GLENIE, JAMES, army officer, military engineer, businessman, office holder, and politician; b. 1750 in Fife, Scotland; m. in the early 1780s Mary Anne Locke, and they had at least two sons; d. 23 Nov. 1817 at Ebury House, Pimlico (London), England.

No stranger to controversy on whatever side of the Atlantic he found himself, James Glenie was a colourful and opinionated figure in New Brunswick’s early history. His intellectual ability and talent won him the support of prominent English patrons, whereas his unceasing attacks on Thomas Carleton and the loyalist élite helped forge an opposition coalition which has been acclaimed as a popular reform movement. He moved easily from the highest circles in London to the struggling communities of Sunbury County, at times a principled opponent of any scheme harmful to the best concerns of the public, and, on other occasions, a defendant given to special pleading on behalf of his own or a patron’s particular interests.

The son of an army officer, Glenie embarked upon divinity studies at St Andrews University in 1766 but instead blossomed into an excellent mathematician, winning two prizes in that discipline in 1769. Equipped with an ma, and having gained the support of the chancellor of St Andrews, the Earl of Kinnoull, he decided upon a military career and received a cadet’s place at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich (London). Commissioned a second lieutenant on 3 Nov. 1776 in the Royal Artillery, Glenie had as his colonel George, Viscount Townshend, who was also master general of the Board of Ordnance and who would prove a supportive, as well as somewhat demanding, patron in the future. Dispatched to Quebec in late 1776 or 1777, Glenie served during the American Revolutionary War in the unrewarding counter-offensives of John Burgoyne* and Barrimore Matthew St Leger*, but he came into his own under Governor Frederick Haldimand. In the summer of 1778 Glenie accompanied Lieutenant William Twiss* to Oswegatchie (Ogdensburg, N.Y.) and Cataraqui (Kingston, Ont.) in search of a suitable site for a supply depot which Haldimand hoped to establish at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Once Twiss had decided upon Buck Island (N.Y.), which he proposed to rename Carleton Island, he sent Glenie to report to Haldimand, expressing his confidence in him. Haldimand agreed with Twiss’s proposal for a post on Carleton Island, but as soon as the proposed works were well launched Twiss was to leave for Montreal and Glenie would “oversee and carry on that Business in your absence.”

By late September Glenie was able to report the completion of a five-foot parapet and the imminent completion of a barracks which would house the garrison in the approaching winter. Already there were problems, however. Glenie complained that the soldiers labouring on the post lacked “the knowledge of working well,” and he soon found himself embroiled in a series of disputes with Captain Thomas Aubrey, who was in command at Carleton Island. Others, including Lieutenant Thomas Bunbury, complained of “hard treatment and ill usage” at Aubrey’s hands, but it was Glenie who was singled out for a warning from Haldimand. Reports of “Complaints and disagreements” between Glenie and Aubrey brought a Christmas Day reminder from Haldimand for Glenie to bear in mind that “he who commands must command in every thing, and be obeyed without hesitation, by every person under him as he is alone answerable.”

When squabbling continued none the less, Haldimand suggested the possibility of Glenie’s recall. Twiss agreed that a recall might be wise but still thought him “the most capable Officer I know in the Province” to undertake a necessary survey of the north shore of Lake Ontario. By May 1779 it was too late to rescue Glenie since a petition he circulated against Aubrey and a charge that he had “Signed a false Return” left him under arrest and facing a court martial. To the double embarrassment of Haldimand, Glenie’s services were still badly needed and in the fall word arrived that Glenie had been transferred to the corps of engineers (his commission as a second lieutenant was dated 23 Feb. 1779) and Lord Townshend wanted him sent home to England. Because of a variety of problems, there was a long delay before Glenie was brought to trial, and Haldimand felt that until this judicial question was resolved it would be “highly improper” to allow him to return home.

For his part, Glenie initially described Aubrey’s accusations as “vague & indeterminable,” offered a spirited defence of his conduct, outlined the insufferable insults he had patiently endured, and asked permission to move to the eastern part of the colony, “where I can find more conveniency of amusing myself in the mean time with Study, as nothing can be more insupportable than idleness.” By November, now in Quebec, he diplomatically accepted Haldimand’s decision not to allow him to proceed to England and expressed his willingness to be “employed as Captain Twiss shall direct, till such time as the affair between Capt. Aubrey & me can be settled without Inconveniency to the Service.” As a result, although charges were laid against Glenie in the spring of 1779, his court martial did not take place until the summer of 1780 and in the interval he continued on active and valued service, largely at Sorel. While under this cloud, he was the recipient of a significant honour at home. Two mathematical papers were presented to the Royal Society by Francis Maseres* on his behalf and earned him election as a fellow in March 1779.

Would such a brilliant young officer be cashiered? Not likely, at least to Lord Townshend’s way of thinking, since several months prior to the trial he virtually assumed acquittal: “Mr. Glenie as his affair is likely to turn out favorably is ordered to remain on the Canada Staff.” Finishing the trial in late August, the court-martial board, which included Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Carleton, on 24 October presented what must have been a rather surprising verdict to some of Glenie’s supporters. He was found innocent of signing a false return but “Guilty of having behaved unbecoming the Character of an Officer and a Gentleman on many occasions.” He returned to England disgraced, his military career apparently ended, but bearing a letter from Haldimand to Townshend describing him as “a very promising Engineer.” “He possesses great knowledge and great application, and from a belief that his faults have arisen from his want of knowing the rules of the Army, I would thro’ your Lordship recommend him for any Employment where great abilities and great application are necessary, But where Subordination is not the first and most necessary Qualification.” Haldimand made identical remarks in a letter to Lord Amherst*, and a variation on the same theme was offered to Colonel William Roy of the engineers, who was urged to intervene to prevent Glenie from being ruined. Within a matter of months the decision was overturned. In late January 1781, on the grounds of irregularities in the court-martial proceedings and Glenie’s good service both before and after arrest, the king, while disapproving of his conduct towards Captain Aubrey, remitted the sentence and restored Glenie to his rank and duty in the engineers.

