During his tenure at McGill University he joined the civil service and moved with the government to Quebec, becoming Under Secretary of State for Canada in Sir John A. Macdonald's government. When the new capital, Ottawa, was founded in 1865, much to his disappointment, he and the rest of the government were forced to move there, writing "the more I see of Ottawa, the more do I dislike and detest it." He was described as ‘one of the outstanding civil servants of his generation’, even if he was "destined to be a man forever ahead of his time." In 1870, John Young, 1st Baron Lisgar offered to Meredith the Chief-Justiceship of St. Lucia, which he declined.