Patronage and Politics in the Victorian Empire: The Personal Gove ...

could only be resolved in practice by governors retreating into inactivity or playing local politics and finding allies in one faction or another, rather than laying down abstract principles. There still remained, however, executive responsibility for direction and planning in public finance, where balancing income and expenditure could not be settled by the exercise of quiet diplomacy because it was vital for assembly patronage at the county level. On the whole, before Gordon's time, the budget was “left to chance,” ⁸although the disbursement of revenues was the central issue of provincial politics prior to the 1860s. The most contentious area was the inability of the executive council to control expenditure initiated by the assembly, especially where it concerned “improvident and corrupt grants.” ⁹The fact that New Brunswick had control of crown lands by 1837 enabled politicians to establish a well-known form of colonial patronage by generating “vast revenues” through sales. ¹⁰These revenues were then available for the more usual methods of influencing support by allocations for roads, schools, and rural and urban works. The executive council had lost control over this source to an appropriations committee of the assembly whose county members formed a clique for management of these funds. Early assembly powers over the salaries of the civil list of government posts may also have encouraged political rewards, though appointment of local government officials was still within the gift of the lieutenant-governor.

The precise nature of provincial “corruption” (a term that featured prominently in Gordon's evaluation of local politicians) still requires analysis by local historians. Allegations of venality were and still are frequent in the literature, and the topic is clearly important for understanding how local patronage networks worked other than at the more obvious level of purchasing electors’ votes. One indication that the topic is not as straightforward as a blanket condemnation is that the assembly itself had divided views about political venality, depending on who the beneficiaries were, and even concurred with the high principles of the governor in condemning “the exclusive distribution of patronage with party views” rather than making official appointments according to merit. ¹¹Practices were not cut and dried. It was possible in 1844 for the lieutenant-governor to appoint