With his career rescued, Glenie should perhaps have trod carefully, but he now had substantial obligations to his protectors and, in truth, seemed to relish controversy. In 1782 Townshend was replaced as master general of the ordnance by the Duke of Richmond, who soon was proposing an elaborate coastal fortification plan, the estimated cost of which was substantial to begin with but would soon escalate. Glenie scoffed at the plan and was enlisted by Townshend’s secretary to write a condemnatory pamphlet which appeared in 1785 as “by an officer.” Its assertions that the duke’s fortifications would eventually cost forty to fifty million pounds, enough to construct a completely new navy, made it a damaging indictment. Richmond attempted a reply, but, when his legislative proposals came to a vote in parliament in February 1786, they were defeated. Not surprisingly, Richmond would not be “satiated until he had hounded Glenie from the Corps [of engineers].”

Meanwhile Glenie had returned to active service in North America and was realistically looking for new sources of income to supplement, or replace, his military pay. In the late summer and early fall of 1785 he supervised work parties of the 54th Foot in the Saint John River area of New Brunswick and, as a result of a tour up the Oromocto River, he submitted a proposal for the proper development of this part of the province. Thinking that the Oromocto region was “admirably calculated for grazing & the rearing of Cattle; of which the beneficial Effects are almost instantaneous when compared with those arising from Agriculture,” on 4 August he proposed to import cattle, clear 60 to 100 acres of land before winter, and begin to raise livestock if Carleton, now governor of the province, and the New Brunswick Council would immediately grant him 200 acres. In addition, Glenie asked for an assurance that, when the restrictions concerning the size of land grants expired, his grant of 200 acres would be augmented with another grant, adjoining the first, of at least 1,000 acres, “which is the smallest Quantity for any Person to embark in a Scheme of this Nature.” A cool governor and Council responded with a qualified offer of 200 acres, but a disappointed Glenie never took it up. Instead he resubmitted his proposal in October 1785 in a joint petition with William Gordon of St Anne’s Point (Fredericton), William Donaldson and James Gordon of Saint John, and Alexander Fraser of Grenada. Again the advantages of cattle-raising on the Oromocto were emphasized and the memorialists promised that, if they were awarded a tract of 5,000 acres, they would each put “not less than twenty Milch Cows upon their Lands early next summer, together with the necessary houses and Servants.” An unimpressed governor and Council granted only what was “agreeable to the General Regulations” and only to “Such of the Memorialists as are in the Province & not already provided for”; again the offer was refused. Hence, even before Glenie took up permanent residence in New Brunswick his schemes had been twice frustrated by Carleton and the loyalist-dominated Council, the same Carleton who had participated in his Quebec court martial.

Glenie returned to England some time after receiving the response to his second petition for land. His stay there, however, was short. Realizing that Richmond’s opposition would damage his military career, in September 1787 he resigned his commission, granted on 15 November of the previous year, as a lieutenant in the engineers. The next month Glenie and his family arrived in New Brunswick aboard the brig Providence, for Glenie a return to familiar country but for his wife, Mary Anne Locke, probably her first visit. Glenie settled on land at Gooldsborough (near Oromocto) in Sunbury County, but the only land claims recorded in his name were two later grants, one of 235 acres in Queens County in 1790 and one of 880 acres in York County in 1794. While he was in London the firm of Blair and Glenie had been formed to participate in the mast trade, and it was through this enterprise that Glenie hoped to make his fortune. Andrew Blair would secure from the Admiralty contracts for masts and Glenie would get the masts to Saint John. By 1790 he had a “Mast Pond with the appurtenances, situate near Portland Point [Saint John],” as well as mast ponds at French Lake on the Oromocto and just below Gagetown on the Saint John River. But once again, he ran afoul of Carleton and the loyalist élite, whose plans for agrarian development would be disrupted by over-aggressive masting operations. Offsetting this opposition was the friendship and support of John Wentworth, surveyor general of the king’s woods in North America, and soon to be, in 1792, lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia. Always ready to help Blair and Glenie in fulfilling their contracts, when Glenie requested a timber licence in 1790 Wentworth was quick to issue one “for so many Trees as were necessary.” Not only was Wentworth very cooperative with Glenie, but Glenie in turn was willing to report “illegally cut” timber and “trespassers.” The latter were promptly prosecuted by Wentworth, sometimes with money conveniently advanced by Glenie. In business dealings and management of the forest resources the Glenie–Wentworth connection was extremely strong, no doubt reinforced by the rapport and respect each had with and for the other.

Given the treatment of his land petitions, the hostility towards his masting activities, and his own confidence in his connections and abilities, it was predictable that Glenie would quickly move to an all-out attack on Carleton and his loyalist advisers. In a by-election held in November 1789 he was elated when “the People unsollicited & contrary to my Wishes chose me Member of Assembly for the County of Sunbury.” This victory was achieved allegedly despite “every Strategem every low Artifice & Lie [which] was practised and made use of by the Govr’s pitiful Junto for months before to prevent it.” According to Glenie, the rulers of New Brunswick “are cursedly alarmed. For they suppose that a Majority of the House will follow me & that their villainous Practices will not only be examined into but brought to Light & exposed.” But it would be well over a year before the House of Assembly met and Glenie could launch his attack there. In the interval, examples of “villainous Practices” were enthusiastically unearthed and used to underline the shortcomings and abuse of power by Carleton and his advisers. When Glenie’s accusations and name-calling are digested – “illiterate Moon-Struck Judge” (Isaac Allan), “ignorant uncouth Dutch Boor” (councillor Christopher Billopp), “ignorant stuttering Chief Justice” (George Duncan Ludlow), and “a man on whom nature has fixed the stamp of Stupidity” (prominent loyalist Beverley Robinson) were some of the thumbnail sketches of New Brunswick’s leading citizens – they seem designed not to change the system but merely to replace one ruling clique by another. Instead of the “unprincipled Harpies” currently being appointed, Glenie proposed Jonathan Bliss* or “My neighbour Daniel Bliss” as excellent candidates for judicial appointments. For Council vacancies, he suggested Phineas Shaw, William Gordon, and “several other European Gentlemen very well qualified who will not be Tools like those recommended.”

