Following the rejection of confederation in the 1869 general election, successive Newfoundland Governments in the 1870s and 1880s concentrated their economic development efforts on the establishment of marine-related industries at St. John's and the construction of a trans-island railway to open up the reputed mineral and agricultural resources of the interior. (1) One St. John's merchant who actively participated in this industrial strategy was Moses Monroe, who by the early 1890s was one of Newfoundland's most prominent business and political leaders.

Monroe, who was born in 1842 in Moria, received his early education in Armagh and Galway and then worked for a local clothing manufacturer. (2) At the urging of his uncle, the Rev. Moses Harvey, who was the local Presbyterian minister, Monroe came to St. John's in 1860 and became a dry goods clerk with the firm of McBride & Kerr, which after 1864 was managed by James Goodfellow. (3) Goodfellow purchased this company in 1869, and on 18 June 1870 he took Monroe as a junior partner. The two men had a business disagreement and on 31 December 1872 Goodfellow dissolved the partnership, claiming that Monroe had falsified the prices on goods sold by the firm to his financial disadvantage. Goodfellow refused offers of mediation from Rev. Mr. Harvey (4); however, the disagreement had no long-term detrimental effect on his friendship with Monroe whose standing in the business community remained untarnished. In 1873 Monroe established his own dry goods and fisheries supply business. The necessary capital may have come from his father-in-law, Thomas McMurdo, a prosperous drugstore owner. (5)

The firm of M. Monroe proved a success supplying merchants and fishermen throughout the island and Labrador. By 1890, however, he had almost withdrawn from the Labrador fishery because the cure of fish and its preparation for market was of such poor quality as to have made it uneconomical. About 1875 Monroe became involved in the bank fishery prosecuted mainly from the Burin Peninsula. In 1885, for example, by hiring ships and their crews, he outfitted 12 vessels totalling 120 men; four years later this number had risen to 40 a vessels carrying 500 men who caught 30,000 quintals of fish valued at $126,000. Monroe never actively pursued the fish export business, but in the late 1880s he did invest with other merchants in west-coast lobster factories. (6)

Monroe's business interests also centered around the promotion of marine-related industries in St. John's during the late 1870s and 1880s. While he was reputed to have investments in most of the local joint-stock companies, his major interests lay in the Newfoundland Boot and Shoe Factory (1875), the Newfoundland Pioneer Woolen Co. (1881), the Colonial Cordage Company (1882) (7), the St. John's Electric Light Co. (1885), and the Atlantic Building Company (1885), in whose establishment he was the prime mover. An important project of that Company was the Atlantic Hotel which opened in June 1885 and was operated under a 50-year renewable lease by John Foran, to provide much needed hotel accommodations in St. John's. Shareholders in this enterprise included James Baird, Joseph Little, and Robert Kent and several transatlantic steamship lines, including the Allan Company, whose ships included St. John's among their ports of call. The cost of the hotel's construction was $60,000, of which Monroe acquired $28,000 through loan guarantees from the government Savings Bank. (8)

However, it was his involvement with the Cordage Company (the "Ropewalk"), which earned him the name "Monopolist Monroe" from his political opponents. (9) Prior to 1882, the local fishery depended upon imported lines, twines, nets, cordage, and cable. Merchants experienced great difficulties in maintaining their supply in the early 1880s (10) and James Rogerson and Ambrose Shea approached Monroe to start a local twine and net factory. (11) Not being familiar with this industry, Monroe offered to form a co-partnership with the English firm of Joseph Grundy & Co. In 1882 after Grundy had refused a partnership, Moses and his brother James, who had come out from Ireland to manage the enterprise, themselves invested $80,000 to construct the factory. Between 1883 and 1885 the Ropewalk employed about 180 people, thus becoming one of the largest local employers of wage labour. (12)

The immediate success of the Ropewalk owed much to the protectionist policies of the Conservative Government of Premier William Whiteway, which in 1882 provided a five-year exemption from import duties and a 5 percent bounty on imported raw materials. The Company also benefited from an 8 percent duty - first instituted in 1871 - on imported twines, cables, and cordage.

