James
Douglas
James Douglas (1789 -31 Oct. 1854) was a merchant and office holder.
He was born in Annan, Scotland, son of John Douglas, a labourer, and
Sarah Hunter.
James Douglas arrived in Newfoundland as a
young man. Although he may have come to join his brother Hugh R. in
a haberdashery and tailoring business, he was probably in the employ
of one of the large Scottish mercantile houses based in Greenock
which were involved in the St John’s trade. First mentioned in 1818
as co-owner of a vessel, he was a typical independent trader with
diversified interests; at various times during his life he was
active in the importing and exporting field, a newspaper, a retail
store, and a drugstore in partnership with Thomas McMurdo. In 1846
his business reached its peak with his ownership of four sealing
vessels, but it soon declined when his premises in St John’s were
destroyed by the fire in June of that year which ravaged the city
and when some of his ships were lost in the great gale that swept
the coast of Labrador three months later. Most of Douglas’s
investments were of a high-risk nature and, according to his
contemporaries, by 1848 he was dependent on the annual salary of
£200 that he received as commissioner of roads for the central
district, although he continued to outfit a sealer until 1850.
Douglas’s first recorded political activity occurred in 1831
when he signed a petition urging that representative government be
introduced in Newfoundland. Some time after April 1833 Douglas and
William Carson supported Robert John Parson in the founding of the
reform Newfoundland Patriot but Douglas severed his connection with
the paper in 1835. In that year he was chairman of a group including
Patrick Doyle, Thomas Bennett, and James William Tobin which
petitioned the British government to dismiss Chief Justice Henry
John Boulton for using the bench to protect the interests of
Conservative politicians. Boulton was eventually removed from his
post by Lord Glenelg, the colonial secretary, in 1838. After the
reform victory in the election of 1837 Douglas had been appointed to
the board of road commissioners for the central district by Governor
Henry Prescott, a move which was interpreted by some as a token
gesture to the reformers. In 1843 he was nominated chairman of the
board by Sir John Harvey. The board had veto power over the local
commissions in all decisions concerning the dispensing of funds for
the construction of roads in the district. Like Governor Harvey,
Douglas was most interested in building and improving truck roads
which would facilitate the transportation of foodstuff to the
capital. By using winter road crews he also provided work and wages
for some of the seasonally unemployed in the city. Although the post
of chairman was potentially the most lucrative of any in the colony,
allowing the holder to dispense patronage almost at will, Douglas
seems to have filled it in an efficient and business-like manner. He
was reappointed to the post every year until his death.
During the 1830s Roman Catholic reformers dominated the House of
Assembly and Protestant Conservative merchants, the group usually
favoured by the governors, had control of the Council. In a move
that defied the religious polarity of the island’s politics, the
Presbyterian Douglas entered a May 1840 by-election under the
Liberal banner in the predominantly Catholic district of St John’s.
Shortly before the election, however, the Roman Catholic bishop,
Michael Anthony Fleming, urged his parishioners to “support their
religion” by voting for one of Douglas’s nominators, Laurence
O’Brien, a Roman Catholic who had consented to run. O’Brien was
subsequently elected by eight votes in a hard-fought and often
vicious campaign.
In December 1841 Douglas became one of the
founding members of the Agricultural Society, formed to encourage
and improve husbandry. The society was patronized and encouraged by
Harvey and his successor, John Gaspard Le Marchant. Under its
direction, production in the colony doubled over the next few years
and, through the distribution of seed potatoes, the population was
saved from the worst effects of the potato blight during the
depression of 1846–49. Douglas belonged to the closely knit
Scottish-Presbyterian community of St John’s and he served on the
non-sectarian board of the St John’s Hospital. As well, he was
appointed to the Fire Relief Commission in 1846, was supervisor of
streets for St John’s, and was instrumental in establishing a new
water supply system for the city following the fire.
Subsequent to his appointments to the roads commission and the
Agricultural Society, Douglas in the early spring of 1843
demonstrated his political independence by opposing Governor Harvey
in his dispute with Chief Justice John Gervase Hutchinson Bourne, a
fellow Presbyterian; however, his action does not appear to have
affected his future as a public servant. In 1848 Douglas again
entered active politics, running in St John’s during the general
election as an independent against four Catholic Liberal candidates.
He came fourth in the three-member constituency. Two years later he
made his third and last attempt to gain elective office, standing,
once again as an independent, in the St John’s by-election called
after O’Brien had taken a seat on the Legislative Council. He, like
many other older politicians in these years, was defeated by a
member of the new political generation: in Douglas’s case, it was
Philip Francis Little*, a future prime minister of Newfoundland.
Douglas, a Scottish Presbyterian and a 19th-century liberal, was
forced to run as an independent when the predominantly Roman
Catholic Liberal party refused to support him. His political
opponents did not attack his character during elections nor did they
aim charges of corruption at the man who, during his tenure as roads
commissioner, used highway construction as a means of providing
employment for the poor. When he died, Douglas left an estate valued
at less than £1,200.
James Douglas died unmarried 31 Oct.
1854 in St John’s, Newfoundland
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