M|3 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Edward Moritz Memorial Fund JL58 186i''"'mi3""'"'""' """"^ Address ... oH„ 3 1924 030 501 427 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tile Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030501427 b ^<^ ^ V y ^\ n' ADDKESS OF THE HON. JOHN A. MACDONALD TO THE ELECTORS OF THE CITY OF WITH EXTRACTS FROM MR. MACDONALD'S SPEECHES Deliyered on different occasions in the Years 1860 and 1861, &c., &c., &c. H\3 COI^TEIN'TS. 4.!Jdress'to the Electors of Kingston -v PArt.I.— Jlr. Macdojiald's personal ppjation. J^lusinns -to the personal position of Mr. Mapdoi^ajd an^ of other Members of the Government 1 ^nion of moderate Men of both Parties, upon the defeat cf Mr. liincks ■. 9 Part IL—Charges against the Government. fUhe charges made-ar-e mostly of a general nature, 11 iEJlectoral frauds 12 The Mercer case 13 The York Roads 15 The « Double ShuflBe." 16 ajhe exclusion , pf Mx- Brown from the Committee of Public Accounts 18 The charge of Lavish expenditure in connection with Railroads and Canals 20 The charge of" French Domination." 21 The charge of Subserviency to Roman Catholic influence 23 The Prince of Wales' reception and the Orange difficulty 27 Mr. Brown on Orangeism 44 Anderson's extradition 46 Part. Ill—Enumeration of the measures passed by the Oorem- ments of which Mr. Macdonald has been a member. Clergy Reserves 48 Crown Lands Management 53 . Seignorial Tenure 55 The Reciprocity Treaty and the Adjustment of the Tariff. 61 The abolition of Tolls on the Canals 66 The value, to the country of the Grand Trunk Railroad and the Canadian Line of Steamers 66 The encouragement of Home Manufactures 70 The abolition of Imprisonment for Debt 71 The organization of the Militia 71 Improvement of the Common School System 73 The Independence of Parliament Act and the Establishment of a Board of Audit 75 Registration of Voters 75 -Other Measures introduced 76 Lower Canada Legislation 76 iv CONTENTS. Fart IV.~-Remarks on the Composition and Policy of the Brown-Dorion Government. Pages. Mr. Brown a governmental impossibility "^^ Mr. Brown " in " and Mr. Brown " out " 78 Mr. Thibaudeau's three reasons for joining Mr. Dorion's Govern- ment S2 Mr. Brown and his party 8* The factious nature of the opposition 85 Mr. Brown and the Bank Charters 87 The maintenance of the union between Upper and Lower Canada 88 Appendix A. Representation by population 96 The Land purchase at Sarnia 114! Mr. Foley justifies Mr. Macdonald 129 Appendix B. Report of the Minister of Finance of Canada 129 TO THE ELECTORS OF THE CITY OF KINGSTON. Gentlemen, It is my intention to ofier myself again as a Candidate for your suiFrages, at the next Election. During the last two Parliaments I have not only had the honour of being Your Representative, but I have been a Member of the Govern- ment, and as such may be expected by you and by the Country to vindicate the policy and defend the Conduct of the Administrations with which I have been connected. In order to do this in some measure, I have caused extracts from several speeches delivered by me during a tour thro' Western Ca- nada last year, to be published with this address. These Extracts are published exactly as they were reported, and without revision or correction (for I have had no time to devote even to their perusal,) but they will serve, I feel assured, to shew to you that we have not been unworthy of the confidence bestowed upon us by the last two Parliaments, and that we have every right to expect that our course will be approved of by the Country. I have no hesitation in saying that the Legislation for Canada^ since 1854, will favorably compare with all that has been done by the Legislature or Government, from the Union up to that time ; we have settled the Clergy Reserve question on fair reasonable terms ; wa have made Lower Canada contented and progressive by abolishing the Feudal Tenure ; we have given Canada the great political ad- vantage of an efficient Second Chamber ; we have perfected and consolidated the Municipal Institutions of both Upper Canada and Lower Canada ; we have decentralised the judiciary system in Lower Canada and established Local Courts. In both sections of the Province, the expenses of the Administra- tion of Justice, in a great measure, will be borne by the Localities instead of being, as they formerly were with respect to Lower Canada, defrayed out of the Public Chest. We have in effect abolished imprisonment for debt ; we have saved for the unfortunate debtor what is essential for the comfort of himself and his family. And we have carried out, and nearly perfected the educational system of Upper Canada. I must refer you to the extracts appended to this address as to our past conduct. I will now say a few words as to our future. It is my intentiou to introduce next sessionr-^ A B4.NKRUPT LAW For Upper Canada, I attempted to carry such a Law last session, but the Upper Canadian opposition defeated me. Never did M^a behave so well as did the Lower Canada majority, Although all Lower Canada was against the. bill, although the Boards of Trade of Quebec and Montreal protested, against it, they voted for my bill, lest it might be said that French Domination governed and controlled legislatipn for Upper Canada. They voted therefore for the second residing,, but there- was, ai majprity from Upper Canada against- it. In- the next stage of the Ball, (going into committee,) anothpr vote- w^s^ taten, and again there was a majority of Upper Qaiuad^n Btepresen- taiives against it. Under thes^ circumstances, I could, not ask. the Lower Canadian Members to carry a measure, which was deeidedly: distasteful to Lower Canada, and apparently had not the sanction of those supposed to represent Upper Canadian interests. With bitter regret therefore, I was obliged to postpone my Bill. It is only a postponement, however, because if I live and have the power, it will become the Law of the land. Nothing could be more factions or unprincipled than the course of the opposition on this question,- and although they professed to be in favor of the> principle of the measure,they voted against the second reading of the Bill,andtherefbra voted against its principle. This thex did on they weak pretext that the measure was cumbrous and expensive; Now, it is true that the Bill contaihed a great many clauses, but we had no Bankruptcy liS-yf. ifl Upper Qanadaj and it was necessary tp , introduce a ooiii- plie^e system : tli# measure was not cun>brpus> but cpfppreh^nsive ,and complete. In ej^peAse, theiBiU wpwldhE^ve effected e^ great paving because it provided for three Judges at i]aQdeir».te salaries, ifisteij.d pf Vll adding to tke salaries of thirty-five County Judges, as proposed' by the Opposition. You will readily see that in effiaieaoy three Judges specially appointed to settle and adjust Bankrupt ' estates would be infinitely preferable to thirty-five Judges, who would naturally postpone the Bankruptcy cases to their ordinary duties as County and Division Court Judges. On the opposition, 1 herefore, I throw the whole responsibility the law says; in the first place, that any man holds oBiee until his • successor is appointed, and that any minister can return to his offiee^ within a month of his resignation without going to the people for re-election, and in the second places it provides that any member of the administration can exchange office with Ms fel- low ministers, also, without going back to his constituents.^ Nbw there was no necessity- for our making that exchange of offices at all, and I asan individual and other members as individuals, expressed, as lawyers our -opinions that we were not obliged to do it ; but there was a difference of opinion, and in order to bring ourselves as clearly ■uind.er the second clause of the law as we were under the firsty we did iefFect tthie exchange. In going back without re-election, we complied with the. spirit of the law ; in exehan^ng offices we com- plied with every letter of it tooi [Hear; hear.] They say, howeyer, that we were wrong iti thus occupying .offices i whose , duties we did not intend to perform, and it is the general impression that if there was any thing wrong, it was in the exchange. But the same kind of 17 procedure is common in England. If any member there desires to leave Parliament, he cannot resign as he can here, but he accepts the office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, gets his commission, whose duties, he never intends to perform, vacates his seat by becom- ing an office holder, and then resigns his office for the next man who wishes to do likewise. It was in a precisely similar spirit that our exchange was made, and the malignantly foul charge that we swore to what was false is so evidently untrue, that it is hardly necessary to say any thing about it. [Hear.] What, Sir, is perjury ? It is stating as a fact what is not a fact, and swearing to it. But when we took office for the sake of holding it but momentarily, all we stated was, that while we held office we would perform its duties, and this we intended to do, whether we held our position for one minute or for 20 years. [Applause.] And it comes with a bad grace from Mr. Brown to make this charge — from him, I say, more than from some of his colleagues, for they were entrapped by him — for he knew that on the very first day he accepted power, the Governor told him he could give no promise of a Dissolution, expressed or implied, and although he knew he could not retain his place for more than two days, yet he swore to discharge offices he knew he could not perform. [Hear, hear.] •! can prove this out of his own mouth, for with his usual want of policy and judgment, he told the people of Gait the other day, that one of the reasons for his accepting office was, that he should drive us back to our constituents. He said : " When the Brown-Dorion Administration consented to be sworn in, it was " with the full knowledge that they might not hold office for 24 hours, but there "was this among other argum.ents m favor of our running the risk of Sir " Edmund Head's m.aehinationa, that if we took office and were kicked out by " the Governor Gpnesral we could all be returned again, while the others woula " have to undergo the same ordeal but would not have the same success." What p^tty trickery this was ! Although he knew he could not get a dissolution — although he knew he could never perform the duties of his position as Finance Minister — yet he took office for the sake of sending a few members back to their constituents, and giving them a little trouble and annoyance. But, Sir, what was the result of that course T There are but two tribunals that could judge of our course. The question had a constitutional and a legal aspect. If we acted unconstitutionally, the only tribunal to decide whether we did so, was the High Court of Parliament. If we acted illegally, the courts of law could alone settle that. The subject was solemnly submitted to Parliament, and by a deliberate vote they decided that we had acted quite constitutionally ; and I have no doubt we did, for we acted legally too, as was found when the matter came up on two several actions before the two Courts of Queen's Bench and Common Pleas. [Hear.] And just mark another bit of petty cheating. The great Grit party could not risk a farthing upon the issue, but they got a man to bring the actions who was insolvent. [Laughter.] So 2 18 that if they could not punish us, they at least cheated us. [Great laughter.] They sued us, not in one action, which would have settled the whole case, but they brought several actions, for ^5,000 a piece, one against me, one against Mr. Smith, Mr. Vankoughnet, and others, and took care that when they failed we should have a pauper to look to for our costs. [Applause and laughter.] The judges did not differ in the case. The six judges gave their judgments that we were right in retaining and exchanging our offices. Constitutional and legal tribunals having thus decided the matter, is it not absurd tq charge us with a breach either of the Constitution or the law "i [Loud cheers.] But these courts of law, it appears, are of no value now-a-days. [Oh !] If there is one thing more disgraceful than another in Mr. Brown's course, it is the attacks he has lately made upon myself and the bench of justice in Upper Canada. On the occasion to which I have alluded, the Globe, Mr. Brown's organ, did not hesitate, day after day, to insinuate that our judges were under my thumb, that I could get them to give judgment as I liked, thus aspersing their honesty as arbiters of justice. [" Shame."] Now I believe that Upper Canada is proud, and has good reason to be proud of the high character, both for honesty and learning of her Bench. [Cheers.] No honest Liberal, no honest E.eformer, no honest Radi- cal, however extreme may be his political opinions, will cast a stain on the ermine of Sir John Robinson or the other Conservative judges, and no Conservative will breathe a word against Mr, Justice Richards or the other Reformers on the Bench. We all know that they are honest, that they are beyond all price and all purchase. [Hear, hear.] Yet the Globe did not hesitate to assail them, and it assails them this very day in connection with the extradition case, insinuating that they are under my control, that I have an underhand connection with them. It is almost needless to say that I have had no commu- nication with them about this Anderson case, and that I had none with them, either direct or indirect, about the resumption of our seats. [Hear, hear, and cries of" So it is."] " THE EXCLUSION OF Mr. BROWN FROM THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS. The St. Catharines' papers report Mr. Macdonald to have spoken as follows of the' refusal to add Mr. Browns' name to the Com- mittee of Public Accounts : " There is another charge brought against us, which is, that we are so afraid of having our accounts examined into by Mr. Brown that, lest he should ferret out our malpractices, we have turned him' off the Committee of Public Accounts. Now, that Committee was of great consequence in the Province before the Board of Audit was 19 established by the present government, though now, when all the money dealings of the Province come before that Board, it is of much less importance. The reason, however^ why Mr. Brown was left off was, that if he had been put on, you could not have got gentlemen to sit with him (Laughter and cheers). Mr. Gait, the present Finance Minister, had just taken office when Mr. Brown was left off that committee. He had no sins to answer for — he had had no opportunity of committing any — his accounts could not be wrong — he might well have said, " Let Mr, Brown be on the committee if he wishes it." But he remembered how Mr. Brown had acted to his predecessor, the Hon. Wm. Cayley, a man of the highest worth, one of Nature's no- blemen, a man of large family, whose feelings were wounded by every attack made on him, and who himself felt a stain as acutely as a wour^d. (Loud cheers). When Mr. Brown was appointed by Mr. Cayley a member of the committee, year after year, instead of acting as a faithful committee man, he used the whole of his power for the purpose of trumping up false allegations to write in his news- paper every morning. Although it was solemnly ordered by the com- mittee that until their investigations were complete, there should be no publication of them ; and although the allegations made were as false as those I have been exposing, he used the evidence in his news- paper for the purpose of ruining his political opponents. When Mr. Cayley vindicated himself, as he did vindicate himself, refuting every calumny, overthrowing every charge against him, establishing fully how faithful had been his stewardship, and how carefully upright his management of the public finances had been, these statements were garbled hy the Globe, and some of them altogether suppressed. More than this, however, forgetful of his duty as a committee man, as a^ member of Parliament, as a man and a gentleman, Mr. Brown had the baseness to tell Mr. Cayley before the committee that he was a liar ; and Mr. Cayley would have been well excusable, though, as Attorney General, I could not have justified him in such a course, if he had given Mr. Brown a severe castigation on the spot. (Hear, hear). This was why the Government, sustained by the House of Assembly, thought it necessary to mark its sense of Mr. Brown's mis- conduct by leaving him off the committee. We put on the same number of his party — the same number of Reformers — ^but for him we substi- tuted an abler man, Mr. Howland— and even Mr. Brown cannot say that committee was inferior to any other ever appointed. That, sir, is our answer to Ihis charge. (Loud applause.)" 20 THE CHARGE OF LAVISH EXPENDITURE IN CONNEC- TION WITH RAILROADS AND CANALS. Mr. Macdonald referred at several places to the charge that his Government have been lavish in their expenditure in connection with the Public Works of the Province. He said, at Brantford : " It has been charged that we have increased the taxation to an un- common extent. Now^, the debt of the country is considerable ; but I must tell you that the basis of it vi-^as laid in 1841, long before I and my colleagues came into office, that it was increased by our public works, the canals, the Grand Trunk Railway, and the construction of piers, harbors and lighthouses, which previous Administrations ini- tiated, and for which the present is not responsible. (Applause). For instance, I will take the Grand Trunk Railway. Mr. Brown and myself strongly and persistently opposed the grant to that road as proposed by Mr. Hincks ; but we were beaten and the road became a fixed fact. The Hincks administration was subsequently defeated and I entered office before the road was completed. It was the duty of the Government to finish it, the country having paid to it ^3,000,000 sterling, which would have been so much thrown away had the work been stopped ; and I am very glad to say it is finished. I contend that we have not added a single shilling to the original construction fund ; but finding the road was going to stop for want of means, we were obliged to postpone our claim to enable the shareholders and bondholders to come in before them, and by a new issue of prefe- rential bonds to let the road be completed. In no other respect have we added to the debt of Canada." (Cheers). At Hamilton, the subject was thus touched upon : " In the first place, it has been charged against us that we have been increasing the burdens of the country by our reckless expendi- ture of public money, and maladministration of public afiairs. If there is one charge so often made that people conclude it is a fact, it is this. As to the alleged maladministraiion of the Government I deny it ; I maintain that the afiairs have been cared for as economi- cally during the past seven years as at any previous time, and that, for its efficiency, the machinery for controlling our affairs is managed with as much care as in any other country. It is true that the expenses of administering justice, &c., increase almost an- nually, but so does our population and so does our revenue Our salaries here are as small as in any other country where such a thine as bribery is not permitted. We might adopt the Russian system by which a General gets ^40 a year, and makes £4,000 by stealing from his soldiers, but it would be hardly satisfactory ; although from 21 mysfelf down to the humblest clerks in the Post Office, all the civil servants of the Crown have less than first-class private establishments give their employees. [II4ar.]" At St. Thbmas, the charge w'as distjosed of is follows : " It has been alleged that w'e have greatly increased the burdens of thfe country. Now, in the first place, the present Government is nbt responsible for the amount of the public debt of Canada. It owes its commencement to Lord Syd'enhani, who borrowed a million and a half before any member of the pfe'sent Administration was in office at all. Even the carials -w^-ere built before this Government came in, so that we have neither the merit of makiiig these works nor the Maine of incurring debt to carry them out. So with respect to our railway ente'rprises ; they were commenced by the Governments previous to oUfs, and whetheir they are for the good of Canada or for its prejudice, Vve cannot praise ourselves fot them, not are we liable to the charge of having increased the debt of Canada therefor. Our duty certainly has been, sb far as the Grand Trunk Railway is con- cerned, to aid in completing it by every means in our power. When the province had invested three aud a half millions of money in the road, -rtre could hot allow it to remain unfinished — we could not allow it to be broken up — the bones of the country destroyed. We are, therefore, responsible for having, by every" pbssible means, endeavored to complete it, and thus to secure the most extensive and most perfect ccintiriubuS railroad system in the universe. But we are not respon- sible for the gf^at amdUnt of the debt of Canada. Great as that debt may be — very considerable as it is when you speak of it as an ainburit — it is stnall in comparison to the great wealth of Canada ; small when you consider how great works we have to show for it, nbt merely of a temporary character, but which will endure for all time, for us, aild for our children's childreh, since for every pound of that debt we have so much railwajr aiid so tiiiich canal. [Applause.] " THte CHARGE OF " FRENCH DOMINATION. " Mr. Macdonald s^poke of the charge of " French domination " at seveiral of the dihhers at whicli He \vas entertained. At St, Catharines he remarked : " Another charge sown broadcast over the country, is that the Upper Canadian sectioU of the Cabinet is oVer-ridden by Ihe French members of the Government, and over-ruled by the Catholics. It is i^aid that John A. Macdonald' and his five Upper Canadian colleagues are merely the tobls of the Lower Canadians, and are obliged to do just as they please. Yet, when I aSk which of all our measures has 22 been passed owiug to French domination and influence, I can get no answer. Has Mr. Brown pointed out a single step of ours he wishes now to have repealed ? No, sir : though he and the factious Opposi- tion have fought from the beginning to the end against all the measures we have introduced, the moment they have become the law of the land, that moment they are admitted to be all right, and no attempt has been made to repeal any one of them. [Hear, hear.] Well, sir, it is very strange, if we are governed by French influences altogether, that our whole legislation with respect to Lower Canada has taken an Upper Canadian direction, while I pause in vain for a reply when I ask what we have done to make us like Lower Canada. [Applause.] Lower Canadian laws are becoming every day more and more like those we Ixave here. At the time Mr. Cartier, ray able and respected colleague and friend at the head of the Government assumed his important duties as Attorney General East, there were but three courts in Lower Canada — Quebec, St. Francis, and Montreal. Jurors were obliged to go, not as you do, to their country town, but hundreds of miles away, to stay in the cities for months and months, at a great expense, and away from their homes and families. All the judicial business of the country was concentrated in two or three towns, to which the people from the farthest point of Rimouski, &c., were obliged to come. This was the old French system, which centralized every thing, and under which the expenses of the adminstration of justice were enormous and ruinous to the people. Mr. Cartier did not allow this state of things to remain. He considered what our position in Upper Canada was, and found that we had Courts in every county, while our two superior Courts of Common Law were brought to every man's door by the Assizes held in each County twice a year. So, when in Upper Canada we took our Clergy Reserve lands and divided their proceeds among the Municipalities, he took those of Lower Canada to build Court-houses and Gaols, and to initiate a system by which law in Lower Canada is now brought home to every man's neighborhood. That's one instance of French domination. [Loud cheers,] Next Mr. Cartier introduced into Lower Canada a municipal system, and he has now consolidated that law almost in the way you have it too. [Cheers.] And he is now compelling the Lower Canadians to pay their jurors by a system of fee funds — gradually, of course, because you cannot force a people who have been accustomed to the French system for centuries, to give up their prejudices all at once — and the consequence is, that the expenses of the administration of criminal justice, which have hitherto been much larger in Lower than in Upper Canada, are now less ; and although Mr. Cartier's system is only in its infancy and not yet complete, he has made a reduction in the expenses of administering justice since he has been in the Government, of no less than JE 35,000 per annum. [Loud cheers.] I have said before about this French domination, but I will say it again, that it must exist either in the 23 Council or in Parliament. Now, in the Council we have 12 men, of whom pnly 3 are Frenchmen and the rest of British origin ; and can you suppose that the nine are to be governed by the three 1 You see it is absurd ! Then they say we are false to Upper Canada interests. Well, sir, in this very same Council — this very French Council— - [Laughter] — there are just exactly four Koman Catholics and eight Protestants ! [Hear, hear.] It must then be in Parliament that French influences prevail ; but there, out of 130 members, there are 88 British to 42 Frenchmen — two to one — and the proportion of Protestants to Roman Catholics is nearly the same. [Applause,"] The subject was spoken of at St. Thomas, in the following language : "You have heard through the public prints that the present government is subservient to French interests ; that I am the tool of Mr- Carti^r and Lower Canada.. Now, T assure you that in Lower Canada Mr. Cartier has been assailed by the Opposition papers in a different direction — he has been told by the French prints tha,t he is altogether an Englishman, and untrue to Lower Canada interests-r' [Laughter] — that he is a mere tool in the hands of that Orangeman, J. A. Macdonald — [Laughter] — that he is neglectful of the interests of his church, and that in Upper Canada and the townships