In 1883 the Monroes established Colonial Cordage as a joint-stock company with a nominal capital stock offering of $120,000, of which $96,000 was raised by the end of the year. Shareholders included many of the island's leading business and political figures such as Charles Bowring, Robert Thorburn and Premier Whiteway, with the Monroe brothers the largest investors with $60,000 in the company.

Disaster struck the Ropewalk on 23 December 1885 when fire destroyed the frame factory, which had little insurance coverage. However, it was rebuilt the following year, this time of stone and brick materials. To this end, Monroe had persuaded the recently elected Government of Premier Robert Thorburn, not only to provide direct financial assistance but also to continue the bounty paid the Ropewalk to 1895 and to increase it to 7-1/2 percent. Additionally, the following year the tariff on imported cordage and related products was increased to 10 percent.

On 23 February 1886 Monroe re-incorporated the Colonial Cordage Company with a nominal capital stock of $160,000, of which $120,000 was paid up within the first year. (13) For local investors, the Ropewalk represented a secure investment, while its importance as a source of employment gave Monroe considerable political influence in the west end of the town, where many of the Ropewalk's employees lived.

On 19 February 1884 Monroe's prominence in business and politics had been recognized when Whiteway appointed him to the Legislative Council. (14) As a Councillor, he demonstrated independence of mind by supporting a non-denominational system of education and opposing efforts to prohibit the sale of liquor, arguing that temperance could best be promoted by "education, example, and moral suasion." (15) He did, however, continue to be a friend and supporter of Whiteway and in 1885 sought to bring about a political coalition between Whiteway and either the Roman Catholic Liberal Party led by Ambrose Shea or a mercantile Protestant party led by Robert Thorburn. In fact, this did not appear altogether likely since the mercantile party did not share Whiteway's and Monroe's vision of the construction of a trans-island railway to develop resources purported to exist in the interior and on the west coast, areas where Monroe had several speculative timber and mineral interests. (16)

But rapprochement with the Liberals seemed even more difficult to attain. Thorburn's supporters had carefully exploited sectarian antagonisms, exacerbated by the Harbour Grace Affray of December 1883 by amending the Throne Speech in such an overt anti-Roman Catholic manner as to force the Liberals to leave the Whiteway Government. (17) Thus, despite an anticipated autumn general election, not even Monroe's best persuasive efforts were able to bring about Whiteway's reconciliation with either the Liberal or the Protestant Party. Finally, in October 1885, Whiteway struck a deal with Thorburn whereby the former resigned the premiership in favour of the latter, who would lead an all Protestant party in the general election to be held on 31 October. In return, Whiteway would be offered the position of Chief Justice when that office became vacant, (18) a promise that was never kept. Thorburn easily won the election campaigning on a public platform of "no amalgamation with the Catholics", while intimating to senior Liberal politicians that such a coalition would be desirable after the election. Monroe remained loyal to Whiteway and supported the independent candidacy of Alfred Marine, a close friend and a Whiteway supporter who ran unsuccessfully in the Protestant district of Bonavista. (19)

Throughout most of the term of the Thorburn Government from 1885 to 1889, Monroe maintained an independent position without making an open public break with Whiteway. (20) Indeed, in 1887 he criticized Thorburn's decision, despite his 1885 election platform of no more railway construction, to build a branch railway to Placentia for political reasons. (21) This railway had been part of a coalition agreement whereby some senior Roman Catholics had supported Thorburn in return for the appointment on 26 July 1886 of Maurice Fenelon and W.J.S. Donnelly to his Executive Council. The remaining Liberal members in the House of Assembly under the leadership of St. John's West MHA Patrick J. Scott continued in opposition, but supported Thorburn's policies. Other members in opposition in the Assembly by 1887 included two Whiteway supporters and one independent - St. John's West MHA Edward Patrick Morris, a young populist Roman Catholic lawyer elected in 1885 as one of three representatives for that district. After 1889 Morris would become a rival of Monroe for the political allegiance of voters in the west end of St. John's.