Glenie was far from a tribune of the common people at this moment, and his electoral success in Sunbury County probably owed more to his taking as a pattern the approach and appeal of a William Davidson* than to later issues such as assembly power. Davidson had been elected to represent Sunbury County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly and then in 1785 represented Northumberland in the New Brunswick assembly. In both instances, the fact that he was at the time of election the most prominent employer of individuals in each of the counties was a major help. This deferential attitude on the part of the electorate was likely still present when Glenie moved into Sunbury with his masting contracts and, coupled with his outspoken anti-loyalist proclamations in an area with a large pre-loyalist population, contributed substantially to his acceptance. Admittedly, when the assembly opened on 5 Feb. 1791 he became an active participant and soon demonstrated an alert sensitivity to the needs of his Sunbury constituents. Within a few days he presented a petition from a number of Maugerville inhabitants asking that the boundaries of land grants in their township and throughout the province be clearly defined. Quickly pressed into service on a variety of committees, Glenie opposed Carleton’s plan for “fitting up” part of Christ Church in Fredericton to accommodate the Supreme Court and the assembly, and a marriage and divorce bill that was decidedly pro-Anglican and neglectful of other denominations. He also contributed to a committee report that found “very great irregularities and important deviations from the Impost Law” in the treasurer’s department.

Again in the 1792 session he remained quite active. Spurred on by a petition from his Sunbury constituents calling for a more liberal marriage act, he moved for leave to bring in such a measure. Apparently the session ended before this was done. At the same time, he condemned those in power in New Brunswick, particularly Carleton, in private correspondence with at least one prominent British government official. As a result of Glenie’s promise “to send you occasionally some Observations respecting this Province,” Evan Nepean, under-secretary of the Home Department, was presented with a devastating criticism of Carleton’s policies. Fredericton “has been very injudiciously fixed on as the Seat of Government.” It was “altogether incapable of Defence” yet £4,000 had already been expended on a barracks, money that “might as well be thrown into the River.” Carleton’s decision to establish military posts farther up the Saint John River was scorned because of the transportation expenses involved, the fact that “two small Blockhouses” could have done the job just as well, and, if it was argued that they were needed to facilitate settlement, why were they erected on American territory? Surely, Glenie argued, it was Carleton’s “Duty to make himself acquainted with the Boundary Line between the United States & the Province, he was sent out to govern, before he adopted Measures not only tending manifestly to bring the Mother Country into immediate Expence but peculiarly calculated for involving her in Troubles & Disputes eventually.”

Even Glenie’s old adversary, the Duke of Richmond, no doubt without realizing it, agreed with the basic thrust of Glenie’s military analysis, that Fredericton should not be the military centre of New Brunswick, and Carleton was forced to abandon some of his Fredericton pretensions. Other of Glenie’s complaints are more suspect. Carleton sincerely believed in the need to strengthen the New Brunswick claim to areas in dispute with the Americans, to build strong lines of communication with Quebec, and above all to facilitate settlement by military protection if necessary. Hence, it is difficult to accept Glenie’s accusations of what amounted to wasteful ignorance and self-aggrandizement on Carleton’s part.

Quite possibly some of Glenie’s complaints were related to the fact that in late 1791 Wentworth had made him the deputy surveyor of the king’s woods in New Brunswick. Shortly thereafter Carleton upset Wentworth by charging that he discouraged the settlement of New Brunswick. The Carleton case was best explained by loyalist Daniel Lyman, who argued that “the reserves made by the Surveyor General of Woods . . . should be taken off, – and a stop put to any more being made. . . . Most of the reserves I have seen are made in places calculated for agriculture . . . large tracts of miles in extent are precluded from being given to settlers.” The policy of controlling white pine timber for the benefit of the crown, or for the enrichment of certain mast contractors, such as Glenie and William Forsyth, was apparently conflicting with the idea of a settled agrarian society cherished by Carleton and the loyalists. If Carleton’s and Lyman’s views prevailed, Glenie stood to lose both as a mast contractor and as an office holder. By the summer of 1792 he was busy prosecuting trespassers, confiscating illegally cut timber, and trying to harvest as much as possible for himself. Thus the discrediting of Carleton would be a considerable impetus to Glenie’s economic concerns, and possibly the defeat of Carleton’s military expansion and settlement plans for northern New Brunswick would preserve another area for the exploitation of its timber resources.