of Lower Canada he allows Orangemen to prevail. [Hear and Laughter.] One paper has even gone so far as to say that Roman Catholicism must be depressed, and Orangeism must be triumphant, untilJohn A. Macdonald is snuffed out — [Laughter and cheers.] The charges, gentlemen, against him and myself, are equally unjust. I believe that Mr, Cartier and I are actuated by the same principle of doing justice to our common country, and allowing no dominancy of one religion over another* " * THE CHARGE OF SUBSERVIENCY TO ROMAN CATHOLIC INFLUENCE. From the several references made at various places to the charge that the Government was subservient to Roman Catholic influences, that at Caledonia is chosen, to illustrate this subject. Mr. Macdonald there said :— " Amongst the accusations brought against the Government, it has been said that I and my Upper Canadian colleagues sacrificed the interests of Upper to Lower Canada ; and that we hold to our Lower Canadian connections simply for the sake of office. They say we are traitors to out race ; that we knuokle to Frenchmen ; that we are faithless to our religion ; and that we are under Roman Catholiff influences. These are the charges most frequehtly made ; because, were they true, they would involve such an amount of misconduct^ both personal and political, as wbiild cause us to deserve condemna- tidn — to deserve to lose the confidence of the people of Upper Ca- nada. But, gentlemen, it is very strange that the Opposition, while in Upper Canada they make these charges againgt the Government- — while in Upper Canada they say that I and my colleagues have s'a- crificed the interests of Upper Canada to Lower Canada and Frfenbh influence — pursue precisely the same policy in Lower Canada, but from a different point of view, for there the Rouge party, which is the Opposition in Lower Canada as the Grit party is the Opposition here, make it a cry against us, that Mr. Cartier, my eolleague, is far too British in his principles, that he is under my thumb as an Upper Canadian, that he is governed altogether by me and by my friend, the Postmaster-General, both of us being Orangemen. [Hear, hear, and laughter.] But, Sir, I say here, distinptly, that the chELrges against both of us are equally untrue — neither Mr. Carti^i^ nor inyself is actuated by any such feelings' as are attributed to us — we attempt, in our humble way, to advise the head of the Govern- ment for the good of the whole country and the equal ititetest of dlL I see, before me, the motto, " Equal Rights ;" and I contend that in all our legislation, in all the measures w^e hare carried through Pax- liameht, we have had this principle in view. [Applause.] I know perfectly well, that it is quite impossible for any Government, from ■w'hatsoever party chosen, to escape all error for six long years — the tihie during which I have been Attorney General — but I feel sure that we have governed to your satisfaction in the main, and that afleir the explanations I am ready to make, you will believe that, although we may have erred, we have at least had good reasons for our coiirse, and have exerted ourselves honestly to do what we thought right. If you are satisfied of that, I feel sure you will look, with a kindly eye upon those mistakes we may have committed, and which it is in poor human nature to commit. [Cheers.] Before I advert to other business, I would speak again about this " French domination." At the last general election, you will remember how the cry was raised against us and how we were said to be subser- vient to " Popish influences" — and I have no hesitation in admitting that in consequence of this, the friends of the Government were defeated in several parts of Upper Canada, and that if this cry, which misled many, had not been raised, we should have had a large ma- jority in Upper Canada. It was got up by the very energetic, able but unscrupulous leader of the Opposition, Mr. Geo. Brown. [Hisse* and 'groans.] He it is, too, who still brings the same charges against us ; but I call your attention to the fact that in the present adminis- tration there are twelve members, but only four Roman Catholics, the other eight being Protestants ; and you cannot suppose that four Ro- 25 man Catholics would outweigh and overrule, in the Councils of the- country, twice their number of Protestants. [Hear.] And of the tVelve, I niay tfell you further, there are only three Frenchmen. [Hear, hear.] So that at the Councils of the Province, British blood and Protestantism really do pi:evail. [Hear.] But when Mr. Brown was called upon to form a Government — that person who once said he was so true to the interests of Upper Canada that he could not get Lower Cariadiahs to join him in a Government, so that he was^ a« Governmental impossibility "—[Hear, and laughter.]— he entered at once into an alliance with the Rouge party in Lower Canada, and although he charges ihe and my colleagues with succumbing to Ro- man Catholic influences, though we have but four, out of twislve mi- nisters, Roman Catholics ; and with subserviency to French interests, though we haive but three out of twelve, yet he put six Catholics into his Caliinet ! [Hear, and laughter.] Now, Sir, as I have had occasion to say before, there is no reason in the world why Mr. Brbwn, or others, should not have as many Roman Catholics as Pro- ttistants in his Go^*^ernment, for are we not all equal in this country ? Have w6 not all the same rights ? And if we get the right man in the right place, it does not matter what his race or religion may be. But, Sir, 1 do cothplain that the very man who tried to defeat us at the pdlls, and drive us from power, on the false charge of selling Upper Canada, and selling Protestantism, should ~ have formed his Ministry — which, however, only lasted for two days — [Cheers and laughter] with more Roman 'Catholics and more Frenchmen in it than there had been since the Union. [Applause.] It has been stated, as an argument in favor of Mr. Brown's present views, that French opinions predominate, not only in the Government, biit in Parliament. You will see how true this is when I tell you that of the 130 members in the Lower House, there are 88 of British or British Canadian origin, and only 42 Frenchmen. Biritish blood, thierefore, predominates in the Legislature by more than two to orii^. [Cheers.] But I have this to say for the credit of Lower Canada li- berality, that purely Roman Catholic French constituencies again and again elect Protestant representatives of British race. I believe, if I remember right, there are 16 or 17 British members in Lower CanJada, the majority of whom are elected by French constituencies. 'fhe following extract frbrii a speech at London is inseirted here, as it bears somewhat on the same subject : " Among other cries raised against us at the la,st elections was this, tji^t we lavored Roman Catholics by encduraging separate schools. There was to be no peace with the present Government until the I9th clause of theSchool Act, by which Separate Schools can be establish'e'd, should be abolished. Now, we have never disguised our opinions, aiid 26 we said, as I say now, that though we were not responsible for the esta- blishment of Separate Schools, which are a legacy of Mr. Baldwin's, it was one thing to establish a system and another thing to repeal it after it had been introduced. We have neither the credit nor the blame of originating the 19th clause, but we are resolved to support it, because there was a privilege conferred, not only upon Roman Catholics, but on others, and we had no right to deprive a party of the privileges the law confers upon it, unless it has been shown to have been abused by them. [Hear.] As far as my own opinions are concerned, I am decidedly in favor of the continuance of the separate school clause, and I -will tell you the reason. As a Protestant, I should not like, if 1 lived in Lower Canada, to be obliged to send my child to a school of which the teacher was a Roman Catholic, and perhaps a Roman Catholic Clergyman. [Hear.] It is the duty of a religious teacher, if he believes any thing to be true, to try to enforce it on the belief of his pupils. It is the duty of a sincere Protestant clergyman to try to proselytize every Roman Catholic. It is the duty of every sincere Roman Catholic to try to impress on others what he believes to be right. As an ardent Protestant who conscien- tiously believes that Protestantism and truth are one, I would not willingly subject my son to the chance of being turned by its teachers into what I consider wrong. [Applause.] And I appreciate the like feeling among my Roman Catholic brethren. [Renewed applause.] Why, the Catholics and the Protestants do not even read history alike- We look at the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary and Elizabeth from one point of view — they from quite a different one. It is of great conse- quence therefore, that in our educational system, provision should be made allowing various kinds of teaching. [Hear.] In my own town of Kingston, I can vouch for the 19th clause producing much good. Before we had a separate school, when Protestant and Catholic gen- tlemen assembled to get school trustees elected, the Catholics tried to get in so many, the Protestants so many, and they were objects of suspicion to each other. But now they elect their trustees separately, they stand side by side, and while the Protestant schools are pro- gressing in numbers and in the standard of education, the Roman Catholic feels that he can raise his own money to send the child to the school he likes, whether the separate or the common school. [Ap- plause.] The measures of the Government on this subject have been sanctioned and approved by one man, whose authority is conclusive, and who will be remembered with gratitude long after he is dead and the present partizan objections raised to him have been forgotten, as the founder and apostle of education in Canada — I mean Dr. Ry- erson. That gentleman's conduct has been maligned and his motives impugned in a most unscrupulous manner, though no man can really doubt his sincerity in the cause of education in Upper Canada, with, which, with a lofty ambition, he has aimed at connecting his name for ever." 27 THE PRINCE OF WALES' RECEPTION AND THE ORANGE DIFFICULTY. The subject of the reception of the Prince of Wales was frequently alluded to by Mr. Macdonald. The explanations he gave at Brantford of the " Orange difficulty " are reported as follows : " This has been a great year for Canada. The chairman has alluded in graceful terms to the auspicious visit to Canada of the son of our present Soverteign — our future Sovereign. He has spoken of Her Majesty as she deserves ; she is not merely a Queen appointed by law, biit she reign in the hearts and affections of all her subjects; We are proud that we live in the times of such a Queen ; and our happiness is increased by a knowledge of < the fact that our children will in all human probability live under a king who, from his visit to this country, has satisfied us that he has all the virtues of his royal mother. [Cheers.] Why, he carried the hearts of Canada by storm. The people were loyal before his visit, but their hearts swelled within them when the saw the son of their Sovereign — so kind, so considerate, and always willing and anxious to please every body. If loyal before, they are twenty times more so, if possible, now. SLoud Cheers.] And it is particularly gratifying to me that the ay selected by the gentlemen of the County of Brant for this dinner should be the birthday of our future sovereign and son pf our beloved Queen. This is not a mere temporary gratification, but one of lasting remembrance. As for His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, his visit to Canada formed a most important epoch in his life ; as long as he lived he would remember it as his first act of royalty. Before he came here he had been laboring to form himself for the goverment of the country, but he had been undergoing a course of training only until he came to this country ; and here first he had assumed, the position and taken stand as sovereign of Canada. [Applause.] He did not come, as we are proud to know, simply as the heir to the Crown of British Empire ; but with the added dignity of the direct representative of Her Majesty, who, unable to come herself and gratify the wishes of the Canadian people, appointed him to be for the time her locum tenens, giving him for the time all her powers, all her position, as far as granting honor to this country was concerned; and we have the gratification of knowing that not only our future sovereign, but the direct representative of Her Majesty has visited this large, great and magnificent Colony of ours. Besides the great honor conferred, the people of Canada must feel that the visit will be of great and permanent advantage. It has called the attention of the world to the position and prospects of Canada; and it will' have a lasting efiect upon all our great national interests. The country- will be sought after ; its great resources and wealth thought of in a 28 manner never known before ; and if much of the riches of the mother country pours into Canada — if we find as I believe we shall find, that our character, our resources, and our position are much better understood in Europe than formerly — it will all be owing to the visit of the Prince of Wales to this country. [Applause.] It is quite true that in this world we have no perfect happiness ; and we have an instance of it in this case. We know that the visit of His Royal Highness was in some respects accompanied by mistakes and heartburnings, for which, however, the Prince was not responsible ; from which he was perfectly free. If there has been any feeling of discomfort or annoyance, we all know that His Royal Highness was not the cause of it ; if any interest of any character has been insulted or neglected, he was not responsible for it. On the contrary, we hold the Prince as dear to us as ever, and felt more proud of him the day he left Canada to visit the United States than the day he first put his foot on our soil. [Loud cheers.] But there has been, I grieve to say, an unpleasantness to which the chairman has alluded ; there has been a source of discontent and heartburning ; there has been a source of a feeling in Canada that a large and respectable Association of men has been neglected and their position ignored, that a wanton insult has been offered to them, that their dignity has been, wounded. [Cheers.] That feeling the chairman has given expres- sion to in no equivocal language and that feeling is entertained by the great majority of the people of tJpper Canada. [Applause.] "When it was announced that His Royal Highness was to come to Canada in place of Her Majesty, we all received the announcement with the greatest pride and satisfaction, and did not anticipate that' any of the difficulties that Subsequently occurred would have takeff place. We hoped that the whole of His Royal Highness's course through Canada would be one unbroken triumph ; and I fear that if that prospect was destroyed, it was because the Prince's progress w^as advised and directed by an individual high in position, high in power, and occupying a high post in the Imperial Government, but who un- fortunately was not acquainted with Canada, who did not know our people and their social and religious relations, and who judged of things in this country by the position and bearing of things in the country in which he lived. It follows, as a matter of course, that' when Her Majesty sent her son to represent Her, She took the same course with respect to him that She would have taken with respect to Herself. Had she come to this country Herself She would have been accompanied by some member or members' of Her Ministry, to whom She would have looked for advice ; and by whom Her progress would have been directed. As you well know, when Her Majesty visits her Scottish residence at Balmoral, She is always accompanied by. one or more ministers, and the same is the case when She goes to Ireland. It was only the other day that She returned from Prussia, whither she had been accompanied by Lord John Russell, Minister, Z9 for Foreign Afiairs, in order that he might be at hand to give Her advice should circumstances arise requiring it. In carrying out this political practice and usage, when She sent her son here to represent herself, She sent with him as She would have brought with herself one of the membbrs of Her cabinet — that member who was most particularly connected with the colonies, His Grace the Duke of Newcastle— to give him advice as to how he should proceed during his royal progress in Canada. Any one acquainted with British con- stitutional practice will see that She was only literally carrying out a reppgnized principle. No one has so strictly observed constitutional usage as the. Queen. She has never made a mistake in this respect. In this case She certainly did what She has always done — acted in accordance with the constitution of the country. [Applause.] I know that it has been attempted to make the Provincial Administra- tion responsible for the progress of the Prince of Wales, for the ad- vice given to him ; and for the course adopted by him in this country. But you will see from what I have stated, that His Royal Highness could not be advised by the Provincial Administration and by the Imperial Adniinistration at the same time. The Duke of Newcastle came here in behalf of the Imperial Ministry, was endowed with all the powers and responsibilities ; and such being the case, there could not possibly exist two separate bodies to advise, who might not have agreed, and certainly would not have agreed as to the course the Prince finally took. [Loud cheers.] It should be borne in mind that the members of the Canadian Ministry have taken precisely the same oath as that the Duke of Newcastle took with respect to the laws and the liberty of the subject. The Provincial government, as a government, are bound to give advice to the Governor General. That is their duty — nothing more and nothing less. In any case affecting the interests of Canada they are bound to give advice to His Excellency the Governor General, or to the Administrator of the Government ; and they can not, without a dereliction of duty, shrink from it ; but they can not, without an assumption of undue power, exceed it. [Cheers.] This being the case, I show the whole argument against us to be fallacious. We were bound to give advice to the person who administered the affairs of this country ; but the Prince of Wales no more administered the affairs of this country than the most humble man in it. He came out here as the representative of Her Majesty, but did not exercise the functions of a Governor Ge- .neral. The Provincial Government had no power therefore to advise him. We were bound to advise the Governor General ; we could not go beyond our duty and advise one who was not the Governor Ge- neral. [Applause.] You know we are in a state of Colonial depen- dence ; and Ipng may the connection between this and the mother country exist. But the people of this country have rights to sustain ; they have their own position to uphold. It is within the recollection of every man among us that it is only lately we became possessed of 30 the rights we now enjoy. It is only within a few years that after a long agitation anS stubborn contest, we were accorded the privilege of governing our own aifairs as we think proper. But while we enjoy our own rights, we inust take care not to trench upon those of others ; and it would have been a great mistake to force advice upon the Prince of Wales when he was to be guided by Impe- rial considerations and by the officer of Her Majesty sent with him for the purpose. It is only by respecting Imperial rights that we can claim and enjoy our own and be able to say that we possess all the same rights in this country as the members of the Imperial Govern- ment in Great Britain. That is the view taken by the (Provincial Government of which I an a member. You may remember in reading the debates of last season — not very profitable or interesting matter — [a laugh] — that the subject of the Prince's visit was discussed ; and there was a very natural anxiety that his Royal Highness should be received in a manner worthy of his position and of the country. At that time — I call the particular attention of those who hear me to this point, for it is made a ground of party attack upon the Government, that they neglected their duty in not giving their advice with regard to the Prince's progress ; — at that time, the whole of the Opposition party in Parliament took the ground that the Provincial Government were not and ought not to be responsible for the progress of the Prince of Wales. [Cheers.] It was an after- thought to hold them responsible, induced by the natural desire to fasten a charge of dereliction of duty upon the Ministry, and thus lead to a forfeiture of the confidence of the people. Why, if you remem- ber the speeches that were made in the House at the time, you must recollect one made by Mr. McGee. You must remember the language that hon. gentleman used with regard to the visit, and to the impropriety of the Governor General and the Ministry interfering in the matter at all. And lest it should be said that this was merely an individual opinion, I will refer to the motion of Mr. Brown, who in the absence of Hon. J. S. Macdonald, moved the appointment of a committee chosen from both sides of the House, to consider the most fit- ting manner of receiving the Prince of Wales. The fact is, the Oppo- sition felt the Prince of Wales would rouse to enthusiasm the feeling of every man in this country, and feared John A. Macdonald and Cartier would take advantage of that feeling to destroy the influence of the Opposition and build up themselves. [Applause.] They then argued that it was not the duty of the Government, but of the Legis- lature, to receive the Prince ; and that it would only make it a mat- ter of party political triumph if the Government interfered at all. That this was the feeling of the Opposition then is clearly apparent. In the speech that was delivered from the throne in the beginning of the present Session an allusion was made to the happy prospect of the Prince of Wales' visit ; and the address being before the House Mr. McGee, the hon. member for Montreal, made the following remarks. — I quote from the Mirror of Parliament : — 31 '* Mr. McGee said he did not intend to speak, and should not have spoken, had it not been the impression on many minds that the first paragraph of the address should not go to the public without an expression of opinion from hon. gentlemen generally. That paragraph, as thej' were all aware, had reference to the visit to Canada of His Royd Highness tho Prince of Wales. It would be in the recollection of Mr. Speaker — for no one had been more concerned in bringing about this desirable result than himself— that the address of both Houses was agreed to with great unanimity on all sides. Therefore, what he would desire to express now — he did not care whether hon. gentlemen on this side of the House would agree with him— was that, if His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales should, by the command of Her Majesty and under the advice of Her conslitutional advisers, visit Canada, it was highly desirable that he should be received by all classes of Her Majesty's subjects with invariable gpod will — not, he would say, with perfunctory kindness, but with hearty good will. In the Imperial point of view the object of His Royal Highness' visit was, no doubt, to increase the good feeling existing between this Colony and the mother country and also to impress the people of the United States with the value of monarchical institutions. As regarded ourselves the object of the visit could no doubt be to make an advertisement. As regarded the Grand Trunk Railroad Company their object was no doubt to make money. [Cries of " oh, '3 There was no question about the matter, although hon. gentlemen might cry " oh," but whatever might be their object, the object of Imperial statesmen— the men who looked before and after — was to increase the attachment between Canada^nd the mother coun,try. Well, that being so, he wished to say, as one of the representatives of the city where His Royal Highness would probably be first and most prominently introduced to the people, that if His Royal Highness was to be chaperoned by a person standing between the people and His Royal Highness, and whom the people thoroughly detested ; if His Royal Highness' visit was merely made the instrument for rebuilding the popu- larity of an unpopular Governor General, it were really better that His Royal Highness should not visit the Province. (Cries of " shame.") " Mr. Speaker — There must be no allusion to His Excellency the Governor General. " Mr. McGee — Why, it was His Excellency's speech that was the order of the day and he was speaking to it. [A laugh.] He did not raise this question ; but he wished to say that if an unpopular Governor General were to stand bet- ween the Prince and the people — if they were to see His Royal Highness made the instrument for whitewashing the double shuffle and the two sets of oaths taken by Hon. gentlemen opposite— if, in short, they were to see the visit con- verted into a political object and a display of flunkeyism, instead of an expres- sion of loyalty to the throne and to the person of the Queen— if they were to see an unpopular Governor General standing between the Prince and people, then a great deal more-mischief than good would be the result. " Mr. Speaker— Order. [Cries of " chair."] « Mr. McGee— Well it should be understood that if His Royal Highness came here under the present circumstances under the advice and protection of gentlemen opposite, and with a Governor General who had a historic name or an actual name— his reception would not be such as every loyal subject and every attached subject would desire it to be." Here was a distinct announcement of those members of Parliament who spoke on the subject, against the Government interfering at all^ S2 ;and I have no doubt these same gentlemen will now denounce us as traitors to the country for not advising the Prince, forcing him to go where we wished, and to act as we chose. In answer to Mr. McGee's, the only notice taken of it was by Mr. Gowan who had intended to reply but said " He had been advised that the best way to treat it would be by passing it over in silence." And I would have passed it over in silence also, and not raked it from the ashes m which it lay, had not the very party to which I belong now said that we were guilty of a violation of the constitution because we did not interfere. [Loud applause.] I'will now refer to the motion of Mr. J. S. Macdonald, who wished to have a committee chosen from both sides of the House to make arrangements for the, visit. My answer was, of course, that the Prince of Wales would come to this country -attended by his own Imperial advisers, and that the Provincial Gtovern- ment would have no right to interfere as to His Royal Highness' course, and that if they did they would probably be told it was none of their business. But I objected to a committee of that kind because it involved the expenditure of the public moneys. You all know that the Government of the day are alone responsible for the disbursement of the public money. I pointed out that under the constitution we -could not hand that responsibility over to any body, whether a mem- ber of the Legislature or not ; and that we could not, as long as we possessed the confidence of Parliament, entrust to any one the expendi- ture of the large sum of money that would be required for the purpose of receiving the heir apparent to the British throne in a manner worthy of Canada, and as he ought to be received by the people of this country. On the 14th of May Mr. Brown, in the absence of Mr. J. S. Macdonald, moved the appointment of the committee. Mr. Bkown said "the Legislature had invited the Prince and the Legislature, as representing the people of Canada, ought to receive him. It was not a political matter and the Government ought not to take the entire control out of the hands of the Legislature." ' " Mr. Cauchon said it was desirable that the demonstration should not be a ^jarty affair, but thought it would be saved from that character by some member ■jof the opposition seconding the address to be moved by the government. " Mr. BnowN said his motion went further than that. The Prince was a fguest of the Legislature and they were the proper body to take action in regard to his progress through the Province. If the reception were left in the hands of the Executive, there was danger of it being regarded as a party affair." There, gentlemen, you will see, that before the Prince came, 'when the opposition were naturally as anxious to do honor to His E-oyal Highness as the majority of the House, and to claim that they ■ were as loyal subjects and as sincere in their desire that Canada should give a worthy reception to the Prince — they were at the same time anxious to prevent -what they feared, namely, that the government would take advantage of the enthusiasm created by the Prince's 33 presence and make political capital out of it, and to avoid this pro- posed that the whole of the royal progress should be under the ma- nagement of a committee chosen equally from both sides of the House.