Monroe's formal break with Whiteway came in the 1889 general election when he unsuccessfully tried to defeat the Morris-led Whiteway candidates, (22) who now called themselves Liberals. However, the real break may actually have begun a year earlier when Monroe, after a campaign organized with Scott's help, won election as a councillor for Ward 3 on the recently established St. John's Municipal Council. (23) Monroe quickly established his presence on the seven-member Council and dominated its affairs.

Within two months of the Council taking office, a Whiteway-inspired civic reform movement developed and was particularly critical of municipal patronage appointments and of the contract Council gave for lighting the city. (24) Since Monroe was Secretary of the St. John's Electric Light Company, he came in for particular public condemnation. (25) Indeed, as a municipal councillor from 1888 to 1892, he was frequently embroiled in public controversy as he and St. John's West Liberal MHA Edward Morris each claimed credit for civic works and sought to use the Municipal Council for their own political ends. The government press constantly criticized the "bounty-fed" Moses as having enriched himself at the "expense of the working classes of the whole community" while his workers, especially the women and children, worked at the Ropewalk for "starvation wages." (26) Monroe did not seek re-election to Council in the civic election held on 23 January 1892, stepping aside to permit James Goodfellow to run successfully in his former seat against a Morris-backed candidate. (27)

In announcing his decision, Monroe took great pride in having contributed to the town's general improvement by Council. The most substantial improvements included a new sewerage system built at a cost of $180,000 and the laying out of two parks - Bannerman in the east end and Victoria in the west end. Moreover. the Council had greatly improved the physical appearance of the town by widening and macadamizing streets and laying block pavement on sidewalks in the commercial district. A more controversial reform had been the alteration of some colourful street and area names-"Maggoty Cove", "Hill of Chips", "Dog's Town", "Barking Kettle", and "Gallagher Range." (28)

As a member of the Legislative Council after 1890, Monroe remained a critic of the Liberal Government, while at the same time disassociating himself from the policies of the former Thorburn Government. Although there was no formal opposition party, Monroe was generally acknowledged as a leading opponent of the government and a strong financial backer of the opposition Evening Herald, (29) edited by Alfred Morine, a staunch confederate. Monroe, not a known confederate himself, favoured mutual reciprocal relations with both the United States and Canada. (30)

In 1890 Morine and Monroe helped to spark widespread protest throughout Newfoundland to a recently agreed modus vivendi between France and Great Britain respecting French fishing rights on the island's west coast. (31) Whiteway had been prepared to accept this agreement, in which Britain agreed to prohibit the establishment of any new Newfoundland lobster factories on the French Treaty Shore, in return for Imperial financial assistance to complete railway construction across the island. But the Tories, now styling themselves as the "Patriotic Association", had aroused public passions and Whiteway was soon on the bandwagon denouncing the agreement. Meanwhile, the British Government, finding that it had no statutory authority to enforce French fishing rights, introduced enabling legislation to achieve that purpose.

In an attempt to prevent passage of this legislation, the Newfoundland legislature sent an all-party delegation to London in April 1891. Morine and Monroe were selected to represent the opposition, while the Liberal representatives were Whiteway, Augustus Harvey, and George Emerson. The delegation, finding the British unwilling to withdraw their bill until the Newfoundlanders had agreed to have local permanent legislation enacted, recommended as a compromise the passage of temporary legislation to enforce the fishing rights up to the end of 1893 and the subsequent enactment of permanent legislation providing for continued enforcement by local courts. While Whiteway stayed in London to negotiate terms for the permanent local legislation, the others returned home with Morine and Monroe playing significant roles in convincing their fellow legislators to support the temporary legislation. In the event, Whiteway's agreement with the Colonial Office allowed for the enforcement of French fishing rights under Imperial jurisdiction and courts. When he presented this bill to the Assembly in 1892, it was strongly condemned by Morine and Monroe as a repudiation of the original bill the delegates had agreed upon in London in 1891, a view supported by Emerson as well. Faced with this situation, a majority of Whiteway's own supporters, who shared Monroe's view (32) that permanent legislation was really unnecessary and that the colony should withhold any further action on the matter until the French recognized Newfoundland's right to have lobster factories on the west coast, rejected Whiteway's bill. The result was a series of temporary bills until 1904 when France agreed to surrender its fishing rights on the island as part of a larger Anglo-French colonial agreement.

