in the former House of Assembly in the Colonial Building had been constructed to the Speaker's left and thus the government members exercised their right to sit in the warmth and glow of the fireplace. This tradition was continued when the House of Assembly moved in 1960 into the present Confederation Building.

Another interesting aspect of Newfoundland's political system is the role the now long-forgotten Legislative Council played in government policy decisions. Members of the Council were appointed by the Governor-in-Council and sat at its pleasure. The Council served to review legislation passed by the Assembly by either amending or defeating such legislation and introducing bills on its own. For any bill to become law, it had to be passed by both houses of the Legislature and assented to by the Governor.

In practice, the Legislative Council essentially served to protect the interests of the Water Street merchants against a populist House of Assembly which, after 1888, was elected by all male voters twenty-one years of age and over. Consisting of the Island's leading merchants, the Legislative Council saw as one of its primary functions to prevent the passage of legislation by the Assembly that ran contrary to its members' concerns.

Thus, in 1914, for instance, the Fishermen's Protective Union, founded in 1908 by William Coaker to advance the interests of the island's fishermen, sought through its elected Unionist MHAs to have the Assembly enact legislation to improve working and living conditions for loggers and sealers. However, the Council simply threw out the two pieces of legislation.

Three years later the Council found that there was a limit to the actions which the Assembly would tolerate from the Councillors. On this occasion, the Council's power to defeat legislation was curtailed, after the Council threw out a bill imposing a tax on business profits. This bill had been introduced after a government inquiry had found that some merchants had made large profiteering gains on the importation of foodstuffs and coal. Faced with the Council's obstruction, the government enacted legislation similar to the English Parliament Act of 1911 limiting the powers of the Council in money matters.

Another theme running through Newfoundland's political history has been the politics of class rhetoric associated with the social and economic relationships between merchant and fisherman. This is, of course, not surprising given the nature of the Newfoundland economy. One example of this theme can be found in the 1880s when the Premier of the day, lawyer William Whiteway, met strong opposition from merchants who opposed, for fiscal reasons, his economic strategy of building a railway across the island to develop the mineral and agricultural resources reputed to exist in the interior.

It should be noted that Whiteway had embraced this course of economic development, in part, because it had been the path followed by American and Canadian Governments in their efforts to exploit their abundant resources and to encourage immigration and settlement. He hoped for similar results in central and western Newfoundland. He also turned to railway development because of the inability of the fishery to provide an adequate standard of living and employment for the island's growing population. Having being rejected in the 1869 election in their efforts to bring Newfoundland into the Canadian Confederation, Whiteway and other former confederates, therefore, had looked to railway development as an economic panacea within the context of the island's continued independence. Moreover, for Whiteway and his supporters, "to remain wedded to confederation," one historian has written, "was to accept perpetual exclusion from office" (Hiller, 1980).

In a general election in 1882 he fought on the railway issue, Whiteway took to the attack saying he wished to "raise the working class to their proper place in the body politic" and criticized the merchants for accumulating great wealth, while fishermen went hungry (Hiller, 1980). In this class appeal, Whiteway's appeal crossed sectarian lines, receiving the support of both Roman Catholic politicians and voters for his proposed railway. In return, he brought senior Roman Catholic politicians into his cabinet, thus belying the basis of the denominational compromise of the 1860s but a political coalition also belying shared views by these politicians on economic development.

Similar rhetorical politics wee evident in the formation in 1908 by Coaker of the Fishermen's Protective Union. Coaker had set out to redress the social and economic imbalances that he and his fishermen followers perceived to exist between St. John's and outport, merchant and fisherman. The Union's motto - "To each his own" - made it clear that it intended to lessen the fisherman's reliance on the local merchant through the establishment of Union-owned companies to purchase and market fish.

Through this appeal to the dignity and pride of fishermen, the Union enjoyed great political success between 1913 and 1932 in electing members to the House of Assembly. Indeed, many of its proposals for social and economic reforms - for instance, free and compulsory education, universal old age pensions, small rural hospitals, elected road boards and school boards - would eventually be realized, although some of them would have to await the arrival of the financial resources of the Canadian welfare state after 1949 to be fully implemented.