— And they now say that the government ought to have assumed the responsibility, and that we were guilty of a dereliction of duty in not doing what they then said we ought not to do. [Loud applause.] Now, supposing the government had, for the sake of avoid- ing responsibility, consented to the appointment of a committee, what would have been the position of the committee ? They would have held no position in the state, being a mere voluntary body without administrative powers. Supposing these difficulties had arisen, as they probably would, would the committee have advised the Duke of Newcastle? Were they constitutional and responsible advisers? And what would the Duke of Newcastle have said to them had they oifered their advice 1—" Pray who are you?" [Laughter.] He would, of course, have paid no attention to their suggestions. And this was the course the opposition would have adopted ; and now they de- nounce the government for not having interfered, for not havino- stood between the Prince and the people, for having allowed every body, whether of high or low degree, a free opportunity of approaching the foot of the throne, and without respect to party politics of any kind whatever, paying their loyal duty to the Crown. [Applause.] When Mr. J. S. Macdonald's motion was before the House, I said " the Prince dur- ing his visit would not be directed by the Government or the Legis- lature but would be accompanied by his own advisers, and would consult Her Majesty's Representative here, the Governor General and of course the Governor General could not receive advice from gentlemen who had no confidence in his Government. The Ministry leould not admit the unconstitutional principle that this money should be voted and expended, except on their responsibility." I said that the Government were responsible for the expenditure of the money, but as to where the Prince would go, how long he would stay in the country, and as to his line of progress, he was to be governed entirely by the advisers who would come with him ; and if those advisers had not come. Her Majesty would have been guilty of that which she had never before been guilty of, a violation of constitutional usage. And the doctrine which I laid down was accepted by the Legislature ; the motion was lost, atid the matter was left just as the Governor had put it — that, as a Ministry, we should see to the disbursement of the funds, and'that it should be done handsomely. We should never have been able to stand up before Parliament and the country if we had received the Prince in a mean, sordid manner. [Applause.] And I may say now — I am happy to inform you — that, while it is admitted by everybody, and while we have the pleasure of knowing His Royal Highness was gratified, pleased and surprised by the hand- some and magnificent reception he had met, the people of Canada will be surprised to learn at the proper time the economical way in 3 . 34 which they have given that admittedly grand reception. [Loudl cheers.] Well, returning to the constitutional question — the course of Government was clear. We were acquainted with the outlines of his progress. We knew he would go to Quebec, the capital of the. Province ; to Ottawa, the future capital ; to Montreal, to visit the ma- gnificent Victoria Bridge ; and to the other principal cities and the great wonders of nature in the country. We knew the main pomts at which he would stop, and made arrangements to give him^a worthy reception at each place. We made suggestions as to what was to be done, but merely suggestions, as we had no authority to advise. There our duty ended ; and when His Royal Highness came he was accom- panied by the Duke of Newcastle, his constitutional adviser. Now I must say I think it unfortunate that the Prince was advised by the Duke of Newcastle. He was a man of undoubted integrity and honor, and of high rank and position ; but liable to look at things from an Imperial point of view. He was like myself a member of an admi- nistration, depending upon Parliament * for support, and had to con- sider what effect the progress of the Prince would have upon the mother country and the Palmerston Administration. [Applause.J He did look upon things from an Imperial point of view ; and from his course upon the Orange question, I am quite certain that the Duke of Newcastle thought more of the condition and prospects of the Palmerston Government than of the Province. Why, we know that at the very time the Duke of Newcastle w^as saying he would not recognize the Orange Institution in ■ any manner, a bill w^as being passed through the Imperial Parliament, with the sanction of the Government, declaring it criminal to wear the badge or colors of the Orange Order. That fact, no doubt, was pressing upon His Grace, and we can easily understand what his feelings were when asked if it would be convenient for His Royal Highness to receive an address from the members of the Order in this country. He felt that by giving his consent, he would be practically opposed to the legislation of the Imperial Parliament, in which he and his Government had a very small majority — and that majority he was liable at any moment to lose. Whatever effect that might have upon his mind, he evidently never thought of the effect of his course upon Canada. I must say that his Grace acted in a most manly and straightforward manner, assuming the responsibility where he alone was responsible. I believe the letter he wrote to the Mayor of Kingston was most injudicious and dictatorial. I am satisfied that had he made the request, in the name of the Prince, that the Orangemen would not appear in badges and regalia ; from one end of the country to the other they would have abandoned them, and I am convinced that had His Grace pursued this course, there would have been no difficulty. [Cheers.] It is one thing to lead a man by kindness and courtesy, and another to shake a halter and say "come along." [Laughter and applause.] But while his course was dictatorial and injudicious, while he sacri- 35 ficed the good feeling of the people of Canada, I must say that His Grace manfully took all the responsibility upon himself, and I will explain how. The Prince had reached Ottawa when the news arrived that there was likely to be difficulty at Kingston. Of course, I was exceedingly anxious that every thing should pass over well at that place ; and therefore, while His Royal Highness went up the Upper Ottawa, I left for Prescott, for the purpose of meeting a deputa- tion sent specially down to come to some arrangement with the Duke of Newcastle. I accompanied them back and introduced them to His Grace, with whom they had a long, earnest and animated conversation on the matter. We pressed, in stronger and more emphatic language than His Grace was probably accustomed to hear, what we thought it was his duty to do and what might be the conse- quence if he persisted in his threatened course. In doing so, I did not act as a meijjber of the Government, but as representative of Kingston, whose interests I had at heart. I am not going to enter into a discussion as to the propriety or impropriety of the conduct of the Orange Association. One thing is quite clear, that they had a legal right to assemble in the streets ; that like any other loyal sub- jects — and God knows there were none more loyal — they had the right of presenting their humble duty to the son of their Sovereign. Whether they chose to do so in the peculiar garb of the Order or not, depended upon themselves ; there being no law to prevent their appearance in such regalia. It may not have been in good taste to do so, but the way to avoid it was not by writing that letter, but to ask them to refrain for the sake of the Prince. When they were told that they must act in such a manner as was agreeable to his Grace, and if they did not, the place where they assembled would not be honored by a visit from the Prince, they naturally felt deeply wounded and annoyed. All this was pressed strongly upon the Duke of New- castle. He admitted the truth of it. He said he was quite aware of the difference of the law in England and in Canada ; he was quite aware that the Mayor had no right to prevent the Orangemen appear- ing in procession ; that if he did attempt to use force to prevent them, he would be committing a breach of the law for which he would be held answerable ; but his Grace said — and I am exceedingly grieved that he persisted in the course — " as the Prince of Wales may visit Ireland next year, I cannot and will not advise him to take a course here that he cannot take there." For this determination and the results of it the Duke of Newcastle rests responsible. In speaking of this conversation, I speak with confidence as to the meaning of his statements, because there were four gentlemen of character and standing present who are quite ready to vouch for the truth of them. We pressed upon his Grace also these consideratiotis : The Orange Association were not forcing their way unduly into the presence of the Prince, but the committee of reception had notified them and given them a place in the procession ; and the different 36 lodges in the country had gone to great trouble and considerable expense in making praparations. The Mayor stated also that when the Duke of Newcastle's letter was received, announcing that the Prince would not land if Orangemen took part in the procession, he informed the committee, who, although they had assigned the lodges a place in the procession, came to the conclusion that there should be no procession of any kind ; and asked whether under these circum- stances the Prince might not land and see the people, and yet not be held to give up the position taken or held to recognize officially the Orange institution 1 The Duke in reply stated that as long as there was an Orange arch or banner or badge in the streets he could not allow His Royal Highness to land. He was fixed in this determina- tion ; and the deputation, after exhausting every argument in vain, finally left : and as I had no oflicial duty to perform, I resolved to cast in my lot with my own people at Kingston. Ltherefore returned there with the deputation and staid there. I felt it would be very bad taste to enter into the festivities at other places, nor did I see His Royal Highness again until the moment he was leaving the country, when I went to pay him my respectful duties and bid him farewell. [Applause.] I have said before and now repeat that the course taken by the Duke of JNewcastle was highly injudicious. Had the Prince landed in Kingston under the circumstances stated, by the Mayor, what would have been the consequences? He would have pleased the Orange institution, because, although not recognized ofiicially their rights would have been vindicated ; and on the other hand, the Roman Catholics would have been pleased, because they would have succeeded so far that the Duke of Newcastle would not have carried out the recognition of the Order. The people of Kingston would have been pleased, because the Prince had honored them with a visit and accepted of their hospitalities. But as it was every body was displeased. The people of Kingston were annoyed because their city was avoided ; and the Duke of Newcastle had left behind him a rankling wound which would require all the temper and modera- tion of the public mind to soothe ; where we expected, and if he had acted judiciously there wouldhave been, gratification and pride. All that was lost by the injudicious and dictatorial conduct of the Duke of Newcastle, and upon him alone rests the responsibility. As far as the Government is concerned, we feel we have carried out the constitution literally ; as far as I personally am concerned, I stood by the rights of the people and vindicated them as strongly as T could. I entreat the pardon of gentlemen present for dwelling upon this matter ; but it is of great importance that I should put the views of myself and my colleagues in the Administration fairly before them and through them before the country. [Cheers.] Well having done so, I will glance at the position taken by the Oppo- sition on the subject. They said " Oh, you should have resigned. 37 . You should have advised the Prince of Wales, and if your advice was not respected, you should have resigned." The constitutional maxim with regard to advice was this : if the Government gave advice to the Gjjvernor General, and if in his discretion that advice were rejected, then they would give place to those whose advice he could act upon. But supposing we had offered advice to His Excellency on this subject, what might his answer have been t. " Well, gentlemen, I agree with you." Suppose His Ex- cellency said that — Hon. Mr. Vankoijghnet [interruptingly] — Perhaps he did. Hon. Mr. Macdonald — Yes, perhaps he did. Well, the Go- vernor General would say, " Thie Prince of Wales will not take my advice." Should we resign in that casp ? But supposing for the moment that the Governor General had said to the Prince " I advise you to land." The Prince would have at once replied, " I cannot do that, because it would be contrary to the advice of the Duke of Newcastle, who is here as my constitutional adviser." Were we to resign and hand over the Government of this country to "joint authority," Brown, Dorion and McGee, because the Prince of Wales preferred to take the advice of the Duke of New- castle to that of Sir Edmund Head ? [Laughter and cheers.] Why, the whole thing can be made so ridiculous that you will see at once the absurdity of the argument of the Opposition. Supposing w^e had resigned because the Duke of Newcastle would not take our advice. What then 1 The Governor General would have sent for Mr. Brown, who would have spent a couple of weeks in forming his ministry, scattered all. over the country. Was the Prince of Wales to remain in the harbor of Kingston for a fortnight, having his meals conveyed to him in a small boat, till Mr. Brown had succeeded in making an Administration? And then, supposing he had remained ; what would Mr. Brown have done 1 He would then have had to advise — it would have been his business to advise ; and the Duke of Newcastle havesaid would , "1 refused Cartier and Macdonald, and I can't agree with you." [Laughter.] Mr, Brown would, of course, in virtuous indignation, have resigned at once ; and the Prince of Wales would have been at Kingston till the present day. [Great laughter.] This is precisely the line of argument adopted by the Opposition. I know that with all their faults, gentlemen would prefer the present Government to one hurried together under the circumstances pointed out — they would rather have the de'il they knew than the de'il they did'nt know [laughter] ; they would rather have the present Administration with the sins of seven years on their heads, than trust their interests to the untutored zeal of a Brown and of a McGee. [Great applause.] I know many, of my own friends are as ardent Protestants as myself. Well, these very friends 38 would have been the first to say, had I resigned, "You should have stuck to the ship to the last." The Government are quite ready, when they receive constitutional notice, gracefully to walk out ; but until then it would be cowardly, and treasonable to the party who have so long sustained us ,to break up that party and throw them into unexpected opposition, in return for the generous and hearty support they have given us, through good and evil report, for seven long years. [Eoud and prolonged cheering.] 1 trust you will pardon me for occupying so much of your time. [Cries of " go on."] No ; I think I have said enough ; that I have exposed the fallacies of the Opposition, and run the fox to earth. [Cheers.] And no one knows the absurdity of their arguments more than the leaders of the Opposition, who are exceedingly anxious to take the places of the Government now that the Prince of Wales is gone and there is no advice to be tendered. At Kingston Mr. Macdonald enlarged upon this subject in the following language : " The first thing that strikes me, on reading the speech delivered in this hall a few evenings since, is the exceeding anxiety displayed by Mr. Brown that the Orange body should not be insulted, or having been insulted should obtain redress. Why it seems to me that he has taken the whole Orange body under his especial charge ! [Laughter.] He comes down here and tells the Orangemen how they were insulted, as if they did not understand their own rights, and how deeply and strongly he feels for them. It is most surprising how that gentleman should have the hardihood — the reckless auda- city — to come here and set himself up as the champion of Orangemen. [Cheers.] Why, Sir, how did 1 become an Orangeman 1 I was not an Irishman by birth, and had little to do with politic^ in those days. It was in 1841, in times when Orangemen were on the descent, when the Provincial Legislature had proscribed them, forbidding them to wear their regalia, and declaring their processions illegal, and at a time when they were about to pass a law preventing an Orangeman from becoming a juror or a constable, or holding any oflicial position under the Crown, thus branding him as an outlaw and a traitor to his country. I, Sir, and many others like myself, felt deeply indig- nant at this wholesale proscription of a respectable and loyal body of men. I was not an Orangeman, but I knew many of the best rnen in Kingston were — men of intelligence and sterling worth — and I resolved that if they, among whom were many of my best friends, were to be proscribed and hounded down merely because they were Orangemen, I would go in with them and submit to the same obloquy the same proscriptii)n. [Loud cheers.] Then, Sir, 1 became an Orangeinan, and it was for the purpose of showing my sympathy 39 ■with men -whom I believed-to be outraged by the conduct of the Legis- .'lature. [Renewed cheering.] What then, tjir, did Mr. Brown do 1 At that, very time he was urging the Administration, of which he was a prominent supporter, to p.ut down Orangeism. Why, we read lin the Globe of those days that they had their feet on the Orangemen and were bound to keep them there. [liear, hear.] At the 'Very time when I from sympathy with their wrongs joined the body, Mr. Brown was hounding on the Government for the purpose of ■repressing them. [Applause.] And, Sir, while I, as an Orangeman, ■have ever since been true to its principles, that gentleman has turned his coat again and again. [Loud cheers.] Have you not seen him insult the whole Roman Catholic population of Canada by his ridicule of" Mary de Charbonnel j" have you not seen him describe the nun- neries, monasteries and convents of Lower Canada in language which I w^ill not recall in all its vileness by longer dwelling upon ; have you not seen him during the elections of 1857, charge my col- leagues and myself with being sold body and soul to the Pope and Popery ; — and this is the man who in 1841, and until he quarreled with Mr. Hincks, because he would not pay his Haldimand election expenses, said that Lower Canada was of immense importance to Upper Canada — that the Reformers of Upper Canada owed a deep ^ebt of gratitude to the French of Lower Canada, that all the mea- sures of liberty and reform had been cirried by their aid, and that they must put their heels on the neck of these Orangemen and keep them down ! [Great cheering/] But the tables have been turned. When he saw a Government formed in which he had no place, he mounted this Protestant horse and rode from one end of the country to the other, saying that John A. had sold himself to the Pope and the Lower Canadians. And what were the consequences of that *' No Popery " cry 1 I believe. Sir, if it had not been for that cry, John A. would have had a large majority in Upper Canada in 1857, fGreat applause.] Why, such was the cry raised then that Mr. Benjamin, who was a Grand Master of the Orange Association, had very great difficulty in securing his seat for the North Riding of Hastings, because he supported my Government and was consequently *' sold to the Pope." [Cheers and laughter.] Mr. Gowan, too, who was also a Grand Master, actually lost his election in North Ontario because it was said he was also " sold to the Pope." Notwithstanding all this, the moment the Government resigned on the Seat of Govern- ment question, although there weis no necessity except on a point of honor for our resignation — for I had a very large majority in the House — Mr. Brown, who had publicly and vauntingly declared that lie was a " governmental impossibility " on account of the high Pro- testant stand he had taken and of his advocacy of Upper Canadian rights, clutched eagerly at office and was quite willing to surrender all his principles — no, not principles, for principles he has none — but he was quite ready to sacrifice all his previous professions, although 40 he had announced himself as a " governmental impossibility.' — [Cheers and laughter.] And then what do we find 1 We find that instead of columns in the Globe ridiculing " Mary Charbonnel," long articles about that " revered prelate "—it being understood that Separate Schools and other things of that kind which might lead to . unpleasantness, should be left over for a future occassion. [Cheers.] You will find, gentlemen, that as it has been so will it be in the future. Mr. Brown is" perfectly well aware that he cannot form a Ministry without a reasonable support from Lower Canada. The moment he thinks he can get ofiice, that moment for the purpose of obtaining such support he becomes as much a pro-Popery man as John A. [laughter] ; but the momerit he sees office receding from his view, he comes down here, declaims against Lower Canadian and Roman Catholic influences, and assumes the championship of the Orangemen. [Cheers.] Only fancy the man coming here and charging me with deserting my Protestant principles — the man who only a few days ago, wrote of the Kingston Orangemen as if they were a band of rowdies . No language then was too strong to use against them, and now he comes here for the purpose of raising a feeling against me and the Government of which I am a member. This, Sir, is the language used by Mr. Brown in the Globe at the time the Prince was on his way to Toronto : " There can be but one feeling in the minds of all right-thinking men as to the occurrences of the last two days at Kingston and Belleville — namely, that the men who have tliiven the Royal party away from these towns have been guilty of an outrage unexampled in malignity and utterly indefensible." Then, again, speaking of the refusal of the Duke of Newcastle to allow the Prince to land, he said : " For be that right or wrong, it was the act of the Duke of Newcastle or of the Provincial Government — and not of the Prince of Wales — and abundant opportunity will occur hereafter for settling that controversy. Whoever was responsible, and had the provocation been g. hundred times as great, nothing could justify the gross personal affront to their future Sovereign by the Orange- men at Kingston and their following on his track along the coast to repeat the outrage." Again, he said : " Neither must it be inferred that we countenance in the slightest degree the brutal conduct of ' Tom Robinson ' and his rowdies who thrust themselves upon the Royal party at Kingston and Belleville." Having called your attention to the opinion of Mr. Brown, as expressed in the Globe, allow me to ask is it not extraordinary^ that he should come down here and claim himself as being the champion