About the time of his son's call to the Bar, the elder Bidwell offered himself as a candidate for the Provincial Legislature as Representative of the United Counties of Lennox and Addington. He was returned by a triumphant majority, and the members of the Family Compact looked forward with much anxiety of the ensuing session, for Mr. Bidwell was a Reformer of the most pronounced type, and endowed with an eloquence, an aggressiveness and a keenness in controversy not often found in Canadian Parliaments in those days. Before the House met, however, the circumstances under which he had emigrated from Massachusetts became known, and a petition was at once filed against his election on the ground that he was an alien and a fugitive from justice. Upon the opening of the session the matter came on for discussion, and Mr. Bidwell defended himself in a speech which was long remembered for its eloquence and vigour. He succeeded in convincing all whose judgments were not war ped by personal and political prejudice that, so far as his flight from Massachusetts was concerned, he had been the victim of a powerful clique of enemies. The House, nevertheless, by a majority of one, decided against him on the ground of his being an alien, and as the constituency of Lenox and Addington was thus left without a representative a writ was issued for a new election there. Young Bidwell, who had by this time attained his majority, offered himself as a candidate, but his candidature was objected to on the ground that he also was an alien, and his opponent—a Mr. Clark—was accordingly returned. In 1824, however, an Act was passed whereby a continuous residence of seven years in this Province rendered a foreigner eligible to a seat in the Assembly, except in the case of a persorf who had held any of the principal public offices in the United States. Under this act Barnabas Bidwell was still ineligible, as he had been Attorney-General of Massachusetts, but the son's disqualification was removed, and at the next election the latter was triumphantly returned as member for Lennox and Addington. He was then twenty-five years of age. He continued to sit in the House for eleven successive years, during which period he occupied a foremost place in the ranks of the Reform Party. At the opening of the session of 1829 he was elected Speaker, and was re-elected to that position in the subsequent session of 1835.
His influence began to be felt long before the close of his first parliamentary session. While not inferior to his father in eloquence, earnestness, and genuine desire for Reform, he held
