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Charles Fox Bennett

Merchant and politician (1793–1883)


Summary

Merchant and politician (1793–1883)

FieldValue
honorific-prefixThe Honourable
nameCharles Fox Bennett
imageCharles Fox Bennett.jpg
birth_date11 June 1793
birth_placeShaftesbury, England, United Kingdom
death_date
office1Premier of Newfoundland
term_start11870
term_end11874
predecessor1Frederick Carter
successor1Frederick Carter
governor1Stephen John Hill
monarch1Victoria
assembly2Newfoundland and Labrador House of
constituency_AM2Placentia-St. Mary's
term_start21869
term_end21878
partyAnti-Confederation Party

| honorific-prefix = The Honourable | honorific-suffix =

Charles James Fox Bennett (11 June 1793 in Shaftesbury, England – 5 December 1883) was a merchant and politician who successfully fought attempts to take Newfoundland into Canadian Confederation. Bennett was a successful businessman and one of the colony's richest residents with interests in the fisheries, distillery and brewery industry and shipbuilding. His brother Thomas Bennett, a magistrate and member of Newfoundland's first House of Assembly, was a partner in the business.

Bennett became involved in politics in the 1840s as a leader of the colony's Anglican community and an opponent of responsible government, an argument he lost when an alliance of Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants persuaded the Colonial Office to grant Newfoundland self-government.

In the 1860s, he led the Anti-Confederation Party opposing the proposals by Sir Frederick Carter to join Canada. Bennett's party defeated Carter's Conservatives on the Confederation issue in the 1869 elections, allowing Bennett to form a government in 1870. However, as Premier he was unable to keep his party united, and in 1874 resigned, allowing Carter to return to power. The issue of Confederation had become a moot point and would not be seriously raised again until the Great Depression.

Bennet also commissioned extensive mineral surveys along the coasts, and in the 1860s developed the prosperous copper mine at Tilt Cove (Notre Dame Bay).

Bennett's anti-Confederates reformed themselves into the colony's Conservative Party.

References

References

  1. "Charles James Fox Bennett {{!}} The Canadian Encyclopedia".
Wikipedia Source

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