and de- fender of Orangemen and Orange principles ? Sir, the motive is easily seen, and can be, I am proud to say, as easily frustrated [Cheers.] I may say to you now that when Mr. Brown was support 41 ing by his speeches, through the press of the country and by his own newspaper, the proscription of Orangemen, a bill was introduced into Parliament doing away with the Orange Procession Act. Mr. Brown opposed that bill, saying they should keep the Orangemen where they had them, under their feet ; but the very man who has been so much denounced by him as a tool of the Roman Catholic hierarchy — a man who is said to ride rough shod over me, to control me and handle me as he pleases — was the first to vote for the bill. [Cheers.] Aye, while Mr. Brown from the beginning was rousing up the Government he supported, to' put down Orangeism by every means in their power, Mr. George Etienne Cartiet was the first man to vote in favor of the bill repealing the Act which prevented Orangemen from walking in procession. [Loud cheers.] Such is the difference between the really honest and liberal-minded Attorney General East and Mr. George Brown. [Cheers.] •<••«»*• « As I have thus proved to you, we have the decision of the Queen, Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and will have that of the Imperial Par- liament when it meets, as well as of the Provincial Parliament and even of Mr. Brown himself, that we took the constitutional course ; yet it is attempted to be held up that we are responsible. The strongest proof that every body thought we were right, and that the Prince would be accompanied by his own Imperial adviser, is that given by the head of the Orange Order, the Hon. J. H. Cameron, a lawyer of high standing and a statesman of experience, who knowing as a matter of course that the Prince would be accompanied by his own advisers, and would not be advised by the Provincial Govern- ment, put himself in communication with the Governor General, requesting him to ask the Duke of Newcastle whether an address from the Orange body would be embarrassing to the Prince or not. Aid. Alexander — Was the Governor General obliged to lay his letter to Mr. Cameron before the Council ? Hon. Mr. Macdonald — No ; he did not lay it before the Council. [Hear.] Mr. Cameron, as the head of the Orange Institution, very properly went to the Governor General as an officer subordinate to the Duke of Newcastle, and he told him he really did not know whether the address would be embarrassiiig or not, but said he would ask the Duke as soon as he saw him and give him an early answer. The reply accordingly came, in which the Governor General, after making Mr. Cameron's request to the Di^ke, says it would be very embarrassing. Now, Mr. Brown says that this was an official intimation ; but it could not be, from the very fact that Sir Edmund Head's letter was marked " private." [Hear.] Aid. Alexander — The reason I asked you the last question was because Mr. Brown stated in this room within my hearing that it 42 was more than he dare do to write a letter to Mr. Cameron without the knowledge of his Council. Mr. Magdonald — Well, here is Mr. Brown's own paper in which the letter is inserted, marked " private," as follows : " [Private.] " On Board the ' Victoria,' " Aug. 13, 1860. " Mv Dear Sir,— I have seen the Duke of New. astle, and I have no " hesitation in saying- that my impressions are confirmed. The address of *' which you spoke would be very embarrassing. I am much obliged to you '' for the candid and straightforward manner in which you spoke to me on the' " subject. If there were any doubt on the point at issue, I would not hesitate " to say so. " Yours very respectfully, f< EDMUND HEAD. " Hon. J. HiLLTARD Cameron." There was a private letter in which Mr. Cameron asked the Governor General to ask the Duke of Newcastle whether an address would be embarrassing, and the reply, conveyed in a private letter also, was that it would be very embarrassing. What then did Mr. Cameron do T As a constitutional lawyer he knew there was no appeal from the Duke's decision ; he did not appeal to the Pro- vincial Government that the Duke was interfering improperly, but upon learning the Duke's views upon the matter, put the address in his pocket and did not make any further effort to present it — thereby showing, with Lord Palmerston and Mr. Brown, that the course we took was the only constitutional course. [Cheers.] The following additional remarks are added from the speech of Mr. Macdonald's, at Toronto : " I have read the remarks which have been made in the press — the reports in the newspapers of the meetings held in various parts of Canada: — the proceedings of the meeting held in Toronto with re- spect to the proceedings of the Duke of Newcastle — and I read with peculiar satisfaction the remarks of the Hon. John H. Cameron. [Great cheering.] That gentleman, who stands high as a lawyer, and who has considerable experience as a legislator, went to' Quebec for the purpose of consulting the Governor General as to whether an address from the Orange body would be acceptable to the Prince, or whether its being offered would be an embarrassment. His Excel- lency told him; as appears by Mr. Cameron's speech, that reference must be had to the Duke of Newcastle, as the adviser of the Prince, and that as soon as he [the Governor General] ascertained what the sense of the Duke was, he would inform him [Mr. C] The Governor 4,3 did communicate with His Grace, and the moment he ascertained that such an address would be embarrassing he acquainted Mr. Cameron with the fact. Mr. Cameron assumed the responsibility of not presenting such an address, and the very fact of his doing so — the very fact of his receiving the assurance stated, from the Prince's res- ponsible adviser, and acting upon it — of his not protesting against the action of the Duke of Newcastle, if he thought it wrong, and seek- ing the advice of the Provincial Administration — showed that he exonerated the ministry from any responsibility in the matter, and that he believed the Duke of Newcastle to be the proper authority to consult as to the Prince's wishes and whose opinion must be deferred to if they would act in accordance with them. [Cheers.] No appeal was made to the Provincial Government ; they were not asked to ad- vise ; no protest was made against the course of the Dtike of New- castle by Mr. Cameron or any portion of the Orange body — of which was a member — [Applause] — from any quarter of Canada ; they were not asked to interfere ; they were not told they had been guilty of a derelection of duty ; but all parties seemed to agree that, as the Prince came here as the representative of the Queen, he could only be advised by a sworn adviser of the Queen herself. Here I shall leave this point, satisfied that I have proved my case. [Cheers.]" Mr. PuRDY — I would like, honorable sir, to understand how you as an Orangeman, felt when the host was hoisted before you in the city of Quebec 1 A Voice — He did not like it at all. [Laughter.] Hon. Mr. Macdonald — I have great pleasure in answering the question. I can only tell him how I w^ould have felt had the circum- stance occurred, but as the host was not elevated I cannot say how I should have felt. [Great Laughter, and cries of " sit down now, Purdy."] Mr. PuRDT — Then, I would like to know how you, as an Orange- man, felt when Roman Catholic Bishop and Priests "superseded" you and other members of the Legislature in the procession at Quebec. Hon. Mr. Macdonald said in reply, that the Roman Catholic bishops and priests had looked for no precedence, asked :^r no prece- dence, and took no precedence, in any of the processions. [Great cheering.] He said further, that at Quebec the civic authorities had sole charge of the arrangements, just in the same manner as the civic authorities at other places visited by the Prince had charge ; and that therefore neither the Government nor the Legislature had any right or authority in the matter. Notwithstanding, however, that the civic powers alone had authority, the members of the Govern- ment had a place in the cortege immediately behind His Royal High- ness. [Immense applause.] With regard to the Roman Catholic 44. hierarchy, he would say this : that although under the old French law, which with other French laws Great Britain had bound herself to respect by a stipulation in the treaty ceding Canada to her, the Uoman Catholic hierarchy in Lower Canada, were entitled to all the rights and privileges they enjoyed in France, yet to avoid any difiiculty or jealousy, they gracefully gave up precedence to the English Bishop. [Cheers.] Yes, although they might by law have claimed prece- dence — although every right they had under the sovereignty of France was preserved, to them under the sovereignty of England — they of their own accord and actuated by a noble motive, gave prece- dence to that venerable and venerated old man. Bishop Mountain of Quebec. [Tremendous applause.] ■Mr. brown on ORANGEISM. At Simcoe, Mr. Macdonald is reported to have referred to the course of Mr. Brown towards the Orangemen, and shown its want of consistency : " I must now read from the Globe of the 13th July, 1858, a speech delivered by Mr. Brown in an Orange Lodge on the previous evening : " There was no thinking man," said Mr. Brown on ihat occasion — " cer- tainly no man professing Protestant principles — he cared not to what denomi- nation he belonged — who dispassionately looked back upon and examined the history of Europe before the battle ot the Boyne — who called lo mind ihe great and important events brought about by that contest— who could fail lo express feelings of thankfulness and gratitude to Almighty God that the arras of King William were victorious, and that the enlightened monarch was enabled to es- tablish the principles of liberty, not only in his own day, but for all future time. (Applause.) There was one view sometimes taken of Orangemen in which he confessed he never had any sympathy, and in which, as a Scotchman, he be- lieved he never could sympathize — namely, that it was intended to keep alive those old national hatreds which might naturally be associated with revolu- tionary struggles in Ireland. He was convinced that not one gentleman pre- sent, came there with any thought of glorying over a victory gained two cen- turies ago by one section of the people of Ireland over the other. The feeling ■which animated them he did not doubt was one of joy, that the great principles of civil and religious liberty then contended for, ha4 been established ; and of gratitude to the men who had shed their life's blood for these principles." These, continued Mr. Macdonald, were Mr. Brown's sentiments in 1858, when he wanted the Orangemen's votes ; and yet in 1843, when he did not want the Orange vote, this was his language ; — Orangeism is a baneful Institution and malignant society. Orangeism is a faction sunk so low that is has been the policy of every Whig Government to suppress it. Justice to Ireland requires that Orangeism should be suppressed. These malignant Orange Societies have been wafted to this side of the Atlantic by designing men. Their days as a party are, however, numbered. This miserable combination lives 45 and reigns by subverting the rights of the people. On the principle of solus populi suprema lex, the GoverniTient is bound lo put down Oran- geism. A person," Mr. Brown said, "Jias left Belleville for the purposfe of organizing all the Orangemen of British America in one body. Can anything," he added be conceived more wicked than such conduct ■? [Loud laughter.J " That was Mr. Brown's language when he did not want the Oran- gemen. Then, during the time of the difficulties at Kingston, 'he wanted, the Prince to land there, as every one else did. As member for Toronto, he did not desire it to be slighted in the same manner as Ki^lgston had been ; and besides he wanted to hand into the Duke of Newcastle a document he had prepared protesting against the awful and corrupt conduct of the present Government. Well, every issue of his newspaper praised the Duke of Newcastle, whose course he thought it well to sustain by j)itching into the Orangemen. Thus, it appears, in 184)3, Mr. Brown was in favor of suppressing the Orangemen ; in 1857, before the election of that year, he endorsed them ; in 1858, he com- plimented them in one of their lodges in Toronto ; and in 1860 he said it was not convenient to discuss the propriety of suppressing them, but there cotild be but one feeling in the minds of all right-thinking men as to the occurrences at Kingston and Belleville — namely, "that the men who have driven the Royal party away from these towns have been guilty of an outrage unexampled in malignity and utterly inde- fensible." And this is the man who charges me with being an enemy of Orangemen." At St. Catherines, the subject was also broached, in the follow- ing language : " I will not detain you by speaking of what is called the Orange difficulty, because I will not weary you. I will say, however, that I joined the Orangemen, not when they were a powerful party, but in 184)1, long before I entered Parliament, when they were proscribed and oppressed, when they had been prevented by law from walking in procession, and when a bill was before Parliament to prevent them from acting as jurors or constables, or from holding any office 'whatever. Mr. Brown, however, who used to hound on the Baldwin Government to pass these measures against the body, and said " we have our foot on their necks, we have therh down, and we must keep them down," became, in 1857, almost an Orangeman. He went to an Orange Lodge and made a speech about William of Orange and Nassau, and all that because he wanted the Orangemen's votes. The other day, again, he came out about the Orangemen, at Kingston, who, I think, were a little indiscreet, but who were ill-used and in- .sulted, and said their Course was wanton and malignant, that they were a parcel of rowdies and blackguards, because at the time he wanted to keep well with the Duke of Newcastle. No body was 46 then so complaisant as Mr. Brown ; he almost kissed the Duke of Newcastle's feet when he went before him with a budget of griev- ances. But the Duke, throwing them indignantly aside, said he ha.d nothing to do with that sort of thing, but that he must go with his grievances to the Parliament of Canada, and from that moment Mr. Brown tried to put upon me all the responsibility, and said I had wantonly insulted the Orangemen. [Loud and prolonged applause.] Mr. Brown has now iilsulted, now cajoled the Orange body. Does he think they are children ] Does he think they are fools ? If so he is mistaken ; men can be fools once, but not twice — at least not those who have the good sense of the members of the Orange Association. [Loud Cheers.] " ANDERSON'S EXTRADITION. At St. Catherines, Mr. Macdonald thus alluded to the Anderson Extradition Case : " I would like to say a few words about that Anderson extradition case, as an attempt is being made to get up a cry against us on the ground that, as they say, we are going to hand over a fugitive slave to certain death. [Hear.] There was a treaty made, called the Ash- burton treaty, negotiated by Lord Ashburton on the part of England, and by the celebrated Daniel Webster, on the part of the United States. — It was essential, as we were bordering on the United States, that there should be some provision made by which criminals escaping from one country to the other — robbers, murderers, counter- feiters, violators, &c., — should not thereby get rid of the consequences of their crimes ; and it was accordingly provided in that treaty that a man who had escaped from the States into Canada, or vice versA, and who should be shown, to the satisfaction of the magistrate, to have committed certain crimes, should be sent back .[Hear.] Now, in this case, a negro slave is charged with murder. — The evidence relating to his crime was taken in the ordinary way before a magistrate in Brantford, whom the Globe calls "my Henchman, Bill MatthewSj" and he sent it down to the Government with his certificate as a magistrate, that, in his opinion, the case had been made out, and that the party could be surrendered by the government. Now, when a magistrate makes such a statement, the government may at once surrender the accused, the responsibility being primarily thrown on the magistrate under the treaty, and under the law which we passed to carry out the treaty. But as this was a case where there was likely to be a good deal of excitement, and as it was the first instance in which the treaty was called upon to be enforced with respect to a runaway slave who had committed murder, and the question was involved of the right of a slave to use the knife to procure freedom, I told Mr. Freeman, who defended the negro, that, though I difiered with him 47 as to his law, there should be a writ of habeas corpus issued, and the matter could be brought before the bench. Were we not right in this? [« Certainly, » "right," "right."] Was it not more proper that in a case of life and death, a case affecting a man's existence, there should be no doubt at all as to whether he ought to be surrendered or not ? [Hear, hear.] So anxious was I, moreover, that there should be no obstruction in the way ' of his case being brought before the courts, that I wrote to Mr. Freeman to see that the man was fully defended, and that I, on behalf of the government, would undertake to pay the negro's costs. [Loud applause.] Strange to say, however, Mr. Brown, of the Globe, attempts to make it a matter of political capital against me, that instead of sending the man to be tried in the States — instead of using my power as a inember of the government, and I had the power to send him at once to Missouri — I sent the matter to the Judges, to have it fully decided whether a case was fully made out against him. [Cheers;] I am quite astonished at this, for I would rather have any one of my fellow subjects, be he white or black, tried by the Magna Charta, by the law of the land, by a legal tribunal, than have his case decided by any Cabinet whatever. The case now stands thus. If the courts decide that the man ought to be discharged, there is an end of it ; and no allegation can be afterwards made by the United States, if we should apply for- the extradition of a Canadian criminal, that they will not surrender him because we have refused to give up a murderer to them. What more considerate thing could we do than to say, " We will not surrender him at once, though we have the power, but we will have- his case tried before our courts, and as he is poor we will furnish him with money to defend himself." Yet the Glebe, to this very day, basely insinuates that I am using underhand means to procure a judgment against him." [Cheers.] (*) (*) The following letter was addressed to Mr. Macdonald by Mr. S. B. F^eeman^. Q. C, formerly Member of Assembly for the City of Hamilton, and politically op' posed to Mr. Maodoaald. He acted as Counsel on behalf of Anderso.n — Hamilton, 18th December, 1860. Mtdeah Si», I can hardly tell you how gratified I was at the receipt of your telegram, for it;; gave me the assurance that the Crown will afford every aid to bring Anderson's Case- before the Court of Error and Appeal : — The matter of .expense is of minor conside- ration. I ha-ve the srongest hope that I shall be able to relieve you from the neces- sity of m aking an order for the surrender of " the negro." Your action- in this matter is alike creditable to your feelings of humanity andf. your sense of the importance of the question in a na,tional point of view. I will at once com m unicate -with Mr. Harrison. Yours truly, S B. FREEMAN. To the Hon. J. a. Macdonald^ Atty. Qenl., Kingston. Part III. — Enumeration of the measures passed bj the Grovermnents of which Mr. Macdonald has been a member. CLERGY RESERVES. Mr. Macdonald spoke of the settlement of the Clergy Reserves at a number of places. The first extract is from a speech delivered at St. Thomas : " We have called, the attention of the legislature to, and have succeeded in passing many measures, and I am happy to say that the greatest proof of the value of our measures is this, that even those vi^ho were most strongly opposed to us, who were most fierce in their attacks on the government, their motives and their course, while the measures were before the House of As- sembly, have acquiesced in those measures since they became law, so that all our legislation has received the general sanction of the people and of the Opposition themselves, and not a single one of those great measures that the government has introduced and carried into operation, has any oile ever attempted to repeal. [Applause.] I may take the measure of the Clergy Reserves, of which you have spoken, which was most strenously opposed while it was passing through parliament. I may take the Seigniorial Tenure question, that of Law Reform, and if leisure would permit, I could go over a long list of our acts, not one of which has ever been assailed by the papers even of our opponents, but all of which have been accepted as laws which were proper and right. [Applause.] It is said, sir, that that country is the happiest which has no history. It may be exciting ^and pleasing for the reader to read of great wars and great conquerors, but that history, so excitii,';- to the reader, tells of misery and des- truction, to the country cosicerned. Those wars, though they may have brought out the great talents of great minds, have been ruinous to thousands of people. And so it is with administrations. That government which is satisfied with being useful — with doing its duty to the people who placed it in power — which, when it finds a prac- tical evil, sets itself to work to reduce it in a practical way, is not a government about which you can get up much enthusiasm. I am happy to say, however, that the administrations of which I have formed part have been of this kind. They have been contented with 49 being useful in their day and generation, and whenever any thing has been pointed out that was necessary for the reform of law, or for the protection of the liberty of the subject, they have met it, and instead of making it a matter of party agitation, or getting up before It a cry at the hustings, they have remedied the evil, calmly and quietly, and they have their reward. [Cheers.J I say we have our reward. [Loud cheers.] I shall be quite satisfied, after present disputes are forgotten, long after this Government has ceased to be to have it engraved upon my tombstone that I was concerned in the' settlement of the clergy reserve question. [Hear.] But while I claim that for myself and those who acted with me, I must bring it as a distinct charge against those who were politically opposed to us that although they had agitated this question from the beginning' ialthough they upbraided us with trying to raise up a State church and a dominant religion, yet, when we came down with a bill to filially settle that question, it met with the most uncompromising hostility from all of them. From the moment I introduced the bill, until it received the royal sanction, it was opposed by those who. had agitated the country, but were not sincere in their expressed desire to settle it. [Hear, hear.] They wanted to use it still as a political lever, on the hustings and on the stump. They were regardless of the evils caused by that civil and social and religious quarrel so long as they could use it, and say " we go for a settlement, but these old Tories are trying to rule over you, to destroy the equality be- tween man and man, religion and religion, and won't hear of it." This country has a right to complain of the partizan and unparliamentary opposition which took place on that occasion. [Applause.] — Thank heaven, however, the measure became law at last, and now we have peace, and quiet, and prosperity ! Every possible objection was taken to the bill, but the greatest was, that there was a certain sum taken by way of commutation, and given to the English, Scotch and Roman Catholic Clergy, which, by the action of previous govern- ments, had been a charge upon that fund. You must remember, that we can't have all we want, and we must endeavor to get as nearly what we want as possible. The Clergy Reserves were settled by an Imperial act of Parliament in 1840. — That act gave certain preferences to certain churches, but notwithstanding this, Mr. Bald- win, the head of the Reform party, said in the House of Assembly, that the man would be an enemy to his country who should re-open the question. It was, however, agitated, and we had to appeal to the Imperial Parliament again to give us power to alter the former settle- ment of 184)0, which we ourselves should have been happy not to have disturbed, had not the country been again convulsed about it. We received that power, but there was a proviso in the act, that we should not affect the position of these individuals who had stipends charged upon the fund, to whom the British government considered the faith of the Queen was pledged. — We had, therefore, either to pas sa 4> 50 bill, preserving these rights, or we could have no bill at all. We did pas?p the bill, and, instead of paying out to each clergyman his annual salary, and keeping the body as pensioners upon the public purse, we calcu- lated its value to him on principles well known to actuaries, and paid the amount to each clergyman entitled to receive it. The clergy were, indeed, enormous losers by the transaction, for, by the law, as it stood, they had a fair claim to one-half of the Clergy Reserves. But they felt that they were ministers of peace, and for the sake of peace they accepted our settlement. , If there is any thing which, more than another^ has exalted the clerical profession in my eyes, it is that act. The clergy were paid their very moderate allowance of j6100, £150 and je200 a year, and the whole of the balance of the fund, consisting of an enormous sum of money, £1,000,000, or so, was ready to be devoted to the municipalities of Upper Canada, among which it was divided, and which hiive the privilege of applying it to the making of roads, to the furtherance of education, or any other purpose they please. [Applause.] There is one great advantage which we secured by this mode of settlement. The Opposition contended that the ori- ginai reservation of the clergy reserves was a fraud on the people of Canada — that it should be abolished, annulled, made void, and that the whole of the clergy reserves should be placed on the same footing as the crown lands. What would have been the consequence 1 As the public lands are sold, the proceeds are put into the public chest, and Lower Canada gets her half, or, as the Globe says, her three-fourths of that revenue. If we had carried out the views of the Opposition in settling the clergy reserves, the clergy lands would have become a part of the public domain, and Lower Canada w^ould have her share of their proceeds, of which she does not now get one six pence. [Hear.] I may call the attention of the meeting to this, because you have heard it very strongly urged and repeated until perhaps you have begun to believe it, that there has been on our part a subser- viency to Lower Canada interests — to Lower Canada domination. While in Upper Canada the municipalities have divided the whole of the proceeds of the clergy reserves among themselves, the case in Lower Canada has been very different. In Lower Canada, ever since it was made a Frenchcolony by the French Kings, the expenses of the administration of justice, of the erection of jails, and institu- tions of that kind, were charged on the public funds ; but my col- league, Mr. Cur tier, the premier, who has been so much assailed for being altogether a Lower Canadian in spii-it,and attempting to injure Upper Canada, he it was who introduced the new system. — He has taken the clergy reserves of Lower Canada, which ought to have been divided among the municipalities, if the same plan had been followed as in Upper Canada, and applied them to the building of prisons and the administration of justice, so that instead of these being a charge upon public funds, Upper Canada might not be called upon to pay any thing. [Cheers.] 