[boueinot] 



BUILDERS OF NOVA SCOTIA 



71 



mean qualifications and a politician of note for many years.* William 

 Young's own Scotch shrewdness and tenacity of purjDOse, his vast store 

 of legal knowledge and experience, made him a power at the bar and in 

 politics, although his public utterances, always conspicuous for their 

 Doric accent, failed to make any deep impression on my mind since I can 

 hardly now revive them in my imagination. He was, however, a man 

 of ripe scholarship and high culture though he never rose to the heights 

 of eloquence which his great rival, James W. Johnston, often reached, or 

 captivated the mind, like Joseph Howe, to both of whom I shall refer at 

 length in a few minutes. His Scotch qualities of shrewdness and acquisi- 

 tiveness enabled him to acquire a fair fortune, a goodly portion of which 

 he devoted Lo i^ublic objects, especially to the construction of the roads 



SPEAKER MARSHALL (1867). 



over which the citizens of Halifax can drive so agreeably amid fragrant 

 spruce groves through Point Pleasant Park, from which so noble a pros- 

 pect can be had of the harbour and ocean glistening away beyond. 



Both John J. Marshall and Martin Wilkinshad lost their seats at the 

 previous general election in 1859, but they were men of marked ability 

 and were borne by the anti- confederation wave of 1867 into the legislature 

 where one became speaker and the other attorney-general. Speaker 

 Marshall— a descendant of a Loyalist — was a man gifted with great 

 volubility of expression, but the attorney-general — a grandson of Isaac 

 "Wilkins — was by far more interesting to hear, since he added to the 

 qualities of a great advocate a fund of natural humour which unfortun- 



1 " On Colonial literature, science and education written with the view of 

 improving the literary, educational and public institutions of British North Americaj 

 in three volumes, by Geo. R. Young, Halifax, N.S., &c., 1842. Only one volume was 

 ever published." 



