thers, it is this very question of the perpetuity of the
union. For myself, I think there should be passed a law providing that
the man who would even conceive the idea of a dissolution of the union
should be guilty of treason. In the sincerity of my heart, I say, perish
the man who should dare to think of it [tremendous cheers]!"

With respect to railway legislation Wilmot was not in advance of many
others in the province whose general political views were less liberal
than his own. There was always a good deal of local feeling injected
into the discussion of railway matters and Wilmot, who was a resident of
Fredericton, incurred a good deal of censure for the ridicule which he
threw on the proposal to build a railway from St. John to Shediac, which
is now a part of the Intercolonial. As this railway brought the counties
bordering on the Straits of Northumberland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence
into easy communication with St. John, nothing is more clear than that
of all the railways then projected in the province it was the one most
likely to be useful and profitable, but Wilmot apparently could not
forget the fact that it did not touch his own county. His speech on this
subject was made in the legislature before the meeting of the Portland
Convention, and it is worthy of note that five-sixths of the Shediac
Railway was to be used as part of the magnificent European and North
American Railway scheme which was so much lauded by him in his Portland
speech.

{HIS WORK IN LEGISLATION}

There is not much to be said in regard to the political life of Wilmot
after he became attorney-general. His principal legislative achievement
while he filled that office was an Act for the consolidation of the
criminal law with regard to the definition of certain indictable
offences and the punishment thereof. This was a useful but not a
brilliant work, which many another man might have performed equally
well. In the session of 1850, Wilmot carried a bill through the House of
Assembly for the reduction of the salaries of the judges of the supreme
court and some other officials, but this measure did not pass the
legislative council. He had always been in favour of a low scale of
salaries as best suited to the conditions which prevailed in the
province. The scale had been fixed in 1836, when the casual and
territorial revenues were placed under the control of the province, but
an agitation soon afterwards commenced for further reductions. The