61 At Brahtford, the Leader reports the hon. gentleman to have said i "Before the election of 1854there was a solemn meeting of the Con- servative leaders, who came to the unanimous conclusion that if the people of Upper Canada decided at the polls to re-open the Clergy Reserve question, they would not oppose it. They were a small party of nineteen, and went to their constituents expressing their desire of abiding the decision of the people of Upper Canada upon the questiouj they had not the remotest expectation of entering office, but had shaped their course for the purpose of giving peace to the country. When the present Administration was formed, they settled that question, although opposed by Mr. Brown, who from first to last voted against the bill. And why ? Because the Government went for jus- tices—and scant justice it was — to the clergymen of this country who had gone into the wilds of Canada upon the faith of the British Govern- ment, who promised them an adequate subsistence. But the people of the country, who fought for a principle, and not for the sake of the money said the confiscation of the lands would add to the treasury, stood by the Government, and when the bill was introduced they supported it, quite satisfied that those clergymen should not be turned into the streets to beg their bread. He was proud to say that the course taken by the clergy was highly creditable to them. They said " We know our lands were valuable and in a few years will be a source of great wealth ; yet secure us only against want for the remainder of our lives, and we will give the property up for the sake of having peace in the country, and that we who are the ministers of peace and kindness, may not be the means of unhappiness and dis- cord." The consequence was that brother was no longer arrayed against brother, religion against religion, the question was settled forever and the country was at peace. He then alluded to the argu- ment of those opposed to the government on the question, that the Reserve should become Crown lands. If the course advocated by the opposition had been carried out, the revenue arising from the sale of the lands would have gone into the public chest, and the people of Lower Canada would have had the same right to the money as they had to that accruing from other Crown lands ; whereas, by the provi- sions of the government measure, the people of Ujtper Canada, after settling with the clergy, had a million of money to distribute among the municipalities. If the other plan had been adopted Lower Canada would have had one half, and according to Mr. Brown, two-thirds of this sum." The next and last extract relating to the Clergy Reserves is from a speech delivered at London : " I may again mention, though I have alluded to it before, that prominent question of the Clergy Reserves. Yon all know how the country was agitated about that. In 1836 it was the cause of a 4,. 52 , rebellion. In 1854 it assumed almost the same formidable dimen- sions. The government of the day took up that question, resolved that it should no more be a question of strife, setting man against man, and family against family, and the settlement was made in a manner to which the whole country has acceded, so that there is no longer a feeling that one church , is dominant, or that one man has ecclesiastically any superiority over another. The Clergy Reserve bill, which I had the honor to introduce, declared that henceforth there should bo a severance of the connection between Church and State, and that every man should worship God as he chose. In settling this, we were surrounded with difficulties, but the chief difficulty was caused by agitators who had kept the question afloat for use at public meetings, as a means of working against the party who were sup- posed to support things as they were — None were more disappointed than those persons when the government measure was introduced ; and, if we had not known them, we should have been surprised at their persistent opposition to a bill calculated to remove all difficulties in a practical way — [Hear, hear.] Now, gentlemen, as this is the first great measure we introduced ; one too, on which we staked our reputa- tion and existence, I may repeat what I have said on previous occasions on the subject, [llear.] You know that in 1840, there was an Act of Parliament passed by the Imperial Legislature which alone had the power of dealing with the question, making a certain settlement of the .Clergy Reserves. An agitation, however, arose in the country against that measure, and there was a strong feeling that the settlement should be altered, although it had been adopted as final by the Reform and Conservative parties j and, although Mr. Baldwin, [whose patriotism, now that he is in his grave, no body doubts, or his sincere desire, accord- ing to his light and conscience, to act for the benefit of the country,] stated in my presence, that the man who should attempt to disturb the settlement of 1840, would be an enemy of his country. However, it was again agitated, and to remove that occasion of sectional strife, we were obliged to apply to the Imperial Parliament to allow us to legislate upon it. That leave was granted, provided we preserved the faith of the British Crown, which was considered pledged to the clergymen whose stipends were paid out of the reserve funds. We knew that we could not get the royal assent to any measure which did not preserve the rights of these clergymen, and we introduced a clause for the purpose of settling that forever, providing that instead of being paid their incomes from year to year, until the last clergy- man should have died, there should be a commutation of these sti- pends, on commercial principles, that each man should have his life valued, and the value of his salary capitalized and invested for the good of tlie church. This clause we had great difficulty in carrying, and one source of attack was, that we were giving a laro-© sum of money to favored churches., that we were showing undue favor to the dominant Church of England, and the established Church of o3 Scotland, and were making a special grant to Roman Catholicism, which had the small sum of ^500 a year charged upon the fund. Yon must remember that every clergyman who had .£150 or £200 a year charged upon the fund had by law a mortgage on the whole of the clergy reserves, and we could not devote a farthing of their proceeds to any purpose so long as one such clergyman remained alive. Under our plan, however, we paid them the fair value of their incomes, and were thus enabled to apply the whole of the enormous balance to the local purposes of Upper Canada. To the credit of the churches con- cerned, and of their clergy be it said, that, great as was their loss, and enormous their sacrifice — for they had a claim on the full half of the proceeds — they acquiesced in the settlement we proposed, because they felt that they ought not to be the cause of strife, and would not be placed in a false position, and have it said that they looked more after temporal than spiritual things. Though the pittances paid were small, I am happy, to have personally received assurances from the clergy of these churches — from their bishops downwards — that they are happy our legislation succeeded. [Hear, hear.] You may re- collect that we took a different view altogether from the Opposition on that question. The Opposition contended that the original reser- vation of one-seventh of the lands of Upper and Lower Canada was a fraud upon the people — that it was made against their will, and was against their interests. It was therefore said that the reservation should be wiped out, and the Clergy Reserves considered as being a portion of the public lands of Canada, and dealt with like the other Crown Lands. What would have been the consequences if that even had been carried out? As fast as the Clergy Reserve Lands were sold, the proceeds would have gone into the public treasury, Lower Canada would have got her share, and if the Globe is to be believed, by far the larger share. "What is now the fact 1 We have settled the cause of strife, satisfied the Clergy, and appropriated more than a million of money to the Municipalities of Upper Canada, to be expended for Upper Canada purposes aJone, in making roads and bridges, for paying their debt, or for other useful objects. [Loud cheers.] " CROWN LANDS MANAGEMENT. ' In reference to the course pursued by the Government regard- ing Crown Lands, Mr. Macdonald, at Milbrook, thus spoke of the action taken by the Governrnent : " The system adopted by Mr. Vankoughnet, which that hon. gentle- man had fully explained at a dinner in the West, he (Mr. Macdonald) was happy to say had been very successful. That system was attacked strongly by the Chairman of Mr. Brown's meeting at Lon- 54 don. It Avas denounced as injurious to the country ; that it was similar to the old Canada Company's system, and that it allowed large portions of land to be bought by rich men for the purpose of keeping out the poor man and actual settler. How unjust these objections were they would see when he stated what the plan of the government was, which in a new country like this he thought was the best that could be adopted. One of the chief obstructions to the openin wof the back country was the enormous expense of the surveys. In order to encourage immediate settlement and save this great expense the government laid out the external boundaries of the town- ships, but did not survey them into lots. They put these townships into the market, and any on'e might become a purchaser. But no one was allowed to take the land for speculative purposes. The purchaser .was obliged to survey the whole of the township into lots within six months after the purchase, and then to settle the land before he could procure a patent ; and every lot that was not actually settled within a certain period reverted to the Crown. And not only was this the case ; but in order to prevent any thing like a monopoly of the land — the purchaser, like the Canada Company, holding it until the industry of the surrounding farmers had made it valuable — every second town- ship only was sold. By retaining one township in this manner, if at any time the party owning land asked too high a price for it from the settler, all the latter had to do was to step into the next township and get it at 4(S. an acre. [Cheers.] By the system adopted by the Government they had saved the great expense of the surveys of the townships ; they procured their survey within six months after sale, and their settlement within two years ; and the settler was secured against any loss by speculators. The gentlemen who had purchased lands from the Government on these conditions had done so, not as liad been charged to make profit for themselves, but with a view of sending on agricultural men from England to settle upon them. This plaii did not, however, prevent emigrants coming to Canada on their own account, but formed an additional and valuable aid to the settle- ment of the whole country. But, it was charged, the Government sold land to th^ rich in order that they should benefit at the expense of the poor man. Instead of that being the case, the Government made the rich men who bought, the agents for the improvement of the wild lands of the country. [Loud cheers.] He made this expla- nation, knowing the people of Cavan and of the country to be deeply interested in the question of settling the country, and to place the policy of the Government in its true light before them." 55 SEIGNORIAL TENURE. At the Brantford dinner, Mr. Macdonald referred as follows to the Seignorial Tenure question and its settlement : " The Government had appropriated ;fi30,000 a year for the purpose of wiping out the obstruction to enterprise and advancement which the feudal tenure presented. This seemed a large snm, but they had been in the habit of expending much larger amounts for the purpose of making roads in Upper Canada, and opening the country to settlers. And if they had done so, were they not justified in expending the amount for the purpose of opening up one of the most beautiful countries under the sun to British enterprise and British, skill, for an Englishman would never think of settling in Lower C^anada, when the Seignorial Tenure existed. When the Govern- ment of Brown, Dorion a,nd McGee was formed, it was the first stipulation that this question should be immediately settled and the money paid to Seigniors. There was this diiference, however, in the modes proposed— -that whereas the present Government were taking out j63Q,000 out of the public revenue to pay the Seigniors, the Brown-Dorion Administration had made an arrangement whereby tliey Avould take out ^500,000 in one lump from the Municipal Loan Fund. [Cheers.] While the present Government were willing to pay for their dinner a shilling a day, the Brown-Dorion Cabinet agreed to run in debt fop their " grub " for a whole year. [Laughter and cheers.] "But" said Mr. Brown, "we were to pay out of local funds in Lower Canada*" Why, already every penny of local funds had been appropriated for the purpose, and there was not a farthing left. Crown dues, marriage license fees and every other available fund had been set aside ; and when it was stated that ^£500,000 was to be taken out of local funds, something was stated which was impossible. On this point Mr. Brown had been contradicted by his own Attorney General, Hon. J. S. Macdonald, who declared that the money was to have been paid out of the revenue of the Province, and was not to be paid back. Not a single member from Upper Canada dare get up and endorse Mr. Brown's statement, because they well knew that it Was not correct. [Cheers] And because the Government had settled that question, because they had introduced into Lower Canada pre- cisely the same peace as in Upper Canada — because they had opened the door for enterprise and industry — they were attacked and abused by the Opposition, who had they the power would have settled it oil terms far more disadvantageous to Upper Canada. [Applause.]." 56 At St. Catharines, Mr. Macdonald gave the histoiy of the at- tempts to settle the Seignorial Question, and the Constitutional tlius reports his language : « You have heard a good deal, probably, about the Seignorial Tenure, and how it has been charged that we have wilfully applied the funds , of Upper Canada to improve Lower Canada, and to remove its Seignorial burdens. I wish particularly to make a few remarks on this subject, inasmuch as Mr. Brown, in a speech just published in the Globe, says more that is untrue than' he has ever done in any one speech before. The Seignorial Tenura was a great burden on Lower Canada. No man in the Seignories could be a freeholder, or could freely sell his lands to whom he pleased, but had to pay rentes to the landlord, and if he sold his farm had to pay the Seigneur one tenth of the purchase money, while if the landlord did not like his new tenant all he had to do was to say, " I will give you ten per cent, more than the purchase money agreed upon, and take the farm myself." The farmer had to draw his grist to the landlord's mill, though it might be a bad one, and had to perform degrading duties, which were not always, though they might be, always enforced. [Cheers.] This, of course, kept the Seignories closed to British settlement and the employment of British capital. [Hear, hear.] Now, the fact is, that several bills were, from time to time, introduced to remedy this, and one charge made by Mr. Brown in his speech at London, reported in his newspaper to-day, is that, in 1852 or 1853, he says I introduced a E-esolution into Parliament against the passing of a Seignorial Act, under which the Seigneurs were to be paid out of the general revenue of the Province, and that I said it was a Lower Canada matter, to which we ought not to be called upon to contribute any portion. Now Mr. Brown knew that, although he was stating what might be literally true, it was altogether false in spirit. We opposed the Seignorial bill of that day because its proposition was simply to lower the rentes, which were thought to be too high, and to compensate the Seigneurs out of the general revenue. " This " said I " does not relieve Lower Canada from the seignorial system. We were quite willing to remove that curse from Lower Canada, if you will sweep it away entirely." My then leader. Sir Allan McNab, said he would go as far as any one to relieve Lower Canada from the degrading system under which she was suffering ; but that merely lowering the rentes was of no good to us in Upper Canada, that British people would still be prevented from going in to settle. We then pledged ourselves, however, that we would go for any rational measure which should make Lower Canada a country fit for freemen to live in, and, sir, we have faithfully carried out that pledge, while we have done equal justice to Upper and Lower Ca- nada. (Hear). We first took all the local funds that could be appro- priated, and we then thought the balance required would be £150,000, 57 so we provided that that amount should be taken out of the treasury, but at the same time we provided that whenever it was done, an equal amount should be taken to be expended in Upper Canada for Upper Canada purposes. We were obliged to form a commission to ascertain what the value of the. rights of the seigneurs w^s. That commission has nearly finished its labors. It found that the appro- priation would be insufficient, and we therefore provided that a sum of ^30,000 a year should be paid out of the general revenue, to get rid of the tenure for ever. We can well afford that sum. We pay more than that every year for opening up roads in the back woods, and iurely, if it is important that a new country should be developed, it is much more important that an old country should be, which lies between us and the sea. (Hear). When Mr. Brown came into power he had to make nearly the same arrangement, and although in his London speech he ventures to draw a distinction between our course and his, I think the advantage is altogether with us. I see he now admits that the Municipal Loan Fund for Lower Canada, which is a charge on the whole Province, was to have been used by him although he formerly said, a local fund was to have been taken for the purpose. His proposition was to take £500,000 at once, and add it to our debt, to pay the seigneurs altogether. Ours .simply takes the interest of that sum, annually, which we can pay without running into debt any deeper, and mortgaging for it our property and our children's welfare. [Cheers.] " At St. Thomas, Mr. Macdonald spoke of the oppressive nature of the Feudal imposts, and shewed that their removal opened up Lower Canada to the enterprize and capital of Her Majesty's subjects. He is thus reported by the Prototype : " There is another question, sir, to which I will call you attention, because it has been much used against us. There has been much, misapprehension in regard to it, and I venture to predict you have heard it at the hustings, and electoral contests. I mean the question of the seignorial tenure. I spoke about it at some length at Brantford, and was afterwards told by many gentlemen that they had been under a total misapprehension until then, as to its details. (Hear), It is well known that, in the old French settlements, the tenure of lands was altogether different from what it is in Upper Canada. Here, a man gets his estate in free and common soccage ; he is lord of the soil, and if his farm is paid for, he has the free and exclusive right to it, for himself, his family and friends while he lives, and for his heirs when he dies. In the seignories, the case was very different. The whole country is divided into seignories, as Upper Canada is into townships, and the seigneur was lord of the soil, while the habitant or farmer did not own the land, but paid 3d or 6d or in some cases more 58 per acre, as a yearly rent. In addition, he was obliged to perforin a great many other diilies to the landlord, degrading to himself, which left him a mere lessee, instead of being a freeholder. This retarded the whole material progress of the country, as you will perceive when I tell you, gentlemen, that a farmer could not go to the best grist mill in his neighborhood, but whether his landlord's was good or bad, though it was built on the old system, which was in vogue when the U. S. loyalists came in, though it might grind very bad flour indeed, he had to go there, though there might be a most magnificent building close by, furnished with all the latest improvements, owned by another man. More, if the holder sold a fatm, he was obliged to give the landlord one-tenth of the price. — The habitant had to furnish a certain number of fowls or so many capons a-year to the seigneur-^ he had to perform corvee and other feudal services. (Marks of atten- tion). If an Englishman, Irishman or Scotchman, wished to go in and buy— you'will remember,.in connection with this, that the great cry of Mr. Papineau was to keep the British out of the country — all the landlord had to say the French farmer who sold was, " I will give you ten per cent more than the price agreed upon, break oiFthe bar- gain, and buy the farm myself." (Hear). Now, such a system— the system of the dark ages — was ruinous to the interest of Lower Ca- nada — no Englishman would settle there, no emigrant go, in, so long as he could get lands in Upper Canda in free and common soccage. The whole country was kept bound, although Lower Canada ought to be prosperous like ourselves, for it lies between us and the sea, we being behind it, and just as much interested in it prosperity as Elgin is in that of Middlesex. — Now, other Governments besides that of which I am a member had felt the difficulty of the question, but we first undertook to settle it. The seigniorial tenure was like the clergy reserves in Upper Canada. There was a necessity that it should be settled ; and we took it up as boldly as we did the other question here, and there, as here, the political mountebanks and agitators did not in reality desire its settlement. In the first place, we appropriated all the local or special funds that could be found in Lower Canada ; there were yery few of them, but we took them to compensate the seigniors. JOr the seigniors had deeds for their rights ; they had the same claim to'their rental and other rights as you. have to your farms. They had to be compensated, and to do so, as I tell you, we took all the local funds, and provided, that if a further sum should be wanted, a small sum of £30,000 per anniim should be taken from the public chest. The value of the Cla-iras of the seignioirs was carefully examined by sworn arbi- flrators, who went from seigniory to seigniory, and found out what they were worth ; arid in our legislation we provided, that instead of paying them the capital, we should only pay them the yearly rental to which they were entitled. Now, £30,000 is not a very large sum ; as I said at Brantfbrd,'we ta;ke every year larger sums from the public JreVerities to pay for the survey of new lands, for opening up new 59 l-bads through the wilderness, in order to allow the settlement of the Country to go on. [Hear.] If we can afford to p^iy ^30,000, to open up new country to immigration, how much more important is it to do the same in Lower Canada, and open up the whole Province to Bri- tish capital, to British enterprise, to the British settler. [Applause.] The present Government carried their measure against a most bitter Opposition, they have since been bitterly assailed for taking the funds of the Province for a Lower Canadian purpose, and by none more bit- terly than by Mr. Brown, who, in his most able and energetic style — and how energetic he is you are all aware — denounces us for appro- priating all the local funds of Lower Canada, and then taking je30,000 a year more, to make Lower Canada like Upper Canada, a place fit for Britons to live in— [Hear]— and after all the misrepresenta- tions, you will be surprised when I tell you that when Mr. Brown formed his junction with Mr. Doribn, he was of course obliged to as- sume the same position as we did — of course he had to settle that question — and the first stipulation made between him and his Lower Canada colleagues was, that the seigniors should be paid in full. [Hear, hear.] You hear very frequently that these sums were to have been paid by Mr. Brown out of the local funds, but that is a mere misrepresentation ; there were no local funds in Lower Canada, every local fund that could by any possibility be used for the purpose of ■repaying the seigniors, had already been appropriated by law and iset -£iside for that object, and £30,000 had to be taken