Ixxiii 



fession ; but his scheme of Kfe was altered through his intimacy with 

 Lewis, whose father. Sir Frankland, was at the head of the Poor Law 

 Board. Through the son's influence. Head became xlssistant Poor Law 

 Commissioner in 1836. He organized the unions in Herefordshire, the 

 district assigned to him. It was on that occasion that he made the acquaint- 

 ance of the lady who became his wife, Anna Maria, third daughter of the 

 Rev. Philip Yorke. They were married in 1838. In the same year the 

 baronetcy devolved on him by the death of his father. The issue of the 

 marriage were three children — a son, accidentally drowned in Canada, and 

 two daughters, surviving. 



From Herefordshire he was transferred to the London district, and in 

 1841, on the resignation of Sir John Lefevre, became one of the chief 

 Commissioners, with his friend Lewis and Sir George Nicholl. This me- 

 moir does not afford an occasion for recurring to the accusations and Par- 

 liamentary discussions, with which, indeed, Sir Edmund had personally 

 little to do, which produced the disruption of that Board in 1847. It was 

 reconstituted by Act of Parliament in that year under a new organization ; 

 but Lewis and Head were not included in the latter. 



In 1847 Sir Edmund was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of New 

 Brunswick by Lord Grey, then Secretary for the Colonies. The period of 

 his appointment coincided with that of a great constitutional change in the 

 government of the dependencies of Great Britain, the introduction of what 

 is called " responsible government." Canada was already undergoing the 

 transition to the new state of things under the able management of the 

 Earl of Elgin. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were the next subjects of 

 experiment. Although the field of action thus afforded to Sir Edmund 

 was but a small one, it was one which taxed the abilities and the temper 

 of the administrator to the full extent. He occupied a post exposed to 

 attack, on the one side, from colonial politicians who were bent on push- 

 ing their newly gained independence to excess, and British members of 

 Parliament and politicians on the other, who could not for a long time be 

 brought to comprehend the nature of the gift which they had bestowed, 

 nor why a colon^^, having achieved the right to conduct its own affairs, was 

 to be allowed to conduct them in a way which they disliked. And many 

 points of serious difference were long left unsettled — the management of 

 the public laws, the disposal of the reserved revenue, then called the "civil 

 list," the embarrassing question of the initiation of money votes by the 

 local government instead of at the caprice of individual members. During 

 seven years of government in New Brunswick Sir Edmund Head contrived 

 so far to smooth away these causes of differences, that few portions of the 

 British empire have been better or more quietly governed than that which 

 he conducted through this first stage of self-government. Cautious almost 

 to excess, entirely free from that self-importance which induces colonial 

 governors at times to forget that the maxim of " reigning and not govern- 



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