to
the day of his death he was a consistent temperance man, and a strong
advocate of the principle of total abstinence. It was, perhaps, this
strong advocacy of the cause of temperance, more than anything else,
that brought him before the public as a suitable person to become a
candidate for the House of Assembly, and led to his first election as a
representative for the city of St. John in the local legislature
thirteen years later. Certainly the fact that Tilley, from that time
until the close of his public career, had always the support of the
temperance societies, gave him a strength which he hardly would have
obtained otherwise, and rallied around him a phalanx of friends, who,
for fidelity to his interests and zeal for his political advancement,
could hardly have been surpassed.

Tilley commenced business on his own account in 1838, before he had
attained the age of twenty years, as a member of the firm of Peters &
Tilley, and he continued a successful career until 1855, when he
transferred his business to Mr. T. B. Barker, the founder of the present
firm of T. B. Barker & Sons. It is unnecessary to say anything more in
regard to Mr. Tilley's life as a business man than that it was a highly
prosperous one. He showed so much energy and enterprise that when he
entered political life he was comparatively wealthy. There is no doubt
that if he had continued in business instead of devoting his energies to
the service of the province and Dominion, he would have made far more
money than he obtained as a politician.

{COLONIAL TRADE}

The movement in behalf of free trade, which was changing the fiscal
policy of the United Kingdom in the closing years of the first half of
the nineteenth century, did not meet with much favour in New Brunswick,
because it seriously affected the leading industry of the province.
Colonial timber had long enjoyed a preference in the British market, but
this preference had been seriously impaired by imperial legislation and
was likely to be taken away altogether if free trade principles should
prevail. Many remonstrances had been sent to the British government
against the reduction or abolition of the duty on foreign timber which
came into competition with the colonial product, but these remonstrances
proved wholly unavailing, and it was seriously believed that the
colonial timber trade would be destroyed. This led to the annexation
movement of 1848, which affected all the provinces, while it