from the general Revenue to pay the balance. When the term " local funds" is USisd, you hear what could not in the nature of things exist, and besides, you learn from the statement of all Mr. Brown's Lower Canada col- Ifeagues and from that of Mr. J. S. Macdonald, his Attorney General West and my successor, that the payment of the Seigniors from public -funds was the basis on which the administration w^as formed. [Hear.] Of course, when Mr. J. S. Macdonald s'ated that, we knew it WdS "true, because we knew in the first place that no government could be fdrnied ■with the assistance of Lower Canada unless on that basis, and in the second place we knew tiiat there were no local fitnds. When we hear that local funds were to be used, the meaning is this : ■^e had a municipal loan filtid in Upper and Lower Canada, under •W-hich the municipalities borrowed money, and the Province superin- tended the payment. The Upper Canada fund had been expended Vj the municipalities ; they had borrowed every farthing of it. In Lower Canada, they were more prudent, or not so enterprising, arid -tbe arrangement was, thalt out df that ftind, \vhich was a locarfund ih one sense, they were to half taken half a million of pounds, ^Ut Although it was a local fund in one sense, the Province had to pay ■for it. [Hear.] The Province was re^porisible'fo'r it. Now, it was ia, distinct understanding between Mr. Brciwh 4rid his collfeagu'es /that the :e500,000 should be thus added to the already very iJir'ge debt of Canada, instead of taking as we proposed Je30,000 60 a year., That annual sum we can pay almost without feeling it, but they were to have taken half a million of money — two mil- lions of dollars— and added it to the debt of Canada ! When our measure was going through, we were surprised to find the opposition it encountered in the'Upper House, but we soon found out the reason — the seigniors did not want to be obliged to receive merely the interest ; they wanted the cash in hand, to lend it out at eight or ten per cent. We, however, said, " If you want the interest, you can have it, but if you want to settle your claim for ever, we will give you seventy-five per cent of it, three shillings and ninepeiice on the dollar — if you give us a distinct profit, we will pay you the cash, not otherwise." [Applause.] Well, we settled the question, in a manner the least burdensome to the public chest, without diminishing our credit, and by appropriating £30,000 a year, as I am ha]ipy to feel we can do without any inconvenience, w^e opened up a great country to the enterprise of British subjects. [Loud cheers.]" The last extract relating to' the subject which we shall offer is taken from a speech at Hamilton, as follows : " 1 now pass on to the question relating to the Seigniorial Tenure. I have been subjected to a great deal of attack in connection with this ; taunted with wilfully abandoning the rights of Upper Canada and allowing Lower Canada to pocket ;e30,000 a year from the public chest for a local purpose. You all know the nature of the seignorial tenure ; whereas, in Upper Canada, every immigrant who comes to this country buys a farm, whether with the capital he brings or the money he saves, and that farm belongs to him and his heirs for ever, the Lower Canada farmer was in a condition of the veriest slavery. He and his children were obliged to pay a rental for every acre of his farm, for all time, and by no possibility could he attain to be a free- holder. He was obliged to take his grist to his landlord's mill, be it ever so poor and oldfashioned, and pay him toll. He could not sell the farm he had inherited from his fathers, except he paid over fully ten per cent of the purchase money to the seigneur, and this, though he had got the land in a wil(i state, and improved it in every possible way himself. Moreover, if the landlord did. not like the new buyer, he could break up the sale by paying for the land 10 per cent above the price agreed upon, and he could thus, according to the cry that was raised in Papiiieau's time, " Keep out the British." Well, while Upper Canada was increasing in wealth and prosperity, Lower Canada was oppressed and depressed, British enterprize was kept out and immigration all driven up West, owing to these laws. And, as the prosperity of the two parts is as mutually dependent as is that of Wentworth and the adjoining county, we resolved to settle the question. The first thing we did was to appropriate every local fund 61 there was in Lower Canada to pay the seigneurs, for the courts had decided in favor of their claims, and it would have been confiscation and robbery to deprive them of their property. And as their funds did not seem sufficient to defray the whole amount, the Legislature set aside ^6150,000 from the public chest, and finally, after the Com- missioners had visited every Seigniory, it v/as found that £500,000 might arrange for the whole thmg, or that £30,600 a year would pay the value of the rentals, &c. We were surprised to find a strong resistance made to our bill by the Seigneurs in the Upper House, but at length we found they were trying to defeat it and the Admi- nistration together, because they expected a better bill from Mr. Brown, who would have paid them their claims in full, cash down, whereas we proposed to give them only the interest, or 75 per cent of the capital, if they chose. [Cheers and laughter.] — Mr. Brown admits that he was to have paid the £500,000 in full, but he says it •was from local funds, whereas in fact there were no local funds, we having appropriated them all. The local fund was the Lower Canada Municipal Loan Fund, which is not a local one in the proper sense, because the united Province is responsible for its repayment. [Cheers.]" THE RECIPROCITY TREATY AND THE ADJUSTMENT OF THE TARIFF. On the occasion of the dinner at Hamilton, Mr. Macdonald remarked : — - " It is, as I have often said before, useless to discuss the abstract principles of Free Trade and Protection, but it is matter for consola- tion that the Tariff has been so adjusted as incidental to encouraging manufacturing industry here. I hope all will see the advantages of a home market. [Hear.] I cannot go the length of the Chairman [Mr. Buchanan] who has so long applied his mind to finance and questions of political economy, in stating that it would be well almost to increase our debt for the purpose of securing protection to our manufacturers, but I feel that whoever created this debt, the Go- vernments of which I have been a member have the credit of com- mencing the system by which, through it, to raise up a home mar- ket, and give a double market to the farmer and the labourer. If we were altogether an agricultural country, we should be dependent for the value of our produce on the quantity of the harvest on the Baltic and Black Seas. As it is, when we have attained our full development, we shall not be so. Manufactories are springing up, East and West, and I hope this great commercial City will see the advantage of encouraging them. [Hear, hear.] If you go to Montreal and look at the enormous factories at work near the canal basin, you will realise what a source of wealth to a city and country they are. You have here no other source of wealth, save your commercial busi- 62 ness and interconi'se with the back ttbnniry. When I look at that, I think how, by the encouragement of manufactures, you might qua- druple your population and relieve Hamilton from its present tempo- rary state of depression, and I hope, then, we should have as strong supporters here as we have in every other part of the country where manufacturers are considered to be of value. [Applause.] I shall now make one other charge against Mr, Brown, of which, if he be guilty, he is deeply reprehensible. One great cause of the prosperity of the farmer in Upper Canada is the reciprocity treaty and the con- sequent interchange of agricultural commodities and raw materials; He has found a market where there was none at all before for him. Although that treaty has existed for 10 years, and is to exist for 10 years yet ; although the faith of Great Britain and the United State* is pledged to its continuance, although on no principle of internatio- nal law can it be repealed, although its repeal would bring injury tc Canada as well as the United States, it has been the aim of Mr. Brown to raise in the legislature of the United States a feeling against it, and the Globe has been constantly filled with articles cal- ling on the Americans to complain of the injustice to them of our ta- riff. [Cries of " shame,"] What have we done save for the pur- pose of revenue, to put duties on manufactured articles ? Now 'the treaty does not relate to manufactures at all ! But because we chose to increase the duties on manufactured goods w^hich do not come within the treaty, and although they have increased the duties on si- milar articles in the United States to an extent considerably larger than ours, so that more duty is payable on goods going from Canada to the United States, than on those coming from the United States into Canada Mr. Brown says we are doing the Americans injustice ! If the Reciprocitv Treaty is repealed, it will be due to such agitators as he. [Hear.] But hear what the Constitution sa.ys,Xh.e organ of Mr. Buchanan's administration : " Canadian Sentiments on the Reciprocity Treaty. — In noticing the ap- pointment of Mr. Hatch by the President to examine into the operation of the reciprocity treaty upon revenue and trade between Canada and the United States, the Toronto Globe admits that the Canadian tariff is in violation of the spirit and intent of the treaty, and operates injuriously to American interests. Ill consequence of this course if action, the Gtofie anticipates a partial or total abrogation of the treaty, altough it was agreed that it should remain in force ten years. It is supposed that the United States will maintain that the ten years' clause may be rightfully set aside, upon the ground that the treaty has been broken by the imposition of higher duties than was contemplated by either parly when the treaty was entered into. Lord Lyons, in a despatch to the Governor General, speaks of thi» ns follows : " As the Consiiluiion is the orjjan of President Buchanan's Administration, and is in fact the Official paper, 1 thought it right to express to General Cass, and to the Assistant Secretary of Slate, iVIr. Appleton, my surprise, that aa ar- ticle of tiuch a character should have been allowed to appear in it. " €3 I am sure, after reading the article, you will think Lord Lyons had a right to express such sentiments. [Applause.] This is an instance of the sound patriotism of the leader of the Opposition ! He thought it would be a good rod to break our heads with, if he could get the United States to interfere in the matter of our tarifi^and if they did, it would be an insolent interference — so that our farmers might be led to believe we were indeed their enemies. [Cheers.J And while on the one hand he thus endeavored to prejudice the agricultural interests of the country, the same gentleman acted in the same way when Canadian manufacturing interests came in contact with British. A representation was made by the Sheffield cuttlers against our scale of duties, and they protested, in language which we very properly resented, against our right to encourage manufactures in Canada. [Oh, oh!] I have in my hand a memorial, sent by the Chamber of Commerce, of Sheffield, in 1859, to the Duke of Newcastle, from which I shall read one or two pages, f giving their so-called reasons for such a protest : " We now beg respectfully to restate the reasons why such enquiry is appre- hended. These reasons may be said to be twofold, — First, — Those arising from a conviction that it is the deliberate policy of the Government of Canada to foster native manufactures by fiscal protection and every other means in their power j and, second, — Those arising from a consideration of the fact that there exists, close to the Canadian frontier, a body of competing United States manufacturers, to whonfi such contiguity more than counterbalances the fact that they have to pay the same duties as ourselves. " In proof that we are not mistaken about what the policy of the Canadian Government is, we would refer Your Grace to the tone of the whole Press of Canada, to the speeches of members of the Canadian Parliament, on both sides of the House, and especially to the steady increase of duties levied on Sheffield goods under every successive tariff. It will be sufficient to say on the last point, that within 18 years, or less, the duty levied on Sheffield goods has been pteadily advanced hum 2^ per cent. We would remind Your Grace, in the second place, that while there is a protection in favor of Canadian manufac- turers against Sheffield of from 35 to 40 per cent, consisting of Land carriage,, freight, msurance, commission, shipping expenses, duty, &c., that owing to the close gontiguity of, and cheap transit from the competing seats of American industry, similar goods can be sent across the Canadian frontier by United Slates manufacturers at the cost of from 22^ to 25 per cent. It is therefore plain that the American manufacturer has actually an advantage over the ShelHeld manufacturer of from 12J to 15 per cent. As this is a natural protection, how- ever, and consequently one which remains about the same, be the Canadian duty what it may, we only name it to show Your Grace how great the obstacles are, naturally, against which Sheffield has to struggle, and for the purpose of remarking as another objection to any increase of duty, that it is actually the interest of American manufacturers, that the Canadian duties should be raised, since any hindrance or confusion caused to Sheffield manufacturers can only tend to direct the demand towards riiarkets easier of access, and with which intercourse is more quickly exchanged than with Sheffield. It is important, too, to remember that the American manufacturer has more than 1000 miles of unguarded frontier oyer which he can smuggle with impunity. The merchants 64 and manufacturers of Sheffield have no wish to obtain special exception for themselves, and do not complain that they are called upon to pay the same duty as the American or the German, neither do they claim to have their goods adrnitted free of duty, all they ask is, that the policy of protection to native manufacturers in Canada should be distinctly discountenanced by Her Majesty s Government, as a system condemned by reason and experience, directly con- trary to the policy solemnly adopted by the mother country, and calculated to breed disunion and distrust between Great Britain and her colonies. It cannot be regarded as less than indecent and a reproach that, while for fifteen years, the Government, the greatest statemen, and the press of this country have been not only advocating but practising the principles of Free Trade ; the Govern- ment of one of her most important colonies should have been advocating mono- poly and protection. Under the artificial stimulus of this system, extensive and numerous hardware manufactories have sprung up both in Canada East and West, and the adoption of increasing duties has been the signal for more to be commenced. We are aware that the fiscal necessities of the Canadian Govern- ment are urged as the chief cause for passing the late Tariff Bill. This is not the whole truth ; no one can read the papers of the Provinces and the speeches ofthemembersof both Houses, and be deceived for an instant ; but, even if that were the cause, we conceive that Her Majesty's Government has a right to ■demand that what revenue is needed shall be raised in some other way than that, which is opposed to the acknowledged commercial policy of the Imperial Government, and destructive of the interests of those manufacturing towns in Great Britain which trade with Canada." Here is a direct statement that we have not the right to raise our revenue, except as they in Shefiield conceive it for their interests ! [Oh, oh !] While we admire the policy of Great Britjiin and are quite willing to act with it as far as the interests of the country will allow, yet as ministers of Canada, dependent on her people, we should have been altogether wanting in our duty if we had not protested. [Loud Cheers.] " We said we had the full right to raise our revenue in our own fashion, according to our own ideas. Yet what do we find 1 That this Chamber of Sheffield makes a long quotation from the Globe, jnst as the Washington Constitution did, to show that on ■Colonial principles, as well as Imperial, we ought to alter our policy ! [Groans.] These are complaints that I think we have a right to make. [Hear, hear.] " , Again— at the dinner at Caledonia, Mr. Macdonald said : " If there is one measure, of late date, which benefits the country more than another, it is the R,eciprocity Treaty, negotiated, indeed, by the Hincks Government, but perfected under Sir Allan's. You know that whereas wheat used to pay 20 per cents a bushel to enter the frontiers of the United States, it now goes in free, and every farmer here is 20 cents a bushel richer for that measure. [Hear.] Instead of being kept out of the United States, and being obliged to go to Montreal to sell his produce, he has now the choice of two markets — he has two strings to his bow — no Collector of Customs 65 stands between hira and the New England manufacturer, or between him and the British consumer. That treaty, which was secured since '5i, is to last until '67 at all events : but I am sorry to say, and this is another of my complaints against the course of the Opposition, [although not so much against the Opposition as against Mr. Brown] that, by every means in their power, they have endeavored to agitate the American, mind against this treaty, on the ground that we have increased our tariff on manufactures, as we have done for the pur- pose of keeping the faith of the Province and meeting our honest debts. You know that we have had a series of unproductive years and failing harvests. You know that a commercial crisis spread, not only over Canada, but the whole continent ; and it is not to be won- dered at that our revenue arising from duties on manufactured goods brought into the country should have fallen off, for the farmer, having little wheat to sell, could not purchase manufactures largely. We therefore, were obliged to raise the tariff. Now, as you know, the Reciprocity Treaty merely deals with agricultural produce — it has. no connection whatever with manufactured goods — and it was therefore absurd and unpatriotic — I will almost say wicked — of Mr. Brown to take the course he has done, and say we have virtually broken the treaty with the United States because we have increased the duties on manufactures. [Hear, hear.] Moreover, we place at this moment a tax on these articles considerably less tha,n that which the Ameri- cans, themselves, impose, though it would be no more than fair and equal reprocity, while both countries admit produce free, to have our tariffas high as that of the United States. [Hear.] It is therefore absurd to say that, either in spirit or letter, we have infringed the treaty ; and it is Very wrong of Mr. Brown to say that we have done so, and acted prejudicially to the interests of the United States. [Applause.] Now, in making the re-adjustment of the tariff, we adopted th,is system : in the first place, we took off the duties on the necessaries of life which the ppor man uses, as much as possible ; in the second place, we increased those on articles of luxury, which the rich man buys ; and, in the third, we raised the taxation of those goods which our own mechanics can manufacture, so as in a manner to give them incidental protection. Although this is an agricultural country, every man, you see, is not adapted for agricultural pursuits. There are many whose physical constitution unfits them for farming. We have opened up a means for giving these persons employment. In every part of the country, East and West, I am happy to say ma- nufactories are springing up — we hear of woollen mills, aye, and of great cotton factories, too, being erected. Foundries, machine shops, tanneries, &c., are flourishing, and are giving employment to many, while they are creating a home market for the farmer. [Loud applause.] " 66 THE ABOLITION OF TOLLS ON THE CANALS. At the dinner at St. Catharines, Mr. Macdonald said : " One of the charges brought against the Government is, that we have taken the tolls off the canals in the interest of Montreal and of Lower Canada. Now I thought the canals were made for the pur- pose of carrying down to the sea the produce of Upper Canada. Before they were made, the expense of getting grain to market was so great that some works of the kind were absolutely necessary to allow the farmer any profit at all. (Hear, and applause.) The tolls on the vessels and freights passing through the canals were not very large, they amounted to only about ^£25,000 a year, and as our shipping in- terest was depressed, and a well founded complaint was made that we had subsidized railways but done nothing for the water lines, we took off the tolls in certain cases, in order to give every opportunity for Upper Canada produce to get to market as cheaply and as quickly as possible. We expected to increase the value of our ships and of our crops in Upper Canada, and I am happy to tell you we have been successful. [Hear.] Notwitstanding, the great reduction of tolls, such has been the great increase in business in consequence of the abun- dant crop with which a gracious Providence has blessed us, that there will be no deficiency in the amount of tolls collected this year as compared with last. [Hear, hear, and cheers.] I call the attention of those who hear me to the very great importance of this measure, and to the great advantage to Upper Canada of our canals being as free as if they were the running waters of the St. Lawrence. You know perfectly well that many a vessel has been rotting at the wharves here because ' parties would not risk money to pay the tolls and go and seek freights. But what is the case now ? If a man has a vessel, he risks nothing, and pays no toll for taking it down even as far as Gasp6, with the produce of Upper Canada. He can there ex- change flour for fish, and bring what he gets up to Upper Canada, jiist as freely as if he were only going from Port Dalhousie to King- ston. And we shall find before long that in many a place in Upper Canada craft will be employed in summer running up and down, and thus conducting what is of far greater consequence to a country than foreign trade, I mean a successful and active home commerce. [Hear, hear.] " THE VALUE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE GRAND TRUNK RAILROAD AND THE CANADIAN LINE OF STEAMERS. ■ A dialogue on this subject occurred at the dinner at St. Thomas, which is thus reported in the London Prototype : Mr. James Blackwood — Will the honorable gentleman explain if the tolls are taken off our canals, and the Grand Trunk Railway does not pay, of what value are they to us ? — 67 Hon. Mr. Macdonald — The value of the Grand Trunk Railway to Canada is simply this — it is the avenue by which the whole west is connected with the whole east. The whole produce of Canada, whether agricultural or not-^wheat and goods of all kinds — was for- merly locked up during the winter. Now, sir, we have the means of sending our produce from the extreme east to the extreme west, and vice versd, at any moment, and at the light time, when prices are highest. [Hear.] Mr, Blackwood — The value of these Avorks is evinced by their divi- dends. [Hear, hear, and no, no.] Hon. Mr. Macdonald — I fully agree with the gentleman fhat, as a commercial speculation, the value of the Grand Trunk Railway is evinced by its dividends. To the shareholders of that railway, the stock, if they get no dividend, is not worth much. I am sorry to say, for their sakes — however, it is their own aifair — that it will be some years before their stock will have much commercial value in this country. It is, however, quite a different thing to say that the road is of no commercial value to the shareholders, and that it is of no com- mercial value to the country. If I have £5, and invest it in the saving's banlcs, so as to get interest, it gives me a commercial return. But if, instead, I make a path from my house to the road, it may not yield me a commercial return, but it enables me to get out to the street. [Ajiplause.] Mr. Blackwood— The argument holds good with respect to our own interest. But why should it apply to the carrying of goods from Chi- cago to Liverpool, and vice versd, at a loss. I ask as a Conservative, I came here as a friend of the administration, and I don't want people to go away, or to go away myself, and report that this speech was a humbug, and that Mr. Macdonald's position won't stand the light of argument. I wish to have my mind earnestly and conscientiously made up. If this is for the good of Canada, let it be shown ; but if we are carrying only for the profit of the 'cute Yankee, and if we are subsidizing a line of steamers which does not pay ; if, iiideed — and there is a feeling abroad to this purport — we are paying three prices for what we get done, let it be exposed. I should like to go back to my neighbors and say that ministers have been belied. [Hear, hear.] Hon. Mr. Macdonald — I am exceedingly obliged to my friend who has addressed us, because my object in coming here was fairly to discuss all those different questions. I must say I agree with him on one point; if the Grand Trunk Railway has been carrying foreign grain across its lines at a loss, to the obstruction of our local trafiic, the practice ought to be put an end to, and I have no doubt the wisdom of the legislature will put an end to it. [Applause.] The Grand Trunk Railway, you will see, is like other corporations or pri- vate companies. People have their capital invested in these concerns, 5' 68 and are associated for the purpose of making money out of them. It A)ifOuld never do for the government to be directly concerned in making railways — this must be done through the instrumentality of private companies — The first duty of a railway is, however, in every case, towards the country through which it passes. It must perform that work fully and satisfactorily, before it ventures to take an ounce of foreign freight. It is only when the Grand Trunk has less local traffic to do than