Local politics were further inflamed in 1892 following the fire on 8 July, which destroyed the eastern and central parts of St. John's. The debate over rebuilding turned strongly partisan when the legislature dealt with the contentious issue of land tenure in the burnt-out areas. The problem was that, following the fire in 1846 absentee landlords - who lived mainly in Great Britain and owned much of the valuable commercial and residential land - had taken advantage of the situation and exacted exorbitant rents and given short-term 40-year leases. (33) Tenants were placed at a disadvantage because, at the expiry of a lease, landed property reverted to the landlord, who then dictated the renewal terms.

Although the lease of his Water Street property was subject to renewal, Monroe was not burnt out in the fire, and he hoped to use the opportunity provided by the fire to his advantage. (34) Twelve days after the fire prominent leaseholders met in Monroe's store and decided to form the Tenants' League, which would pressure the Whiteway Government to establish a land court to adjudicate fair and equitable rents upon appeal to it by a lessee. This court would be based on the principle of the Irish Land Court, whose head was Moses' brother, John. Moses wanted the local court to have its right of appeal extend not only to leases terminated by the fire, but also to those which would expire in the near future. However, Premier Whiteway, himself an absentee landlord agent, rejected the suggestion believing that landlords and tenants could best deal with their own affairs. Instead, Monroe had to settle for government legislation providing incentives for landlords to grant 99-year leases and thus be free from having to compensate tenants for any improvements made to the land during the life of such a term. (35)

The other major issue arising out of the aftermath of the 1892 fire was the large surplus revenue the colony had received from its revenue tariffs. This surplus was the result of the sudden increase in the importation of building supplies which the fire had necessitated. On 30 September 1892 Monroe convened a public meeting to support the position of the Tory-controlled Municipal Council that this additional revenue be given to the financially beleaguered Council. Needless to say, the government turned a deaf ear to this opposition appeal, although Monroe and his Tory colleagues continued to make the revenue surplus a political issue with which to beat the government. (36)

Indeed 1893 was an election year and the government quickly made Monroe and the Ropewalk an issue. Specifically, as the unofficial Tory leader, he was criticized as having profiteered from the sale of goods and provisions for fire relief, charges that the governing Liberals failed to substantiate. (37) After considerable speculation as to who would lead the opposition in the election scheduled for 6 November, the Tories held a public meeting in St. John's on 16 June 1893 to announce the formation of the Grieve-Monroe Party and to honour the co-leaders, St. John's merchants Walter Baine Grieve and Moses Monroe. (38)

The co-leaders condemned the government for its past neglect of the fisheries and its weak actions in protecting local interests on the west coast against the French. They also attacked the railway contract Whiteway had signed earlier in 1893 with Robert Reid, the Canadian contractor the colony had hired to operate the Placentia railway and to complete the construction of the main railway line to the west coast. Monroe did not oppose the building of the railway, but the terms of the contract, because it gave away too much of the colony's resources in return for a ten-year operating contract. (39) Monroe headed the three-man Tory ticket - which included P. J. Scott - against Morris and his colleagues in St. John's West. As the historian Daniel Prowse, a Whiteway supporter, noted at the time, both Morris and Monroe campaigned vigorously; Monroe "one of the ablest politicians in the island, conducted his own election in the west end of St. John's with immense spirit, leaving no stone un-turned to gain his seat...." (40) Both parties provided employment and alcohol to prospective voters; (41) indeed, one Morris demonstration was referred to by the Monroe faction as the "Wild West Show" in contrast to their own "People's Parade." (42)

Monroe failed in his first try at colonial politics as the Liberals easily won re-election. The opposition did not take defeat lightly and on 6 January 1895 filed petitions in the Supreme Court under the 1889 Corrupt Practices Act charging 17 government members with the illegal use of public funds during the campaign. Subsequent judgements of the Court led to the unseating of Whiteway, Morris and other members, forcing the resignation of the government and the formation of a new one led by Tory merchant Augustus Goodridge. His parliamentary majority depended on the election of Tory candidates in by-elections held later that year in those districts left vacant by the unseated Liberals. (43)

