SMITH, Sir Albert James, Canadian statesman, born in Westmoreland county, New Brunswick, in 1824. He was educated in his native county, studied law, was called to the bar of New Brunswick in 1847, and was afterward appointed queen's counsel. He was a member of the New Brunswick legislature from 1852 till the union of the province with Canada in 1867, when he was elected to the Dominion parliament. He was re-elected by acclamation in 1872, on his appointment to office, and again at the general election in 1878. He was a member of the executive council of New Brunswick from 1856 till 1863 and for a short period in 1866, attorney-general from 1862 till 1863, when he retired from the government and held the same office in his own administration in 1865. He was a delegate to London in 1858 on the subject of the Intercolonial railway, and on public business in 1865, and to Washington with Mr. Galt (now Sir Alexander T. Galt) and others on the subject of reciprocal trade, in January, 1866. He declined the chief justiceship of New Brunswick in 1866, the lieutenant-governorship of the same province in 1873, and the post of minister of justice in June, 1874. He became a member of the privy council, and was appointed minister of marine and fisheries, 7 November, 1873. He represented the Dominion government before the fisheries commission at Halifax in 1877, and was created a knight commander of the order of St. Michael and St. George in 1878.