it can do, that it can be allowed in any way to enter into the general traffic of the west. [Applause.] There is another point in the remarks of the gentleman, in reference to steamships. We established a line of ocean steamers, for which we paid £40,000 subsidy. The line was fortnightly in summer, and monthly in winter. Without it our canals and railways were useless, for such were the supposed difficulties of the navigation of the St. Lawrence, such the expense of freight and insurance between Quebec or Mont- real and Liverpool, that although we could carry from the West to Quebec cheaper than we could send through the United States to New York, and therefore ought to give the preference to our own route, especially for our own produce, still, freights from New York to Liverpool were so much cheaper, that our trade was finding its way through a foreign country. To prevent this we established our service, following in humble imitation of the British Government, who very wisely granted a subsidy to the Cunard Company in its infancy. But we found that a fortnightly line in summer, and a monthly line in winter, could not at all compete with a line going weekly from New York and Boston as certainly as the week came, so we established a weekly line too, giving it je2,000 a trip, or jG 104,000 a year as subsidy. I am happy to say the line has been a complete success, in consequence of the zeal and ability of my hon. friend, the Postmaster General, the Hon. Sydney Smith — I may praise him, for he is not here. In consequence of his exertions in Europe, he having visited Britain, France, Germany, &c., for that purpose, we have effected an arrangement with the United States and several European Governments to regard our line with equal favor to others. And notwithstanding that we have had to fight against two subsidies — one given to the Cunard line, and one to the Gfalway Company — great has been our success. For although the postal arrangements only went into effect in the middle of the summer, and our line is scarcely known as yet in the western States and in Europe, the foreign postage we shall receive will be upwards of £50,000, so that we shall actually pay no more for the weekly line this summer than we did before for the fortnightly one. [Cheers.] You must remember, too, that this is only a beginning. It takes a long time to break up old connections. A merchant who has got into the habit of writing his letters for the Wednesday's Cunard steamers will not change in a hurry. But I have no doubt whatever that the line will be self-sustaining, and that we shall virtually have 69 the communication with Europe for nothing, as the postage will pay the whole subsidy. [Cheers.] You must recollect, also, that although the line was established for carrying mails, the great object was to introduce steam power into the St. Lawrence, and to cheapen, freights. This is rapidly beiHg done. In a few years, with the influence of steam propellers, arid the weekly example of this steam- ship coming a,nd going, not only carrying mail bags, but laden with the produce of Canada, it will be fully accomplished. We are already beginning to enjoy the advantage of our railways and canals, and it will soon be shown that our route to Europe has the recom- mendation of being the most direct and cheapest too. I am much obliged to the gentleman for calling my attention to this subject, a very interesting one, which I should otherwise have entirely over- looked. I shall be happy to answer further questions, either to-night or during the short time I shall be amoijg you to-morrow. [Loud and continued cheering, amidst which Mr. Macdonald resumed his seat.] Mr. Blackwood was understood to express himself perfectly satis- fied, and hoped the meeting would attribute his remarks to their proper motive ; he desired to have misconception removed. [Hear, hear.] At the Brantford dinuer, Mr. Macdonald remarked on this subject : " Among, the other arrangements of which I think the Government may justly boast, are the postal service and the present efficient ocean service. While the United States have been unable, with all their wealth, to maintain a line of ocean steamers, Canada has been able to support a successful line, and that too under the. great disadvantage of the mother country subsidizing a line running against our own. The Canadian system has been so admirably managed, that while we have had to increase the annual subsidy for the pur- pose of securing weekly instead of fortnightly trips, the increase in postage is such that it amounts to half the subsidy, £50,000. [Cheers.] Thus, we do not pay more now for the weekly service than we paid for the fortnightly service two years before. [Loud cheers.] I have no doubt that before long, my friend, the Postmaster Genera,l, will have the pride and satisfaction of announcing that our service is self- supporting." [Renewed cheering.] 70 THE ENCOURAGEJVIENT OF HOME MANUFACTURES. In relation to the Encouragement of native industry, Mr. Macdonald said, at London ; " It is not necessary for the government to discuss the question of protection or free trade. In order that the Province might keep its faith with the public creditor, in order that Canada might be honest — and I am sure that every man Irere would be willing to make a sacrifice of his wealth, and his means to keep her credit — there has been an adjustment of the customs duties, from which our revenue for Provincial purposes is chiefly derived. While we keep up the taxation on luxuries, and on those articles which we can manufacture ourselves, there has been a diminution in taxation on those articles of prime necessity which our manufacturers can work up. The conse- quence is that in every part of the country, both in Upper and Lower Canada, there are manufactures springing up. We hear of hundreds of industrious mechanics and artisans combining together to establish woollen and cotton mills, &c., and it is quite certain — I am quite satisfied, and you must be so too — that the wants of the country, owing to its rapid material progress, will so press upon the treasury, that they will always be in advance of the revenue. The manufac- turer can therefore safely commence to apply his capital to his business, without fear that by one stroke of the pen, all his enterprise will be destroyed, through the reduction of the duties. [Hear, hear.] Well though we have so adjusted the tariff", as to encourage every manu- facturing interest in the country ; I wish it to be understood that we have not increased the taxation over the taxation of our predecessors. It is true we have put a higher duty on some articles, chiefly those we can manufacture ourselves, but the free list has been enormously increased. Goods that were heavily taxed in the days of our prede- cessors are free, and under the tariff" as it now stands, after having been adjusted under the responsibility of the present government, the amount of taxation levied in Canada on each man does not equal what was levied in the time when Mr. Hincks was the financier of the country. [Hear, hear. "] Again, at St. Catharines, Mr. Macdonald remarked, by way of further illustration that taxation is not heavier now than during Mr. Hincks' administration. " It is said that we have increased the taxation of the country. Some of you will be surprised to hear that we have not raised the taxation higher than it was during the time of Mr. Hincks. We have, however, readjusted the Tariff", reducing tlie duties on articles of necessity and raw materials, and increasing those on what is required for home manufacturing — this being a direct encouragement to our artisans and 71 mchanics. It is as if formerly there had been half a dollar duty on a hat, and half a dollar on a silk neck-tie ; whereas there are now three quarters of a dollar on a hat, and one quarter on a silk neck-tie, thus protecting the maker of hats, which we can manufacture in this coun- try, and letting the consumer have his silk neck-tie cheaper, which we cannot produce. [Hear.]" THE ABOLITION OF IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT. Mr. Macdonald said at the dinner at London : " I was very proud to hear my personal and political friend Mr. Carling, refer to the abolishment of imprisonment for debt, and when I this morning when through the Gaol of the County of Elgin, and found that there was not a single person confined for debt, I found how really beneficial that piece of our legislation was. Under the former law, any man was in the power of his creditors who might swear that he believed he was going away ; now the creditor has to establish before a judge and to the judge's satisfaction, just as in a criminal charge before a magistrate, that the debtor is going to ab- scond- The efiect of that alteration in the law has been practically to abolish imprisonment for debt. [Cheers,]" THE ORGANIZATION OF THE MILITIA. In reply to a question from Col. Kingsmill, at the Hamilton dinner, Mr. Macdonald is reported by the Spectator to have made these remarks in reference to the organization of the Militia, which the Colonel desired to have placed on a more costly footing : " In 1854, when the MacNab Administration was formed, there were two opinions respecting the Militia of Canada. There was a respectable party who thought that an active force, an organized militia, was of little service ; who objected to its expense and thought that by forming a militia here, we should do away with the practice on the part of Britain of sending British troops here. Then there was a party, to which I belonged, who thought we were bound, if we were worthy of being a free people, to be able to protect our- selves. I believe no country is worthy of liberty unless it is able to fight for it, and that not by hired hands only. No one respects the soldiers of England more than I do, and they cannot be considered mercenaries when in Canada, for they are as much in their Queen's dominions here as when they are in England. But when we see ■what England has done with her volunteers, we see that we have need ofsome such force too. There the people have risen in t hair 72 might at the first threat of war. Not satified with their magnificently, organized army and navy, the moment there was a chance of Epg- land's position being endangered, they have rushed to arms ; the merchant leaving his counter, the farmer his plough, the lawyer Jtiip iqsk — and by the same token they say the lawyers make the best of soldiers, because they are always so ready for the charge, [laughter] — and every member of society, who had time or money to spare, enrolled himself, so that England now stands at the head of the world, perhaps, in that respect. [Cheers.] Well, we too made provision for raising a militia, by the Act of 1854, an act upon the legal clauses of which I was of course consulted, but which was lormed, I may state, by a professional, commission, of which Sir Allan MacNab,was a foremost member. [Hear.] That Act provided for both a sedentary militia and an active force of volunteers. Not one man was forced to ],€a,ve his home, yet a body of 5,000 m^en was raisied, and .the means vote^ by the Legislature. It is true that the measure was strongly opposed by those .who were in opposition to the, government, but still it was carried, from a sense on the part of the representatives of the people, with whom I am sure the people will agree,, that it was unworthy ,of us (while the Imperial Government came forward in the most geije,r- ous and proper way, and stated that if we were g.ttacked jn any w;ay by foreign foe, the whole force and wealth of the Empire should be exerted in our defence), to ask the hard-working laborer of England, the tax-paying people, to keep up a force in this country, and to have no force of civil soldiers of our own, who would keep the peace, pre- vent riots and public tumults, such as have existence in all countries, however highly civilized they may be. So when England informed us that she could no longer keep her soldiers here to occupy our chief placps and act as police, we properly found that we could not and ought not to insist upon it ; and in forming the active force, we formed a body that would be a nucleus round which the whole people of Canada would rally in case of necessity. [Applause.] But Eng- land did not ask us to effect this great change without giving us more compensation. In the most generous manner, she handed to us, for tlie use of the Province, a large amount of land and public buildings in the shape of stores, soldiers' barracks, ofiicers' quarters, together with great military works of every description, to do with them whatever we chose, with but one reservation, that we should appro- priate. the funds, if we sold any of the property, to keeping up an active force in Canada. [Hear, hear.] Although at first the militia was a serious expense, because we could not at once dispose of those properties without a great sacrifice, yet they are yearly rising in value some of them have been sold at considerable prices, others like those at Penetanguishene and Isle Aux Noix, have been assume! by the Province at fair rates and appropriated to public uses as relorma- tory .institutions, so that in a few years we shall be able to dispose of them and form a fund equal or nearly equal to the sum required for 73 keeping up the active militia. [Cheers.] Of course the bilt was only an experiment, though I may say it was a successful one,, and the Parliament which allowed it to pass in 1854, therefore pro- vided that it should simply remain iu force for four years. It was my duty, after that, to draw up the bill to continue the system and make it perpetual. Sir, I had great difficuties to encounter in carry- ing that bill, and by speaking of them I shall reply to the objection of my gallant friend, Col. Kingsmill. At that time there was a diffi- ciency in the revenue. There had been a series of bad crojis, there was a great want of money in the public chest, and a great cry of distress from the suffering country. It was said, therefore — and I fully appreciated the force of the remark — that as we were retrench- ing in every way, we should retrench in the militia expenses as well, until the revenues of the Province were in a more flourishing condi- tion. Well, in order to prevent the disembodiment of the whole militia- of Canada by dropping the bill, or not carrying it, I wa» obliged to diminish very much the appropriation — the number of men employed in the active force, the number ofdays they were to be called Upon ot drill, &c., — and it was only by that means that I saved the measure as it is now. I believe that the value of the force is known, and' the fund so rapidly increasing that the Government will be able to keep up that active force in its original strength, so that we may have 5,000 good -soldiers, ready to meet the soldiers of any other Bation, and those volunteers, not hirelings. [Applause.] Thus, I answer Col. Kingsmill's objection that we have allowed the militia system to be run down — there was no Militia Bill when we came in, and it is due to us that there is now any Militia Bill at all." [Loud oheiers.] IMPROVEMENT OF THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTE;VI. In his speech at London, Mr. Macdonald referred as follow;s, to r the assistance he had had frqm Dx. Ryerson in the irnprov^ijicnt of the Common School system : " In the improvement of the Common School system, the Govern- ment had had the valuable assistance of Dr. Ptyerson, the able and zealpus founder of the system ; and he (Mr. Macdonald) wouFd take the opportunity of expressing his admiration of the great zeal, and with which Dr. Ryerson had managed educational affairs. He knew he had been attacked by the Opposition press and party ; but long years after his puny slanders would the name of Dr. Ryerson be remembered as the founder and promoter of a system of education more perfect, more complete and less burdensome than the system of any state in Europe or America. [Cheers.] 74 At Caledonia, Mr. Macdonald gave Dr. Ryerson's reason for not advising the repeal of the Separate School Clause, and stated his own opinion on that subject, thus : " I have called the attention of the people to the fact that the 19th clause of the Common School Act became law long long before I was in the Government at all ; so that the merit of it or the blame of it is not with me, but rests entirely with the ^aldwin-Lafontaine adminis- tration, as it was brought in under the auspices of Mr. Baldwin parti- cularly, that pure and honest man of whom I always love to speak, though we were opposed in politics. — [Cheers.] And if it be asked why we did not repeal it, I answer, in the first place, that it is one thing to give a right or a franchise, and another thing to deprive peo- ple of it ; and in the second place, we have the indisputable evidence of a disinterested witness — a man who cannot be suspected of any leaning towards Popery — I mean Rev. Dr. Ryerson, a Protestant clergy- man himself, at the head of the Common School System — a person whose whole energies have been expended in the cause of education — who states deliberately to the people of Canada, that the Separate School clause does not retard the progress or the increase of Common Schools ; but that, on the contrary, it " widens the basis of the Com- mon School System." [Cheers.] If I thought it injured that system, I must say that I would vote for its repeal to-morrow. [Applause.] You must remember also, that Lower Canada is decidedly a Roman Catholic country — that the Protestant population of Lower Canada is a small minority, and if Protestant schools were not allowed there, our Protestant brethren in Lower Canada would be obliged to send their children to be educated by Roman Catholic teachef's. Now, I don't know how many Protestants or how many Roman Catholics I may be at this moment addressing, but I say that, as a Protestant, I should not be w^illing to send my son to a Roman Catholic school, while I think a Roman Catholic should not be compelled to send his to a Protestant one. [Hear.] In Lower Canada the teachers are gener- ally the Roman Catholic clergy, and, of course, it is their duty to teach what they consider truth, and to guard their pupils against error. But the system in vogue there is more liberal than even ours, in that it not only permits the establishment of Protestant schools for Protestant children, but allows the whole municipal machinery to be employed to collect the rates to maintain them. [Applause.] In discussing this subject, I have always found that when it is fairly laid before the people, they always, by their applause, signify their approbation of the consistent course of the Government in regard to it. [Cheers.]" T5 THE INDEPENDENCE OF PARLIAMENT ACT AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A BOARD OF AUDIT, At Brantford, Mr. Macdonald thus refered to the Independence of Parliament Act and the establishment of a Board of Audit : " The present government have been charged with using their patronage and power for the purpose of securing the election of their friends and putting money into their pockets. But the present Speaker of the House, who had been a member of the Government, is the very person who introduced a bill which prevents any one sitting in Parliament who has a contract with the Government, receives money from them or is in any way pecuniarily connected with them. It is a consolidation and completion of all the laws thai had ever been passed for the purpose of securing an independent Parliament and free from the possibility of influence by crown patronage. For fear that it might be said that the lawyers enjoyed the patronage of the Government, I myself introduced a clause into the bill depriving them even of the power of prosecuting cases on behalf of the Crown \^hile occupying seats in Parliament. [Cheers.] Now it is said that there is a great deal of corruption in our books. Our Government has intro- duced a most thorough and perfect system of auditing the public ac- counts, and has appointed a man as Auditor General, Mr. Langton, whose character has been praised even by the Opposition. Many have in fact, lauded him to the skies because they thought his political tendencies were towards Reform rather than otherwise. His honesty and fitness for the office have been admitted by all parties in the House and country; and not a single farthing of the public money is paid out without a voucher for it and passing through his hands, the Government being responsible for it to Parliament and to the country. [Cheers. "] REGISTRATION OF VOTERS. At St. Catherines, Mr. Macdonald remarked : You may have heard a great deal of election frauds. The Govern- ment found that these frauds were practised alike by friends and foes ; that they were demoralizing to the country and destructive of the purity of election ; and they therefore introduced an admirable system of registration, by which a correct list of votes is made out from the assessment-rolls. You may all have seen or heard of cases in which bad votes were recorded ; but that has been completely done away with by the introduction of the registration system. [Cheers.J 76 OTHER MEASURES INTRODUCED. Mr. Macdonald, at London, thus briefly enumerated some of the other measures introduced under the auspices of the Govern- ment of which he has been a member : They had fostered and maintained, as far as their resources would permit, the agricultural societies of t^ie country, and they had founded a noble institution for the encouragement of arts and manufactures. [Applause.] "fhey l;i£id framed a measure for the proper inspection of railways and steamers, thus securing safety to the lives and pro- perty of the public. They had closed the Municipal Loan Fund Qf Upper Canada, which had threatened rapidly to increase the public debt. They had enabled every municipality in Upper Canada, with the exception of one or tvvo, to meet their engagements and prevented tha,t being charged to the public funds of the Province. They had reformed the law, and decentralized it by increasing the jurisdiction of the local courts. They had established an efficient system for the inspection of jq^ils and prisons. They had legislated in such a manner that there could be no more fraudulent assignments. They had in- creased the exemption of property of unfortunate debtors liable to be sold for debt. The present Finance Minister had greatly decreased the burdens of the people, and by is judicious arrangement for the conversion of tlie public dejjt, the coji^try received five per cent, ior terest on the Sinking Fund instead of three as formerly, thus effecting an enormous saving ; and bp^ides they had got the British Governr ipent to reiceiye £35,0(?P per annum instead of;e75,000 for the sinkjiiig fund — thus distributing the burden over a series of years and ma^n;g oijr children pay a portion of the cost of our public works, which weje pppstructed for their la^nefit as -Hrell as our o^vjii-n. [Applause.] LOWER CANADA LEGISLATION. At St. Thomas, Mr. Macdonald took the opportunity of speaking in the following terms of Mr. Cartier and his Legislation with respect to Lower Canada : I am proud to call the Hon. Mr. Cartier not only my political but my personal. friend, a,nd if you knew hini as well as I do, you would see how worthy he is of esteem. — Until lately — indeed until he came in as minister of justice — the Lower Canadians were suffering very much from the French system of the concentration of the courts. .There were courts only at Montreal and Quebec, and an inferior one in the district of St. Francis ; jurors and witnesses were obliged to go hundreds of miles to attend them, and often had to remain for six weeks away from their homes and families. Now fancy if, in Upper 77 Canada, a man from Sarnia had to go to attend a court in London — if indeed there were but three courts in the country, at London, To- ronto, and Kingston — what our people would say. Would they stand that ? [No, no.] Now Mr. Carlier introduced, in the first place, a municipal system, almost identical with our own, taking pattern by our municipal law, which, since its consolidation, is almost perfect, and adopting it for Lower Canada, with those slight changes which the different laws and institutions of the country required. In the second place, he introduced our county system in the matter of courts — establishing county courts and county .jails, and county organizations, just as we have thern. As I before said, he took the Clergy Reserves of Lower Canada for this — Lower Canada, too, having had one-seventh of its lands reserved, just as Upper Canada had — and he forced the municipalities to erect jails, like Upper Ca- nadians. [Hear.] He introduced this system by degrees, and a plan is now in operation, by which, in Lower Canada, they pay their jurors as we do in Upper Canada, instead of out of the general fund, Eis they did before. [Cheers] Again, in consequence of the expense of the administration of justice in Low'er Caiiada, although Lower Canada has far less crime [I am sorry for Upper Canada to say it] and there is far less necessity for the paraphernalia of courts, the cost was far greater than in Upper Canada. But, I am happy to say, that inconsequence of measures lately introduced, the expenses of the administration of justice are JB35,000 less than they were in the time of the late Attorney General East, and although the system is only in its commencement, thfey are already rather less than in Upper Canada. Part IV. — Remarks on the Composition and Policy of the Brown-Dorion Government, MR, BROWN A GOVERNMENTAL IMPOSSIBILITY. At London, the Attorney General West asked : " Who brings the charges against us of yielding to Lower Canada in- fluence 1 Who rides the Protestant horse against the present govern- ment, but the leader of the late administration, Mr. Brown, who with great ability and zeal, endeavors to establish in the minds of the peo- ple of Upper Canada, not a fact but the, impression that we have been unjust to protestanism and Upper Canadian interests. Let me now call the attention of the meeting for one moment to some ques- tions which have agitated this country, by which you can see how futile those charges are, how unjustly, and how completely they can be answered. Whenever the leader of the Opposition finds there is but little chance of getting office, he becomes more Upper Canadian and more Protestant. [Hear, and laughter.] But the moment he supposes there is a chance of a change, his Protestant zeal becomes small by degrees and beautifully less ; he becomes quite ready to coalesce with these well-abused Lower Canadians, and to make any arrangement that pleases them. [Great laughter.] Why, sir, he said in the House, in my hearing, with a stentorian voice, that he was a governmental impossibility ; that he knew that so long as he re- presented the interests of Upper Canada and of Protestantism, he could not take office. Yet the moment that, on an unexpected vote, which nobody anticipated, on the seat of government question, we resigned, he was quite ready to forget that he was a " governmental impossi- bility" — he' at once formed an alliance with Lower Canada, with these very men he had been abusing and reviling. fCheers and laughter.] " & o l MR. BROWN " IN " AND MR. BROWN « OUT. " The following contrast between the views of Mr. Brown " in "■ and Mr. Brown " out " is taken Irom a speech delivered at St., Catharines : " A Voice.