Monroe, who had been appointed to the Legislative Council on 2 August 1894, (44) on 16 October unsuccessfully contested Whiteway's former Trinity district. Morris, taken by surprise by Monroe's decision to run in Trinity, nevertheless sought to influence the outcome by publishing in the weekly outport edition of the Evening Telegram the details of "one of the foulest plots ever hatched by the most unscrupulous politician." Morris asserted that in March of that year Monroe had sent a Ropewalk employee to persuade him to use government influence to have the Ropewalk bounty extended after its expiry in 1895. He had not made this information available before, Morris wrote, because he was "patiently waiting till the time when Mr. Monroe would come to St. John's for Election, when I should have confronted him publicly with the instrument of his perfidy . . ." James Monroe defended his brother and denied Morris' charges that coercion had been used to secure a published retraction of the employee's alleged statement as published by Morris. James also denied that the employee was drunk at the time of the retraction. (45)

On 10 December 1894 - "Black Monday" - the political chaos of the past several months gave way to the problems created by the collapse of the island's two private banks. A subsequent public investigation showed that the banks' directors had over-extended their credit in making large loans to themselves and other export merchants. (46) Two days after the collapse, Monroe, who had not followed this borrowing practice, wrote to the press that he had arranged for the Canadian Bank of Nova Scotia to come to the town to establish a branch of that institution. He also cautioned the public that it was "not the time for recrimination or abuse" for "there will be ample time later on for enquiry and punishment if desired . . . " With the immediate help of outside banking assistance, Monroe believed that many of the mercantile firms were indeed solvent if their owners were given time by their creditors to realize their assets, a suggestion that was not generally followed as many firms found themselves placed in trusteeships by local creditors. Monroe managed to avoid this situation by agreeing with his creditors to pay off his debts in full if permitted sufficient time. (47) This, he did, but in doing so he nearly depleted his financial resources and saw his health rapidly deteriorate. (48) Consequently, when his estate was probated on 6 August 1895 it was valued at only $10,500, much of which, no doubt, was represented by his shares in the Colonial Cordage Company. (49)

On 8 February 1895 for reasons of health Monroe left for a holiday in his native Ireland. There his health greatly improved and he returned on 18 April to Newfoundland. Despite the appearance of having fully recovered, on 19 May he suffered another stroke and died suddenly, his death taking the whole community by surprise. (50)

When the House of Assembly met the following day, friend and foe alike praised Monroe and then adjourned in his honour. For Morine, his long-time friend and solicitor, Monroe's death was such a traumatic experience that he became "so much overcome by his feelings that he was forced to resume his seat." For Morris, Monroe's "opponents in political life found in him one worthy of their steel, and in a fight you quickly recognized that if you were to win, every tactic and the most skilful manoeuvre must be availed of . . ." However, "when the battle was over and the fight ended, the nobility of the man's character shone forth, and whether victor or vanquished, the big heart longed for reconciliation." (51) Two years later residents of St. John's established a memorial to him in Victoria Park, which he had helped to set up during his term as a municipal councillor. Its inscription read in part: "Erected by voluntary subscriptions of all classes and denominations in token of the respect and esteem with which they cherished his memory." (52)

The bank crash in December 1894 and the subsequent deaths of Monroe and several other merchants, as a result of ill-health brought on by strains from their financial problems, deprived Newfoundland after 1894 of a significant local entrepreneurial group of merchants. The void was quickly filled by Canadian financial institutions and entrepreneurs such as the railway contractor Robert Reid, who would play prominent roles in the exploitation in the twentieth century of Newfoundland's natural resources by foreign capital. As the business and political career of Moses Monroe demonstrates, we need to known much more of the nineteenth century entrepreneurial class which comprised that group of men, collectively referred to as the "Water Street Merchants".

