Charles James Fox Bennett (1793-1883) 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.
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.
He led the Anti-Confederation Party in the 1860s fighting 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. As Premier he was unable to keep his party united, however, and resigned in 1874 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 Liberal Party.