Whether because of difficulties in his masting business or because of his determination to undermine Carleton, in 1793 Glenie returned to England; although re-elected to the assembly after its dissolution in December 1792, he was unable to attend the 1793 or 1794 sessions. In London both Nepean and Henry Dundas, the Home secretary, were presented with thoughtful commentaries on the defence policies of Carleton which soon moved beyond military matters to chastise both Carleton and his brother Lord Dorchester [Guy Carleton] for much that was wrong in New Brunswick and British North America generally. Glenie had earlier argued that the two regular regiments stationed in New Brunswick were unnecessary but he also took issue with the decision to allow Carleton to raise a New Brunswick regiment to replace these regular units, now withdrawn. To Glenie this decision would result in a substantial drain on the colony’s limited manpower resources, which were already in decline due to the short-sighted policies of Carleton and his followers. A combination of the existing provincial militia, a few howitzers at the mouth of the Saint John River, and a couple of sloops in the Bay of Fundy was all that was required. Of course the line of posts up the Saint John valley should be downgraded since the “natural line of Defense . . . is from St. Andrews or Passamaquoddy along the Bay of Fundy to Fort Cumberland [near Sackville, N.B.].” These were, for the most part, comments that deserved consideration, but Glenie soon launched into the usual accusations of ignorance and maladministration which probably hurt rather than helped his argument. The Council must be changed because it was “composed Entirely of Americans (there not being one European in it, though there ought always to be at least a Majority).” Moreover, it was Glenie’s rather ludicrous suggestion that the new regiment Carleton was raising would be American as well: “It is obvious – the Lieut Governor & his American Field Officers will be under the necessity of introducing men from the States & putting Arms into the hands of Enemies & thereby contribute to the Dissemination of Principles perhaps still more hostile to the Constitution of this Country than even those of the French themselves.” Thus were the loyalists accused of disloyalty; but the Carleton family was accused of even greater sins. Just as his brother, Lord Dorchester, “through the most unpardonable negligence lost the whole of [Canada], Quebec excepted” – a somewhat puzzling reference to the American invasion of 1775–76 – so Thomas was about to lose New Brunswick. Glenie was “unavoidably led to the Conclusion that the Carleton Family is fated to be the Ruin of British America & think if it be continued & for only a few years longer, these Provinces will be lost to the Crown of Great Britain for ever.”

The Carletons might have been in disfavour, particularly with Dundas, but to displace a lieutenant governor on the basis of Glenie’s shrill accusations, at a time when the defence of Britain and the empire required continuity rather than disruption, was an unlikely action. Consequently, Glenie’s direct lobbying in England produced no change in New Brunswick. And if his attacks on Carleton were proving fruitless, even more discouraging was the fate of Glenie’s masting operations. By late 1794 and early 1795 unnecessary waste and cut-throat competition in the masting trade forced Wentworth to urge the several contractors to accept an agreement that left Forsyth and Company in control rather than Blair and Glenie. Relieved of his commercial responsibilities, Glenie still had his appointment as deputy surveyor and plunged into “prosecution on behalf of the Crown” with his usual vigour. Meanwhile, despite his absence, the assembly had not been idle. In 1793 and 1794 it had challenged Carleton and the Council on a number of issues – including the proposed quarters of the legislature and Supreme Court, times and places of Supreme Court sessions, and aid to Carleton’s cherished college – and appeared headed for a confrontation. The moment was right and Glenie was ready.

The assembly session of February and March 1795 brought consistent disagreement between the lower house and the Council, which was allied with the lieutenant governor, and time and again Glenie emerged at the centre of the skirmishes. When a committee was struck to prepare an address to Carleton requesting that he “order such of His Majesty’s instructions to be laid before this House as may tend to the information of the same,” Glenie was appointed. When word was sent to the Council drawing its attention to the bill for setting the times and places of convening the Supreme Court, Glenie was dispatched with Robert Pagan* to carry the message. Again, when the Council failed to accept the above bill, Glenie was appointed to a committee to search for precedents – for holding a conference with the upper house. He served on committees to bring in bills “For establishing the Due and Equal Administration of Justice,” “To regulate the Practice of the Courts of Law,” and “For regulating and establishing a Table of Fees” for the courts. The introduction of Glenie’s own Declaratory Bill and the assembly’s refusal to accept Carleton’s defence expenditures in St Andrews and Saint John made the Council increasingly assertive of its and the governor’s rights and privileges. The assembly’s anticipation of the need to take its grievances to the home government prompted the addition of Glenie and others to a committee appointed at the previous session to correspond with the province’s agent in London, William Knox. When the Council rejected a money bill, which included an appropriation for the payment of assembly members, Glenie was among those appointed to respond to the Council’s objections. In the last case a well-argued response was made to the Council’s position, which historian Ann Gorman Condon, describing it as a “sophisticated, terse reply” asserting the assembly’s “exclusive right to originate money bills,” feels was the work of Elias Hardy*. None the less, Glenie had made a substantial contribution to the impasse which existed between assembly and Council by the time the house was prorogued on 5 March.

Once Carleton decided to attempt to secure a more amenable assembly through an election in September and October 1795, Glenie was quite willing to take to the hustings to outline his active and vigilant defence of the assembly’s, and thus the people’s, rights. The proposed act concerning Supreme Court sessions, Glenie explained, was pushed “in order to carry the administration of Justice by that Court into every County and to every Man’s door as much as possible; The very purpose, I conceive, for which the Judges receive their salaries.” He pointed out that this bill had been passed by the assembly five times only to be rejected by the Council, and even when “I delivered a message myself putting them in mind of it as a Bill tending greatly to promote the happiness and convenience of His Majesty’s subjects in this Province,” no satisfactory explanation of the Council’s setting it aside was offered. The assembly’s refusal to grant money for the erection of a legislative and court building at Fredericton was explained as the result of its judgement that “the Province [was] not in a situation to bear without great inconvenience to the people, the raising of such sums as would have been necessary. . . .” Moreover, Glenie expressed his opinion, growing out of his own considerable experience, that the buildings would be far more expensive than estimated.

A concern about unwarranted or premature expenditures was also behind the assembly’s unwillingness to approve funds for a college. This “barely-existing Colony” could ill afford the proposed grant, which was in any case “not half sufficient.” Emphasis should be placed on a parish school system meeting local and broader needs first, for “however much some persons may dislike the general dissemination of knowledge among the people and reckon it dangerous, it ought in my opinion to be the first object of attention in every well regulated state.” The assembly’s refusal to accept Carleton’s defence expenditures in St Andrews and Saint John was due to the fact that responsibility for such expenses rested with the home government. As for the most important issue of assembly power over the public purse, Glenie told his constituents that to have accepted the Council’s claims “would have been tantamount to an absolute surrender of your purses, property, rights and liberties, into the hands of the Council at once. . . . It is a proposition, to which I hope in God no House of Assembly will ever give its assent. For it is a parliamentary maxim as old as parliament itself, that those who have the sole right of granting have an unquestionable right to dispose of what they grant.”

