Charles Fox Bennett

Charles Fox Bennett

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 island'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 island'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.

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

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

Political offices
Preceded by Sir Frederick Carter	Premier of Newfoundland 1870–1874	Succeeded by Sir Frederick Carter

Persondata
Name	Bennett, Charles Fox
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	11 June 1793
Place of birth
Date of death	5 December 1883
Place of death