Leds 
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN CANADA. 63 
arbitrators in case of controversies in the French settlements. An appeal was allowed 
to the governor at Annapolis.’ 
In 1749, the city of Halifax was founded by Governor Cornwallis on the shores of 
Chebucto Bay, on the Atlantic coast. The government of the province was vested in a 
governor and council, and one of their first acts was to establish a court of general 
sessions, similar in its nature and conformable in its practice to the courts of the same 
name in the parent state. In 1751 they passed an ordinance that the town and suburbs 
of Halifax be divided into eight wards, and the inhabitants empowered to choose annually 
the following officials “for managing such prudential affairs of the town as shall be 
committed to their care by the governor and council :—eight town-overseers, one town- 
clerk, sixteen constables, eight scavengers.’ 
It was only after the establishment of the first legislature that Nova Scotia was 
divided into local divisions for legislative, judicial, and civil purposes. The first House of 
Assembly, elected in 1758, was composed of twenty-two representatives, of whom sixteen 
were chosen by the province at large, four by the township of Halifax, and two by the 
township of Lunenburg. It was at the same time provided that whenever fifty qualified - 
householders were settled at Pisiquid (now Windsor), Minas, Cobequid, or at any other 
township which might be thereafter erected, it should be entitled to send two representa- 
tives to the assembly.! In 1759, the governor and council divided the province into five 
counties: Annapolis, Kings, Cumberland, Lunenburg and Halifax.’ A few years later the 
whole island of Cape Breton was formed into a county.” 
The legislature appears to have practically controlled the administration of local 
affairs throughout the province, except so far as it gave, from time to time, certain powers 
to the courts of quarter sessions to regulate taxation and carry out certain public works 
and improvements. In the first session of the legislature, a joint committee of the council 
and assembly choose the town officers for Halifax, viz., four overseers of the poor, two 
clerks of the market, four surveyors of the highways, two fence viewers, and two hog-reeves.’ 
We have abundant evidence that at this time the authorities viewed with disfavour 
any attempt to establish a system of town government similar to that so long in operation 
in New England. On the 14th of April, 1770, the governor and council passed a resolu- 
tion that “the proceedings of the people in calling town-meetings for discussing questions 
relative to law and government and such other purposes, are contrary to law, and if per- 
sisted in, it is ordered that the parties be prosecuted by the attorney-general.”* The 
government of Nova Scotia had before it, at this time, the example of the town-meetings 
of Boston, presided over by the famous Samuel Adams, and doubtless considered them as 
the very hotbeds of revolution.” What the Tories thought of these popular bodies can be 

' Haliburton’s History of Nova Scotia, i. 93, 96. 2 Thid., p. 163. 
* Murdoch’s History, ii. 199. * Haliburton, i. 208. Murdoch, ii. 334, 351. 
à : Murdoch, ii. 373,374. In the election for the Assembly that came off in August of the same year, the coun- 
ties in question returned two members each ; the towns of Lunenburg, Annapolis, Horton, and Cumberland, two 
each, and the township of Halifax, four, or twenty-two representatives in all. 
; eee p. 454. ? [hid., p. 361. © Haliburton, i. 248. 
* Bancroft very truly considers Samuel Adams more than any other man, “the type and representative of the 
New England town-meeting.” History of the Constitution, ii. 260. For an interesting account of his career, see 
Samuel Adams, the Man of the Town Meeting, by J. K. Hosmer. Here the reader will be able to obtain a very 
accurate idea of the important influence that Adams and the town-meetings of Boston exercised over the destinies 
of America. No wonder was it that the governing class in Halifax frowned upon all manifestations of popular 
feeling in the province. 