Glenie had made a powerful case for a vigilant and active assembly sensitive to the needs of the overwhelming majority of New Brunswickers. Controlling needless and wasteful spending, making education and the courts accessible to the people, and enhancing the elected assembly’s position and power within the governmental system were all issues that would have a definite appeal to many who were not among the privileged loyalist élite. Glenie went even further, however, in apparent anticipation of a possible counter-argument that the parliamentary system he envisioned was quite different from that in operation in the mother country. Essentially, he argued that there was a need for adaptation of the English system to suit colonial realities. “True it is,” he agreed, “that our Legislature consists of three distinct Branches, like that of Great Britain,” but the House of Lords was quite different from the New Brunswick Council and Supreme Court, which occasionally were one and the same in that the judges “sometimes form a majority of the Legislative Council.” Whereas the House of Lords was “a dignified, opulent and independent body,” and its members could only be removed by “an Act of the British Legislature,” New Brunswick councillors and judges “hold their seats not hereditarily, not even during good behaviour, but during the pleasure of His Majesty’s servants and ministers, and are removable at their pleasure, without any reasons assigned.” Since the colony lacked the finer balance and independence of the mother country, the opportunities for arbitrary rule were apparently increased. “If therefore an attentive, watchful and vigilant opposition has ever been found necessary in the House of Commons to preserve the rights and liberties of the people in Great Britain, it must certainly be doubly requisite here, where two Branches of the Legislature are in a great measure thrown into one scale.” Glenie on the hustings in 1795 was Glenie the reformer and people’s tribune at his best. Rising above character assassination and unsubstantiated accusations, and even to a considerable extent above the personal bitterness and selfishness that lay behind earlier attacks on Carleton and the élite, he had persuasively argued the case for many of the assembly’s actions during the 1795 session and pinpointed some of the needs of New Brunswick as well as some of the nuances of the constitutional debate.

Against this background, the Declaratory Bill which Glenie had introduced during the 1795 session, and which had been passed by the assembly but rejected by the Council, was to him the key to enhancement of assembly power and to the emasculation of the other branches of government. To Glenie this measure was “unquestionably the most important and salutary one in its tendency which was ever introduced into that House.” Shorn of the various clauses removed during debate, the bill maintained that New Brunswickers “are extremely desirous of having the Constitution & Government of said Province brought as near, as their local Circumstances will permit, to that of the mother Country, and of enjoying the Benefit of all the Laws of England and Acts of the British Parliament applicable to their colonial Situation down to as late a Period, as the fundamental Principles of constitutional Law will admit of their being construed as extended thereto.” The reception date for English statute law proposed in the bill was 1750, erroneously assumed to be the British settlement date for Nova Scotia, rather than the restoration year of 1660, the date decided upon by Carleton and his advisers in the early days of New Brunswick’s existence. Thus, under the bill all acts passed by the British parliament before 1750 were to apply to New Brunswick, in so far as colonial circumstances permitted. By the same token, “no Act of Parliament made or passed since the Beginning of the Year of our Lord 1750 shall be held taken or construed as extending to this Province without express Words in the Act itself shewing the Intention of the British Legislature.”

Glenie himself, his enemies, and scholars such as James Hannay*, George Francis Gilman Stanley, and Samuel Delbert Clark have greatly exaggerated the significance of this proposed bill, as David G. Bell has pointed out in a carefully argued article. Bell makes clear that the bill stopped well short of any challenge to British parliamentary authority over New Brunswick; it was “far from radical,” and, contrary to Glenie’s hopes, it would not have “reduce[d] judicial discretion.” It probably would have indirectly encouraged the movement towards a more responsive, representative system, and a more active assembly, in that the period from 1660 to 1750 was marked by considerable improvement in English jurisprudence, the passage of statutes “that defined and established the principles of the Constitution and the liberties of the subject,” and the enactment of “such fundamental libertarian safeguards as the Bill of Rights.” But Daniel Lyman certainly erred when he described the bill as going “further than the first address or declaration of the American Congress assembled at Philadelphia, when they were about to separate themselves from Great Britain.”

Be that as it may, the Declaratory Bill was portrayed as a radical measure and its proponent, seen as equally radical, was the lightning-rod that absorbed the loyalist thunderbolts. As Lyman put it, “This Mr. Glenie is known to be in the correspondence with some of the most violent members of the opposition in the British Parliament – at least, he avows himself so – and his sentiments or declarations are such as tend to the subversion of all government of Church and State.” The outraged response, in view of the limited nature of the bill, prompts a question about Glenie’s contribution to the cause of assembly rights. Although he symbolized this particular cause, his radical rhetoric precluded acceptance of much of what he proposed. At the same time, other more cautious exponents of assembly privileges could portray themselves as loyal moderates and work towards the same goals in a less flamboyant fashion. Thus both Elias Hardy, spokesman for assembly control of the purse, and Amos Botsford, shortly to be a voice for moderate reform, opposed Glenie’s Declaratory Bill while certainly not abandoning many of his other goals. In short, Glenie’s attacks accelerated a broadening of the rather closed loyalist political culture into a more accommodative structure where opposition could no longer immediately be silenced or dismissed as disloyal republicanism. Ironically, at the very moment when Glenie was at his political peak, his radical political image was clearing the way for a more respectable reform movement, guided by others and contributing to his own decline.

