and prudent administration will proudly rear their heads and serve as an example to their successors.”

Like all institutions of government the Charlottetown City Council took a number of years to become an effective instrument of administration. The council was at first too large for the small number and limited significance of its functions, and there was much inefficiency. It was difficult to secure the services of competent personnel, for the trouble and expense of running elections for short terms of office and limited powers and influence deterred most prominent citizens from entering municipal politics. “Everyone admits”, said the Patriot in 1879, “that we, as citizens, are badly governed; and everyone says that a better class of men ought to be placed in the City Council, yet when the election comes no one acts upon his convictions, but allows the Corporation to jolt along in the old ruts.” Nor were the civic employees apparently drawn from the most respectable citizens. “There is scarcely one of them,” said Mr. (later Mr. Justice) E. J. Hodgson of the policemen, “that has not either been in goal for beating his wife or suspended for drunkenness”. Some improvements in the council resulted from the increased number of its meetings after 1880, and the reduction in its composition from ten to eight councillors in 1.891. It was not until the City grew in size and population, however, that municipal politics could boast of some interest and efficiency and the machinery set up in 1855 became appropriate for the amount of business involved.

And improvements came with experience. For example, the fire department was enlarged after what was probably the most serious crisis in the history of Charlottetown, the great fire of 1866. Early in the morning of July 15th a blaze started in a house near the corner of King and Pownal Streets and a westerly wind drove it through the town to Great George Street. Everyone was out to help in the bucket brigade, but the conflagration was not brought under control until two hundred buildings were destroyed. Similar exper-

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