he government, sought for documents regarding
this office, to enable them officially to bring the subject more in
detail under the consideration of Your Majesty, but this information, so
highly desirable and necessary, has been withheld from them; and the
assembly, therefore, with great submission, lay before Your Majesty
herewith, a copy of the said address, with the reply thereto, for Your
Majesty's gracious consideration.

"It will by that be seen that the objects contemplated by the assembly
are no less than relieving Your Majesty's government permanently from
the burthen of the whole civil list of the province, a subject which the
assembly humbly conceive to be of great advantage to the parent state,
and only requiring that the revenues, from whatever source or sources
derived in or collected within the province, should be placed under the
control of its legislature."

{THE CIVIL LIST}

A portion of the Crown-land revenue went to pay what was termed the
civil list, which included the salaries of the lieutenant-governor, the
judges, the attorney-general, solicitor-general, private secretary,
provincial secretary, auditor, receiver-general and commissioner of
Crown lands. The latter official received seventeen hundred and fifty
pounds sterling per annum besides enormous fees, so that his income was
greater than that of the lieutenant-governor. Thomas Baillie, an
Irishman, who had been a subaltern in a marching regiment, had filled
that office since the year 1824, and continued to hold it until 1851,
twenty-seven years in all, when he retired with a pension twice as large
as the salary of the present surveyor-general of New Brunswick.

What the Reformers in the legislature of New Brunswick sought to obtain
was the control of the public lands, and the disposal of the revenues
derived from them. To accomplish this they were willing to undertake to
pay the salaries embraced in the civil list, although these salaries
were looked upon by the people of the province generally as altogether
too large. Yet there were great difficulties in the way of this
necessary reform, for King William IV was known to be violently opposed
to it. At a later period, 1835, in the course of a conversation with the
Earl of Gosford, who had been appointed governor of Lower Canada, "I
will never consent," he said with an oath, "to alienate the Crown lands,
nor to make the council elective. Mind me, my Lord, the cabinet is not
my cabinet. They