This development was not readily apparent in the election of 1795 since the electorate appeared to approve of Glenie and the assembly party’s conduct by returning a majority of members even more hostile to the governor’s supporters. Glenie himself won easily in Sunbury County, topping the poll with 79 votes, although one of the defeated candidates who had received 22 votes challenged the outcome. William Hubbard charged that Glenie and his running-mate, Samuel Denny Street*, had provided “Meat Drink and Entertainment in order to induce the said Voters to give their voice” for them. Not surprisingly, the assembly rejected Hubbard’s accusations and, by a vote of 13 to 8, declared Glenie and Street legitimately elected. None the less, in the new assembly Glenie was much less active than in the previous session. To be sure, he did reintroduce the bill regulating the times and places of Supreme Court sittings, and he also served on committees for other bills. As well, he was among those appointed to correspond with William Knox concerning the Supreme Court issue. But when a very strong motion was passed requesting that Carleton direct at least one of the Supreme Court judges to reside at Saint John, Glenie, despite his expertise on the question, was not among the three-man delegation appointed to present this resolution to the lieutenant governor. Likewise, although Glenie was a member of the assembly committee that met with a committee of the Council concerning a revenue bill, he did not occupy the limelight when this committee reported back to the assembly. A lengthy indictment of the Council’s actions, ending with a ringing declaration that the elected members were “resolved to continue to assert the Privileges of the House of Assembly and the Honor of their Constituents,” was instead presented by Daniel Murray, a Massachusetts loyalist who had voted against the Declaratory Bill. When the Council offered a blistering reply, it was again Murray, on behalf of the committee, who spelled out the assembly’s detailed and determined position.

In December 1796 Glenie was honoured by the mayor and corporation of Saint John with the freedom of the city. Still, when the assembly met the following January he received an open rebuff from this body. If the words of one of Glenie’s opponents are accurate, however, perhaps he had done his work all too well and further bold assertions of the assembly’s rights were unnecessary. Edward Winslow assessed the house that gathered in 1797 as follows: “We have fellows here who three years agoe did not know that Magna Charta was not a Great Pudding – will analyse all the principles of Government – Trace ‘Jurisprudence to its Source’ – fix political Longitudes & Latitudes & establish the boundary line between prerogative and privilege.” Consequently, when Carleton dared to lecture the assemblymen on deviations “from the line of conduct at all times pursued by the British House of Commons, by which you have so often professed the laudable intention to be solely guided,” a committee was struck to reply. Apparently the response, urging the lieutenant governor not to press for measures that “will involve the province in perplexities and difficulties which might prove pernicious to public credit,” was not strong enough for Glenie. He introduced two motions suggesting that Carleton’s statements were “contrary to the fundamental principles of our colonial constitution” and that his assertion “manifestly tends to destroy the independence of this branch of the Legislature.” Both resolutions were rejected. Even when he softened his position in a third motion, the assembly rejected it by a vote of 17 to 5. The impasse continued but other assembly leaders were fighting the battle in their own way and thus disassociating themselves from Glenie’s more abrasive approach. Still, Glenie continued to vote with the majority on important issues such as refusing to accept the Council’s demand that expenses of assemblymen be removed from the revenue and appropriations bill. By now, however, even some of Glenie’s friends and patrons outside the house appeared to be wavering. After the session ended Glenie and John Coffin* decided that their differences of opinion could be resolved only by a duel, in which Glenie came off the loser with a flesh wound in his thigh. Such activities produced the comment from John Wentworth that “in a late conversation with H.R.H. [Edward Augustus] we lamented the late accident which the public papers informed us you had sustained, we both concurred in wishing that you would forever Substitute the pursuits of Philosophy; or rather science, to politics – from whence you would derive the greatest good to the world at large, and gratify all your friends.”

During the short session of 1798, also a stalemate, Glenie was involved in one of the major manœuvres by the assembly. Although apparently bypassed in dealings between the lower house and the Council or the lieutenant governor, Glenie was recruited to serve on the committee to prepare a letter to the Duke of Portland, the Home secretary, outlining the assembly’s position. Speaker Amos Botsford, after the assembly approved the letter, sent it to Portland as a summary of “the present deplorable situation of this Colony.” Emphasizing the loyalty of the assembly to the sovereign and the British constitution, the letter briefly outlined the deadlock, the appropriation and revenue problems, and the shortcomings of the judiciary – all matters Portland had already heard far too much about – and stressed the need for instructions to the lieutenant governor to rectify the problems. By now Portland was not the only one who found the continuing controversy increasingly tiresome. In New Brunswick the electorate was becoming restive, and with good reason: supplies had not been voted for the past five years because of the legislative deadlock, and without revenue the province was unable to undertake public works. At the same time, as the decade closed, a measure of prosperity and an awareness of the French menace to the mother country were diverting attention to other matters. In Kings and York counties petitions were circulated, and eventually presented at the 1799 session, urging the assembly to restore “harmony between the two Branches of the Legislature” by removing the pay measure from other appropriations. In the press it was even suggested that the assembly was the tool of a profiteering merchant community since, though duties could not be collected without a revenue bill, there had been no fall in prices: Carleton was also active, shrewdly placing extracts of Portland’s correspondence into Botsford’s hands to underline the growing impatience of the British government. The mounting pressure paid off in the 1799 session. Parts of Portland’s correspondence were now submitted to the house and, as Botsford described it, “the principles of Legislation were therein so clearly pointed out, and the anxious desire of the House such, that Bills were prepared and passed, and concurred by the Council: in these Bills no point was given up by the House, they only varied the Mode, and every item they had put into their former Bills which had been negatived, now passed.” All disputes had been “amicably adjusted” in what Botsford perceived as a vindication of the assembly. To Carleton also, it was a satisfactory outcome in that the pay item had been set apart by the assembly and the Council waived “their objections to some irregularities,” hoping “that, by the present recovery of harmony and mutual confidence, they should contribute most effectually to the adoption of a more regular system of proceeding in future.”