Another example of politicians using the traditional animosity between fisherman and merchant can be found in the political debate of the late 1940 over Newfoundland's constitutional future. On this occasion, the Confederate leader, Joseph Smallwood, a self-proclaimed socialist in his early twenties and an avowed admirer of Coaker, skilfully manipulated this animosity and labelled the representatives of Water Street in the National Convention - the "29 Dictators" - to win the July 1948 referendum. Confederation, its supporters confidently proclaimed, would bring a new dignity for the "littleman," for the "last forgotten fisherman off the bill of Cape St. George."

One final aspect of Newfoundland's political history to be explored in this presentation is the continuing local fascination with the notion of free trade with the United States, a fascination that has historically been shared as well by other Canadians. In the decade after 1854 Newfoundland, along with the other British North American colonist, enjoyed great prosperity as the result of a reciprocity agreement with the Americans.

Having had a tease of such prosperity, since the 1860s Newfoundlanders have not given up the idea and hope that their economy would be better off if the island's fishery products had easier access to American markets. Thus, in 1890, as the island's Colonial Secretary, and again in 1902, as Premier, Robert Bond strenuously but unsuccessfully tried to finalize reciprocity agreements. In 1890 Bond failed due to strong Canadian opposition, while in the l9O0s he fell short because of the strong lobbying efforts of New England fishing interests.

During the constitutional debate of the late 1940s, the issue arose again in the shape of the Economic Union Movement led by Chesley Croshie and Donald Jamieson, who later would go on to become a Canadian cabinet minister in the late 1960s and 1970s under Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. That such thinking is still with us can be seen in the current efforts by the Canadian and Newfoundland Governments to have a free trade agreement with the United States.

For Newfoundlanders, besides the obvious economic benefits they believe would accrue to them under such a commercial agreement, the desire for closer economic times with the Americans has been forged by decades of strong bonds between the two peoples. Not only have many Newfoundlanders settled in the United States, especially the "Boston States", but also in the period, in particular, before 1949 many Newfoundlanders regularly sought seasonal employment in the Boston and New York areas. Such bonds were further strengthened by the stationing of American troops in Newfoundland during the Second World War and the marriage of many local girls to American servicemen.

As this brief presentation has shown, Newfoundland has had a rich parliamentary tradition and history characterized by a strong sense of local nationalism which has not been dissipated, despite the island's integration since 1949 into the North American mainstream culture. As the disagreements of the early 1980s with the Federal Government over ownership of offshore petroleum resources and the recent debate over French fishing rights off the East Coast illustrates, Newfoundlanders still rally behind their political leaders to do battle against a perceived common enemy. Staunch patriotism, economic vulnerability, and the willingness to compromise on religious and educational issues, in short, are legacies of Newfoundland's past that will be carried over into the 1990s and beyond.

Baker, Melvin. "The Tenth Province", Horizon Canada, vol. 10, no. 111 (1987), 2641-47.

Channing, J.G. The Effects of Transition to Confederation on Public Administration in Newfoundland (Toronto, The Institute of Public Administration of Canada, 1982).

Courage, J.R. "The Development of Procedure in the General Assembly of Newfoundland" M.A. thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1960).

Gunn, Gertude. The Political History of Newfoundland, 1832-1864 (Toronto 1966).

Hiller, J.K. and Peter Neary, eds. Newfoundland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Essays in interpretation (Toronto 1980).

MacRay, R.A., ed. Newfoundland: Economic, Diplomatic and Strategic Studies (Toronto 1946).

MacKenzie, David. Inside the Atlantic Triangle. Canada and the Entrance of Newfoundland into Confederation 1939-1949 (Toronto 1986).

McDonald, Ian. ETV Lectures. Newfoundland and History since 1815 (St. John's, Memorial University of Newfoundland).

Neary, Peter, Democracy in Newfoundland: A Comment." Journal of Canadian Studies, 4, no.1 (1969), 37-45.

Neary, Peter, ed. The Political Economy of Newfoundland, 1929-1972 (Toronto 1973).

Noel, S.J.R. Politics in Newfoundland (Toronto 1971).

O'Flaherty, Patrick. The Rock Observed. Studies in the Literature of Newfoundland (Toronto 1979).

Ryan, Shannon. Fish out of Water. The Newfoundland saltfish Trade 1814-1914 (St. John's 1986).

(St. John's) Sunday Express, 15 November 1987.

National Archives of Canada, MG 30, E82, C.A. Magrath Papers.