January 1, 1868

Wishing all of our very many readers a very Happy and Prosperous New Year and a reminder to all of you in Toronto that today is the municipal election day.

To commemorate the dawning of this new year, we reprint here the beginning of the New Year’s Day message from the Fredricton, New Brunswick Head Quarters:

’Tis curious, but many people really have come to look upon life as if it were a drama, of which they were spectators, and on the movements of events — whether warlike or political — on the great stages of the world, as spectacles got up for their especial benefit. The vaticinations of pseudo-prophets, the rage for sensational news that is never satisfied unless it can report immense and pressed preparations for a general war to come off early in spring, may have something to do in bringing about this dramatic attitude of mind.

Looking at it from that point of view, then, the year that has just passed over our heads has greatly disappointed expectation, for 1867 was a year of much reputation among modern prophets — such as Fleming and Cumming — who predicted that some most memorable overturn of human politics would occur in it.

But the year is over, and the world is not seemingly jarred out of its ordinary course, a fact for which ordinary people will be devoutly thankful. But the year 1867, though not signalized by any mighty war, or an especially great calamity to the human race, was too rife in trouble, present and prospective, to lead any but the most blindly credulous into belief of the near approach of the Millennium.

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It need to be said that 1867 was the most eventful year for the the British Provinces, and New Brunswick in particular. The passage of the Union Act in April, the proclamation of the Union on 1st July, the meeting of Parliament on the 6th November, are three very notable events. At the beginning of a new year it is desirable to speak as hopefully and pleasantly as possible. Circumstances have happened to cast a doubt upon Confederation, and to tinge with gloom the minds of some of its most ardent supporters, but it is to be hoped that having first felt the inconveniences and hardships of Confederation, it will not be long before this Province will enjoy the prosperity so confidently promised.

For ourselves, we wish all our readers the compliments of the season, and all happiness and prosperity in the year that has this day commenced.