What did James Glenie think of all this? Initially there was a strange silence but before 1800 expired he had written and published a satire, based on the Apostles’ Creed, in which he lampooned, among others, Provincial Secretary Jonathan Odell, “maker of Militia officers and Just Asses of the Peace, and plotter of all head quarter intrigues visible and invisible, the only beloved of Simple Tom.” Obviously, the compromise arrangements did not go far enough for Glenie. Nothing short of a purge of the upper house and a recall of the lieutenant governor would satisfy him. The old Glenie, an abusive and bitter name-caller, re-emerged and the reasoned arguments for legal and constitutional reforms were forgotten. His bitterness no doubt was heightened by the realization that even in the assembly, the cause of which he had briefly championed, he could no longer count on anything like majority support.

There was no assembly session in 1800 and Glenie busied himself with his duties as deputy surveyor of woods, duties that took on a new urgency as a result of the European situation. “Masts and other Spars and naval timber must of course be preserved, and an immediate supply be provided,” reminded Wentworth, who continued to rely on and confide in Glenie as an old friend. Whether because of these activities, or perhaps because of disillusionment with his assembly colleagues, when the legislature met again in January 1801 Glenie was not present. He managed to appear for eight days at the tag-end of the thirty-two day session, the worst attendance record of any member except for two who did not appear at all. When he did attend on 10 Feb. 1801 it was for a specific reason: this was the day a censure of Carleton was to be attempted. Between sessions, the lieutenant governor had expended funds on the construction of a building in Fredericton to house the assembly and the Supreme Court, and to some members this arbitrary executive act had to be challenged. Glenie supported a motion by Pagan that Carleton’s action was “unconstitutional, and infringes the unalienable right of the House of Assembly to originate all Appropriations of Public Money.” Not only did the assembly overwhelmingly reject this censure by 14 votes to 5, but it then passed a motion affirming the need for a new building in Fredericton, thus vindicating the lieutenant governor. Glenie retreated to his surveying duties, ever vigilant and with plenty of legal advice for Wentworth, and turned to loftier schemes, such as trying to get financial support for a survey of a possible canal between the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St Lawrence.

During the session of 1802, however, Glenie returned for his last campaign in the assembly, a campaign that culminated in a boycott of its proceedings. At issue was who should become clerk of the house during the illness and following the death of Isaac Hedden (Heddon). Glenie successfully moved that Samuel Denny Street be acting clerk and then served on a committee “to search for precedents, as to the powers authorities and privileges, in the appointment to the Clerkship.” Clearly, Glenie and a majority of assemblymen felt that the assembly had the power to recommend appointment to the clerkship and, once Hedden died, Glenie moved, again successfully, that Street should be recommended to the lieutenant governor for the post. Carleton’s response revealed equally clearly his feeling that the crown controlled this appointment and he therefore chose Dugald Campbell. Glenie retaliated by moving that the house appoint Street and by 11 votes to 9 his motion passed, but the Council was quick to block the clerk’s salary which the assembly tried to provide for Street and, of course, stood with Carleton in upholding the legitimacy of Campbell’s appointment. To force an adjournment Glenie and like-minded assemblymen stopped attending the sessions, thus depriving the assembly of a quorum; but even when there were only eight members present the sessions continued, despite the opposition of two of this number, Street and Thomas Dixon. The serjeant-at-arms was dispatched to inform Glenie that the house required his attendance, but Glenie replied “that he did not consider them as a House, and that he would not go near them.” As a result, only a handful of members finished the session, Dugald Campbell received the clerk’s appointment and salary while Street performed the duties, and the issue was taken to the electorate since Carleton called an election for October 1802. There followed an extraordinary debate in the press of New Brunswick as both sides presented in elaborate detail the legitimacy of their case. The election itself resulted in a rout of Carleton’s opponents. Even in Sunbury County, Glenie and Street barely scraped back in, with 101 and 93 votes respectively compared to their opponents’ 87 and 82, and the results were to be disputed.

First to be challenged was Street, who was denied victory when the sheriff of the county scrutinized his votes and those cast for his opponent, Elijah Miles*, and then declared Miles elected, a decision eventually supported by the assembly. Another petition sought to have Glenie unseated because of the impact his accusations against the government had had “upon the minds and the fears of the Electors.” It was alleged that Glenie had spoken of “Such Gigantic strides of Despotism . . . that the like has not been known since the days of Henry the Eighth the most despotic Prince that ever ruled on the English throne.” Glenie was not unseated, but a clear indication of his political demise was provided when he dared to reopen the clerkship question. His motion in the 1803 session that the house choose a clerk was defeated by 15 votes to 8, and instead a motion was passed to make clear that this office “is a Patent Office, and the appointment thereof vested in the Crown.” If it was any consolation, Glenie’s attacks had taken their toll on the crown’s representative and Carleton was preparing to leave New Brunswick. Prior to the lieutenant governor’s departure in October 1803, his faithful and equally abused Council attempted a final defence against the charges so frequently levelled. In praising Carleton the Council testified that “we have had the honor, for many years, to be witnesses intimately acquainted with the inflexible integrity and disinterested purity of your Administration; and we consider our faithful testimony, on this occasion, not only as a debt due to personal merit, but as a document of public importance.” The need for the document reflected the severity of the attacks launched over the years. Moreover, the Council emphasized that “an equal regard to the Prerogatives of the Crown and the Rights of the People has been the constant Rule of your Government, which hereafter will afford a bright example to your Successors.” This was more than face-saving rhetoric for it revealed how deeply Glenie had stung the conscience and pretensions of Carleton and the loyalist élite.