1. David Alexander, "Newfoundland's Traditional Economy and Development to 1934" in J. K. Hiller and Peter Neary, eds., Newfoundland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Toronto, 1980), 17-39.

2. Daily News, Evening Herald, 19 May 1895; H. Y. Mott, Newfoundland Men (1894), 55.

3. A. B. Perlin, The Story of Newfoundland (1959), "The Colonial Cordage Company"; and Newfoundland Journal of Commerce (August 1957).

4. Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, (PANL), P5/4, James Goodfellow Papers, Box 1, file 12 "Appendent to certain articles of co-partnership between James Goodfellow and Moses Monroe, June 18, 1870", and Moses Harvey to Goodfellow, 27 December 1872, and Box 2, file 10, Harvey to Goodfellow, 19 February 1873.

5. PANL, GN5/1, Newfoundland Supreme Court, Registrar's Office - Wills, vol. 4, p. 74 "Thomas McMurdo". On 16 May 1871 Monroe married Jessie Gordon McMurdo. PANL, P8/A/25, Free Presbyterian Church, St. John's, Marriages, 1842-79, Moses Monroe and Jessie McMurdo 16 May 1871.

6. Mott, Newfoundland Men, 55; Daily News, 20 May 1895; Keith Matthews, Profiles of Water Street Merchants (Maritime History Group, 1980) "Moses Monroe"; Decisions of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, 1874-1884, "Monroe V Falle, April 1882"; Report of Judge Bennett together with Evidence respecting Bait Protection Service, 1890 (1891), 105-7.

7. John Joy, "The Growth and Development of Trades and Manufacturing in St. John's, 1870-1914; (M.A. thesis, Memorial University, 1977), 46, 78, 159; and Evening Herald, 16 October 1893.

8 Evening Herald, 18 October 1893; PANL, GN2/1/A, Incoming Correspondence of the Colonial Secretary's Office, Monroe to Edward Morris, Cashier, Savings Bank, 3 July 1885.

9. Evening Telegram, 9 December 1889.

10. Joy, "Trades and Manufacturing", 105-14.

11. Evening Herald, 2 August 1893.

12. Evening Telegram, 23 December 1885.

13. Joy, "Trades and Manufacturing", 105-14; Evening Herald, 2 August 1893; and Statutes of Newfoundland, 1882, 1886.

14. PANL, Bluebook, 1887.

15. Monroe in Legislative Council Debates 22 April 1887 and 2 April 1889 in Evening Telegram, 30 April 1887 and 6 April 1889 respectively.

16. Legislative Council Debates 19 April 1884 in (St. John's) Times, 10 May 1884; and PANL, GN9/1, Minutes of Executive Council 24 September 1883.

17. Evening Telegram, 12, 28, 30 September, 24 November 1885. The Harbour Grace Affray was a violent clash in December 1883 in Harbour Grace between Protestant Orangemen on parade and Roman Catholic residents resulting in the deaths of four Protestants. The Roman Catholics charged with the killings were later acquitted in legal proceedings, and strong feelings lingered among Protestants that justice had been denied.

18. PANL, GN9/1, 12 October 1885.

19. Evening Telegram, 24 November 1885.

20. Evening Herald, 8 August, 2 September 1893; Evening Telegram 20 May 1887; and Monroe in Legislative Council Debates 20 February 1891 in Evening Telegram, 27 February 1891.

21. Monroe in Legislative Council Debates 12 May 1887 in Evening Telegram 6 June 1887.

22. Evening Telegram, 4 November 1889.

23. Daily Colonist, 13, 21, 28, 31 August 1888.

24. Melvin Baker, "The Government of St. John's, Newfoundland 1800-1921" (Ph.D. thesis, The University of Western Ontario, 1980), 226-48.

25. See, for instance, Daily Colonist 23 October 1888.

26. Evening Telegram, 29 October 1889, 19 August, 9, 10, 11 September 1890, 1, 3, 8, 12 December 1891; 23 March 1892; 4, 16 August 1893.