To all intents and purposes, Glenie’s political career was ended. He now concentrated on his duties as deputy surveyor of the king’s woods which, it was expected, would be more demanding as a result of a renewal of land granting in New Brunswick and new naval contracts. Without Wentworth’s continued support even this appointment might have been lost to Glenie; before Carleton returned to England he suggested to Wentworth that George Sproule should be appointed deputy surveyor in New Brunswick, but this advice was not acted upon. Nevertheless, Glenie had never realized his financial ambitions in New Brunswick and in May 1804 he was busy planning a visit to England which Wentworth hoped “may be prosperous and happy, in every respect, and your return to your friends here be speedy and in perfect safety.” In the winter of 1804–5, after arranging the appointment of Street as acting deputy surveyor of woods, James Glenie left loyalist New Brunswick, never to return. According to one report, published in 1817, his departure came as a surprise to his own wife. Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Gubbins claimed that the “notorious Glenny” had “fled from this Province without making the least provision for his wife, or acquainting her with his intentions.” Left impoverished, she was able to make ends meet only with the help of her husband’s creditors, who were sympathetic to her plight, and the “neighbouring peasantry.”

In January 1805 a no doubt apprehensive Carleton, now in England, questioned Edward Winslow: “What’s become of that worthy son of Beliol, Mr. Glenie? I understood he was to come home this winter.” What became of Glenie remains somewhat of a mystery since little is known of the remainder of his life. Through the intervention of the Earl of Chatham, in 1806 Glenie was appointed “Professor of East India Cadets” and in 1807 “Inspecting Engineer in some of the West India islands.” However, his penchant for controversy remained and in 1809 his critical comments concerning the Duke of York, connected with a parliamentary inquiry into the alleged sale of military commissions by York’s mistress, gave such offence to the duke that Glenie was stripped of both positions. His mathematical talents remained – he presented a paper to the Royal Society in 1811 – but his efforts to attract students were largely unsuccessful. Consequently, he died in poverty on 23 Nov. 1817, the same year that Carleton passed on, and was buried in the churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. His wife had remained in New Brunswick and continued to live in Sunbury County, known to her neighbours as Lady Glenie, until her death on 26 Feb. 1847. They had at least two sons, one (Melville) a military officer and the other an Anglican minister; the at times rather undisciplined and anti-establishment Glenie no doubt appreciated the irony.

The obituary notice of James Glenie that appeared in the Halifax Free Press and then was reprinted in the New Brunswick Courier was full of praise. The Duke of Kent, it reported, respected Glenie’s “personal merit” and “superior mental endowments.” It also claimed of Glenie that “in the discharge of his public duties he was particularly eminent,” with “a sound judgment, united to great political sagacity and foresight” and that “many individuals in the sister Province” acknowledged “the value of his counsel, and the prudence of his admonitions.” One wonders whether his officer-son, then stationed in Halifax, was the source of this eulogy! Whig historians in search of the first glimmerings of responsible government have continued this eulogistic approach, hailing Glenie as “a reformer of the most advanced type” who was “a full half century in advance of his time.” More recently, William Stewart MacNutt* attempted a balanced assessment, observing that Glenie’s reform reputation was “subject to damaging qualifications” since “many of his motives were vindictive and mischievous.” None the less, MacNutt concludes, “it was perhaps he who first led a movement that by any stretch of the imagination could be called popular against the upholders of the royal prerogative, who first employed a popular assembly as a forum for the seizure of power from privileged hands.”

Concerning his motivation, it should now be clear that his economic interests and personal bitterness were frequently behind his attacks on Carleton and the loyalist élite. Yet, to his credit, there was a real desire to serve his Sunbury constituents and, however briefly, a real commitment to constitutional change in New Brunswick. Unfortunately, his proposals and principles were never spelled out in sufficient depth, at least in the evidence available at present, and often were clothed in an aggressive rhetoric which further obscured rather than clarified. One can be more decisive on the question of whether Glenie ever “led a movement” to seize power from the privileged. The assembly party of the mid 1790s was very much a loose coalition of those who felt disillusioned or deprived in Carleton’s loyalist New Brunswick. Religious issues (dissenters versus Anglicans), economic issues (mast contractors and merchants versus an aspiring landed gentry), geographic divisions (coastal versus inland counties), nationality differences (pre-loyalists versus loyalists, Scots versus Englishmen, Europeans versus Americans), metropolitan rivalries (Saint John versus Fredericton), and quite simply loyalists out of power versus loyalists in power were some of the ingredients that went into the cauldron of the colony’s politics and produced the alignment of an assembly party versus a governor’s party. But to describe the assembly party as led by Glenie or as a Glenie faction greatly overestimates his role. Such a coalition of varied interest groups was bound to be plagued by constant shifts in loyalty as the issues under discussion changed and would have been virtually impossible to lead. Assembly rights appeared to be the one constant, shared at some point by all the anti-Carleton groups, but even on this issue Glenie sometimes parted company with the majority, or some quickly parted company with Glenie, over how far, how fast, and even how, changes should be achieved. Indeed, Glenie seemed committed to change from the bottom up – that is, a greatly enhanced role for the lower house – only in the 1795 to 1796 period; once Council and assembly had agreed on a compromise he retreated to his earlier position of change from the top down, a new governor and Council. Thus, despite his radical image and his assertions concerning the assembly’s privileges and the people’s rights, James Glenie falls far short of being the consistent, committed, and influential leader of a reform movement. He was an erratically brilliant individual, however, and his very presence contributed to the legitimization of dissent and opposition. It also was a forceful reminder to Carleton and the loyalist élite that what they assumed in 1784 to be a coherent and united New Brunswick had, by the time of Carleton’s departure for England and Glenie’s withdrawal from politics in 1803, proved itself a much more pluralistic and diverse society.

W. G. Godfrey