27. Evening Herald, 2 August 1893.

28. Baker, "The Government of St. John's, Newfoundland, 1800-1921", 257; and Evening Herald 1 December 1891.

29. Evening Telegram, 7 April 1893.

30. Monroe in Legislative Council Debates 8 March 1892 in Evening Herald, 21 March 1892.

31. On the French Shore question, see J. K. Hiller "A History of Newfoundland 1874-1901" (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1971), 190-243, and F. F. Thompson, The French Shore Problem in Newfoundland (Toronto, 1961), 74-187.

32. Monroe in Legislative Council Debates 9 May 1892 in Evening Telegram 12 May 1892.

33. Melvin Baker, "The Influence of Absentee Landlordism on the Development of Municipal Government in 19th Century St. John's" Newfoundland Quarterly, vol. LXXXI, No. 2 (Fall 1985) 19-25.

34. Journal of the House of Assembly, Appendix. 1883, 32-5.

35. Baker, "The Government of St. John's 1800-1921", 270-84.

36. Ibid., 284-88.

37. Evening Telegram, 8 April, 31 July, 4 August, 30 September, 21 October 1893; Evening Herald, 25 April 1893.

38. Evening Herald, 17 June 1893.

39. Ibid., 16 September 1893.

40. D. W. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland (London, 1895, Mika reprint 1972) 530.

41. See the Daily News, May-July 1894 for coverage of the St. John's West Election Trials.

42. Evening Herald, 30 October 1893.

43. Hiller, "A History" 267-99.

44. Evening Herald, 2 August 1894.

45. Daily News, 15, 17, 19, 20 October 1894; Evening Telegram, 26, 29 October 1894.

46. Hiller, "A History" 173-84.

47. Daily News, 13 December 1894.

48. P. J. Scott in House of Assembly debates 20 May 1895 in Evening Telegram, 12 June 1895.

49. PANL, GN5/1, Newfoundland Supreme Court, Registrar's Office - Wills, vol. 6, p. 224 "Moses Monroe 6 August 1895"; and Decisions of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland "Monroe v McNeil 15 March 1902".

50. Evening Herald, Daily News 20 May 1895.

51. Assembly Debates 20 May 1895 in Evening Telegram, 12 June 1895.

52. Paul O'Neill, The Story of St. John's, Newfoundland, A Seaport Legacy (1976) 671.

Up! hardy Newfoundlanders! arise and loose the shackles,

Which Whiteway's rule has bound you with so long,

Strain every honest muscle to drive from power the traitors,

And let this be the burden of your song.

Chorus:

We're going to defeat them, we'll drive them out of office,

The voters whom they've cheated all say so;

We'll choose an honest Party, who are sure to keep their promise,-

The heroes that will follow Baine Grieve and M. Monroe.

Four years of stupid ruling, of grinding, sore taxation,

We've had from Messrs. Bond and Whiteway,

And though now the clouds seem blackened, and we can scarce see beyond them,

"It's always darkest just before the day."

Chorus:

We're going to defeat them, &c.

Four years of broken pledges to the people of the Island,

Four years of gross insult and grievous wrong,

But thank God it's nearly over, 'twill be finished in November, When Monroe and Grieve will guide the ship along.

Chorus:

We're going to defeat them, &c.

No empty boasts are dealt in, but all is fair and honest,

No trading on the feelings of the poor;

"A man's a man for a' that" is the doctrine of our party,

A doctrine that has ne'er prevailed before.

Chorus:

We're going to defeat them, &;c.

By the middle of November, when the Party is elected,

And the Whiteway fraud is sent to "Kingdom come,"

All industries will prosper as they've ne'er before been known to,

And, boys, there'll be an everlasting hum.

Chorus:

We're going to defeat them, &c.

So buckle on the armour, don't lose a single moment,

Be leaders in the great progressive van,

Talk and work, and vote, and conquer, You're in easy reach of triumph,

For the country will support you to a man.

Chorus:

We're going to defeat them, &c.

The verdict of the people in this Legislative struggle,

Is that Whiteway and his crowd of pawns must go;

What we want is men to ballast our fast overturning state ship, And those who can do it are . . . BAINE GRIEVE and M. MONROE.

(Evening Herald, September 1893)