— What about Mr. Brown and Mr. Thibaudeau ? " Mr. Macdonald.— I must say a few words on that topic, sir and gentlemen, and call your attention to the difierence between Mis- Brown « out " and Mr. Brown " in." [Laughter.] Just as difierent 79 as black is from white is Mr. Brown " out " and Mr. Brown " in." [Hear and laughter.] You may remember, that at the elections of 1857, when we appealed to the country, the cries that were raised against us were, in the first place, " French Domination,'^ and in the second, " No Popery." [Hear and laughter.] In the third place it was said we had thrown over Representation by Population alto- gether ; and, fourthly, that we would not vote for the abolition of Separate Schools. So vigorously were these cries raised that Mr. George Benjamin, once Grand Master of the Orangemen, was very near losing his election, because he was said to be in league with the Pope, through us ; and Mr. O. R. Gowan actually was defeated in North Ontario because he also was a friend of the Pope. [Applause and laughter.] Well, what will you say when I inform you, that when Mr. Brown got in, he became a greater friend of the Pope than I had been. [Laughter.] He had, of course, to go back to his con- stituents for re-election, and so had Mr. Thibaudeau, his Minister of Agriculture, who was of course obliged to give his reasons for joining Mr. Brown's Government, since Mr. Brown was not very popular in Lower Canada. This gentleman said he had joined Mr. Brown's Administration because, in the first place, there were more Roman Catholics in it than there had been in any other since the Union, and that there were 6 Catholics against 6 Protestants in it ; whereas, in my government there only 4 against 8. [Hear.] Now, I have no objection, as I said before, to Mr. Brown's thus having 6 to 6. Pro-. testants and Catholics are both subjects of Her Majesty — are both inhabitants of the land — both contribute to the public revenue — and both bear a \ art of the public burthens. But what I do object to is, that Mr. Brown, who for seven long years has abused the Govern- ments of others because they had two or three Roman Catholics in them, should have turned round the moment he came in, arid appoint- ed a greater number himself. I never asked the question, and never will ask, what a man's religion, race or ancestry may be : if he is a capable man, the " right man for the right place," that is all I ever e^quire into. But, sir, how unjust, how iniquitous it is of Mr. Brown to bring up these charges to rouse the country, when the moment he gets into ofBce he becomes all that and more for which he has been abusing us. [Applause.] The next point of difference between Mr. Brown out and Mr. Brown in, is, that while out he stated that Upper Canada was misrepresented and misgoverned — that it had a majority of inhabitants, and ought to have a majority of representatives in Par- liament. There was to be no quiet in the country until Representa- tion by Population was obtained. But when Mr. Brown got in then Representation by Population was only to be granted with certain checks. [Laughter.] Now, Representation by Population means that the majority of the people should elect the majority of the Re- presentatives, anf! that being so, how in the world can there be any check upon it ] Checks would destroy the working of the principle : 80 •checks would obstruct its operation ; we could not fpr a long time understand what the proposed checks were. But when Mr. Thibau- deau went to his constituents, he gave as a second reason for his having joined Mr. Brown's Cabinet, that it was formed of a majority of members who had voted against Representation by Population to the last. [Applause.] There were only five members of Mr. Brown's Government in favor of Representation by Population, against seven opposed to it. All the Lower Canadians were against it, and Mr. J. S. ,Macdonald, the Attorney General West, was, and still is, pledged to oppose it. He, then, the champion of Represen- tation by Population — he who had attempted to put us out because we would not at once, against the wishes of Lower Canada, force that measure upon them, — the moment he got in, so formed his govern- ment that Representation by Population w;is impossible to be granted. [Cheers.] Well, sir, the last and greatest charge brought against us at the last general election was that we would not repeal the 19th •clause of the Common School Act, and abolish Separate Schools. I repeat, we had not passed that law ; we found it iu existence, enacted by the Baldwin Administration, which, you will admit, was not •opposed to Common Schools, and we had to carry it out. " Why did you not repeal the 1 9th clause 1 " asked some. I will tell you why. It is one thing to give a new right — quite another thing to deprive a man of an established one, especially if it is not proved that he has :abused it. [Hear, hear.] If the separate schools had been proved hurtful to our common school system, then we might have asked Parliament to do away with them ; but the able and energetic super- intendent of common schools. Dr. Ryerson, said they widened and strenthened the basis of that system, and we could therefore do no such thing. [Hear.] I have never hesitated to express my own "Opinions on this point. I have always been against the repeal of that ■clause, and the consequent destruction of separate schools, and for these reasons. In the first place, you know that there is a large Protestant population in Lower Canada, and I wish the Catholics in Upper Canada to be in the same position as the Protestants are in Lower Canada. Why, when Lower Canada was a French Province, almost altogether Roman Catholic, such was the liberality of its people that they passed a separate school bill, much more extensive in its terms and granting considerably more protection to the Pro- testant schools in Lower Canada, than the Roman Catholic now •enjoys here. [Applause.] And, as a fair man, I could not, sir, admi- inister one kind of justice to my Roman Catholic friends in Upper Canada and deprive them of a privilege they enjoyed, while at the same time my Protestant brethren in Lower Canada were enjoying the same rights to a greater extent. [Hear.] Again, the schools ia Lower Canada are mostly in the hands of the Romin Catholic clero-y, and as I would not willingly, if I could avoid it, send my child to a Koman Catholic school, so I would not compel Roman Catholics to 81 send theirs to Protestant institutions ; for, if a teacher believes > given thing to be truth, it would be his duty to impress it on his pupils, and as I would not like to subject iny son to the proselytizing influences of a Roman Catholic priest, so I would not force Roman Catholic children to be placed under the care of Protestant school- masters. Well, though Mr. Brown, out, had said the clause must be repealed c&iite qui coiUe — that sectarian schools must be abolished at once — no sooner did he get i« than an arrangement was come to with Messrs. Dorion and McGee, that a commissioner, messenger or agent should be appointed in order to run all over the earth, examining into^ the systems of Belgium, Switzerland, Prussia, &c., to find out one which would work to the satisfaction of all parties. [Laughter. And while this commissioner was away — and if he were well j-aia he would stay away a long time — while he was preparing his report , as to a plan which should reconcile all people and make Roman Catholics and Protestants think alike — [laughter] — what do you think was to be done 1 Why, things were to remain as they are, and separate schools were not to be attacked at all. [Hear, hear and laughter.] "A Voice. — Who was the commissioner to be^ Mr. McGee? [Laughter.] " Mr. Macdonald. — Mr. McGee has denied that he was to be, and ' I will therefore say nothing more as to that. I will, however, quote you the two passages in the^ Globe which show the truth of what I have ju^t stated. In December, 1859, when M. Brown thought he had no chance of getting into officse, he wrote : " Electors of Upper Canada ! These instructions of Charbonnel are being car- ' ried out all over the country. Now at this moment it is done secretly. Romish priestcraft loves a secret bargain. Depend upon it, whenever you see a candi- date shirking the Sectarian School question — talking of conciliation — talking of I leaving things as they are— however strongly he may profess general opposi- tion to Sectarian Schools — that man has a secret bargain with the priests,, and will be found next session where the priests want him." " In 1858, however, when Mr. Brown formed the Two-Days'- Ministry, what was the language of M. Dorion, as reported in the Globe 1 It was as follows : " It was agreed by himself (Dorion) and his colleagues the question should be taken up at once,' and an inquiry should be made without delay into the systems prevailing in such countries as Belgium, Ireland and Prussia, where the same difficulties had arisen, and where they had more or less been satisfao- torily settled ; in order that the Common School law might be so amended as to make it work more in harmony with the people of both sections of the Pro- vince, Protestant and. Catholic, and until that inquiry was made, the system should remain as at present." [Cheers.] 82 MR. THIBAUDEAU'S THREE REASONS FOR JOINING MR. DORION'S GOVERNMENT. Mr. Macdonald, at Caledonia, thus referred to the three reasons given by Mr. Thibaudeau for joining the Brown-Dorion Govern- ment. The report is from the Dunville Independent. " You must know, gentlemen, that when Mr. Brown rode the high Protestant horse [laughter] he did not render himself very popular in Lower Canada ; and therefore it was that when he formed a Govern- ment, this great champion of Upper Canada rights had to show that Roman Catholic and French influences would be carefully preserved by him. So when one of the most prominent members of his administration, the President of his Council and Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Thibaudeau, went before his constituents for re-elec- tion, he gave three reasons for joining Mr. Brown. The first reason was that there were more Roman Catholics in his Government than there had been in any other since the Union. [Hear and laughter.] The second was that though Mr. Brown had been in favor of repre- sentation by population — although, for years, both in and out of Parliament, through his newspapers, and by every other means, he had agitated the public mind, saying that, as Upper Canada had a larger population, it ought to have a larger representation than Lower Canada — although the coutinuance of the Union and the best interests of the country were jeopardized by the agitation of that question j)rematurely— yet, [said Mr. Thibaudeau] among the twelve members of his administration, there were seven pledged against the principle. [Laughter and great applause.] You may remember that Messrs. Brown and Dorion, in their explanations in Parliament, stated that they had agreed upon the ultimate setlement of the question of representation by population, but that it was to be with certain " checks and guarantees. " What these " checks " were we never could find out, though we subjected the administration tcj a long and close cross-examination on the floor of the House. And we did not understand, if the principle was a good one, why any check should be necessary — if representation by population were granted, of what use would it be with " checks " upon its legitimate operation ? But Mr. Thibaudeau disclosed what the real " check " was. It was that the six Lower Canada members of Mr. Brown's Government were all opposed to representation by population, and would vote against it to the last ; while one of its Upper Canada members, Mr. J. S. Macdonald, had always voted against it too, and still consistently opposes it. So that, although he opposed us for not grantin ent religions, and opposing prejudices. [Loud cheers.] Why, even Mr. Brown himself had spoken against a dissolution of the Union, as I will show. On the 20th August, 1855, only four years before his Convention platform was adopted, Mr. Brown had said in the ■ Globe—" Would Upper Canada prosper with an ignorant and unedu- " cated race possessing the channel and mouth of the St. Lawrence ? " We think not. No policy could be more suicidal than a separation " of the Provinces. It would materially weaken the Colonial Empire " of Great Britain." [Cheers.] Yes, continued Mr. Macdonald, it would sever the connection with Great Britain, yet such was Mr. Brown's desperate political position, that he had pressed for a disso- lution, and committed his whole party to it, even at the expense of breaking the happy connection between Canada and England. [Great applause.] Then, again in October, 1853, Mr. Brown, through the Globe, said — " In a country which has no foreign affairs to control, " it would be seen that one Legislature ought to suffice. To give '• Congress merely control of the Tariff and Post Office would make it " a nullity ; and if the management of legal affairs and questions " relating to public morality were committed to it, there would be " no need for local Legislatures." These sentiments so powerfully expressed by Mr. Brown in 1853 and 1855, are mine (Mr. Macdonald's) in 1860. [Loud and long continued applause.] It is the duty, in my opinion, and I hope also in the opinion of those present, of every lover of his country, to keep it in the high position it had attained — to keep it from retrograding, and, by separating Upper Canada from Lower Canada, dash its glorious prospects to the ground. What would Upper Canada be, separated from the sister Province, but a petty municipality, having no exit to the seaboard, and in a constant state of dependence upon the good-will of the neighboring Republic ? You may talk of the domination of Lower Canada, but it possesses splendid water communication and all the advantages which fit it for union with the Upper Province. Nature has joined the two .together, and that man is no lover of his country who would sever the bonds that unite them. [Loud applause.] Lower Canada is certain to become a manufacturing country. The climate and popu- lation are both favorable to the promotion of manufactures. This being the case. Upper Canada will have a home market for its pro- duce, and Lower Canada will supply it with manufactured goods. We shall not then be dependent upon the crops in Europe for a market for our products, as we are now, when even a good crop on the Black Sea affects the price of our grain. By becoming one great country, by having a large population of manufacturers in Lower Canada and farmers in Upper Canada, we shall have a domestic market and be sure to get a good reward for our labor. All this will be Jost if we return to the position of things before 1840. It is true that when two people of different races, antecedents and associations are 90 together, there must be a certain amount of animosity and heart- burning ; but so it was once between England and Scotland, and so it was between England and Ireland. I believe on the whole it is lextraordinary that the Union has been so successful. In twenty years the assimilation and amalgamation between the two Provinces has been wonderful. All Moderate men begin to appfeciaite the advan- tages of the Union ; and if it were desirable to maintain the standing of the conntry— and who would say it was not desirable— we must •continue the Union ; we must look indulgently upon each other's faults and fuibles ; we must try to get over these little discrepancies insteadof enlarging them for mere party political purposes. [Loud cheers] " At London, Mr. Macdonaid spoke of the absurd nature of the " joint authority" scheme : " On gunpowder plot day, 1859, Mr. Brown found out that represen- rtation by population was not worth a farthing, that it was no real remedy. He set it aside, though he had called it every thing for Upper Canada, and he raised up a new myth, a new phantom which he called "joint authority." [Derisive laughter.] If we ask our- selves what this joint authority is, we shallsee how crude the idea is. Is it a legislature or is it a bench of bishops: 1 If it means any thing, it means that Canada is to be divided into two, that there are to be two separate legislatures, but a central power. Now, if the joint authority which is to govern all Canada is to legislate on all points affecting Eastern and Western Canada, why, that is what we have just now. The only difference would be that under the pro- posed system we would have three parliaments, any amount of ' speakers, any amount of maces, one central power, and two wings, not doing any thing, how^ever, because the central body, if it Tvas tehtrusted with real power, would do every thing. But if the real •power was to be in the local- governments, the central one wouldbe of no use whatever ; it would be a mere figure-head. But, sir, it •would have this effect, and indeed the whole scheme means this, that when Mr; Brown found that he could not be Prime Minister for ithe whole of Canada, he was quite willing to be Prime Minister of 'Upper Canada for a while, and advise Her Majesty's representative on the affairs of onehalf of the Province. [Lovid applause.] To stiph a consummation I am altogether opposed ; I am a sincere Unionist, I nail my colors to the mast on that great principle. Our first object is union with Great Britain, under the government of our beloved ! sovereign. Queen Victoria ; and I say that next to th« union with >(3jeat Britain, next to having our Queen as ruler, I look to the union (if the two Canadas as most essential. [Cheers.] After the Govern- iment of which I was a member, and continue to be a member, had settled the great questions to which I have alluded, there were, un- 91 fortunately, no great principles on which parties were divided — an unwholesome state of things for them, as has lately been the case both in England and Canada ; politics became a mere struggle for oflice. I am happy that now we have a new principle announced, on which we can agree or disagree, I am glad there is a party willing to agitate the country on the question of disunion, because we can then fight and struggle upon the subject, it can be our war cry. [Hear.] I go with all my power and force in favor of the continuance of the union , and 1 say this — whatever may have been the antecedents of any man in Canada, whether he has acted with me or against me, if he becomes a disunionist, I disown him ; and I don't care what may have been the antecedents of another, though he may have struggled fiercely against me, if he enters himself as a supporter of the union with England, under Her Majesty the Queen, and of the union of the two Canadas, I hail him as a brother, and am ready to act with him. [Cheers.] God and nature have joined the two Canadas, and no tactions politician shoidd be allowed to sever them. The same great waters flow past them, the mighty St. Lawrence connects them, their interests are the same. Our country, sir, is one. The agricultural products of Upper Canada will flow to the cities of Quebec and Mont- real, and be deposited there, and there will be a reciprocity of benefits. In Lower Canada there is an incalculable amount of water power for every manufacturing purpose. There is a large industrious and frugal population, living for six months of the year in enforced idleness. It must become a great manufacturing country. Then , sir, we.shall see that wholesome exchange of commodities in active operation which our recent legislation has promoted, we shall have the farmer sending his wheat down, not to be in all cases forwarded to Europe to compete with R.iissian, Turkish or Egyptian wheat, but we shall find a pur- chaser at our own door, get a reasonable price for it, and the Ij0W«i Canada consumer of Upper Canada produce will send back the manufactures which he has been biisily workirjg at and preparing, in his diiTerent scene of industry, during the winter months. [Loud cheers.] " Mr. Macdonald, at St. Thomas, alluded to the growth of Canada since the Union, saying : " There is one question in which the government is to some extent interested, and to which it is to some extent, committed. It is that of the confederation of the Provinces. Confederation is one tMng, joint authority is another. It Was formerly, stated, that,: by-uait- ing with the ; Lower Frovinees,, we i§hpuld put an end to Freaeh influence and fCfiwe Lower Canaiiian id^iHiination. I do not go i^ato the question with any such spirit, believing that the union between . Upper and Lower Canada has been a great success. It tocds a ceiiitiar)r 92 before Scotland got over the feeling of opposition to the union with England, and really began to enjoy the benefit of that union. He knew what opposition there was to the union between England and Ireland. And when we consider that the union of Canada took place only a few years ago, in 1840, I am surprised at its early success. From two miserable municipalities having no credit, no standing of any kind, we have grown to be a nation. [Hear.] We are considered in the light of a nation ; we are equal in population to the United States when they assumed the responsibility of independence ; in wealth we are far before what they were. When we consider that the French of Lower Canada used to look to France for a model, the British of Canada to England, and that when the union took place the two Provinces were actually fighting hand to hand, and sword to sword, we may well wonder that civil war has died away, that political dissentions are only kept up by political demagogues, and that we have risen to such a height of credit before the civilized world." At Hamilton, the following remarks fell from the Attorney Ge- neral West : " And I will now draw your attention to but one subject more. This is now a great agricultural country, and is going to be one of the greatest manufacturing countries in the world, possessing as it does great water power, an industrious population w^hich, as it increases, will of course contain more and more people unfitted for agricultural pursuits and wanting other means of employing their industry. — Especially will manufactures spring up in Lower Canada, and we shall have the manufacturer of Lower Canada sending his goods to Upper Canada in exchange for the wheat and other productions of this more favored section of the Province. But in order to do so we must resist as one man this cry of dissolution of the Union. [Rap- turous applause.] We are now one great country, with a population of nearly 3,000,000 — equal to that of the United States at the time of the declaration of Independence — standing as to our credit at the capitals of Europe equal — aye and superior to — most nations of the European world. [Cheers.] I hope that the Union between Great Britain and the Colonies, especially this colony, will long continue, but that if we ever are severed from her we shall be severed as one people — great in territory, great in resources, great in enterprize, great in credit, great in capital, as we can only be through and daring the Union. [Cheers.] To dissolve the Union would be a suicidal act, for we should revive the same state of things as in 1837, when one Province was exclusively British, the other exclusively French, with no com- mon laws, without similar systems of administering justice, insomuch that a man at one end of the Province would not find the same law as in the other, and what was a crime in one might be a virtue in 93 the other. As I said a day or two ago, whatever may have been the political existence of any man, if he be for the Union, I hail him as of the same party as myself, if against it I denounce and disown him. And if I had any influence over the minds of the people of Canada, any power over their intellects, I would leave them this legacy — " whatever you do, adhere to the (Jnion — we are a great country and shall become one of the greatest in the universe if we preserve it ; we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken." God and Nature have made the two Canadas one — let no factious men be allowed to put them asunder. [Loud and long con- tinued cheering.] " Mr. Macdonald, at Guelph, pointed out the great and conti- nually advancing prosperity of the country and attributed it all to the Union : " He said — What was Upper Canada previous to ISiO ? A wretched municipality, having credit neither at home or abroad, with no home market and without communication with the seaboard. But by the Union we attained a high position in the world. We have a magni- ficent line of water communication, a direct trade with Europe, can obtain credit to an almost unlimited extent in England and have every prospect of becoming one of the most prosperous and thriving commu- nities in the world. Are we going to spoil all this by severing the Union in order that Mr. Brown may govern a part of it 1 (Cries of " no, no.") That is the whole secret of the agitation. Mr. Brown, finding he has no chance of again governing the whole country, even for two days, cares not whether he throws it into the condition it was in half-a-century ago, if he only has an opportunity of reigning in Western Canada. The language the poet Milton put into the mouth of his Satanic majesty is very applicable to his case — " I would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.^' (Applause.) Mr. Brown's ambition is such that he would rather govern half of the country — and the half which would be depressed and ruined— in order that he may call himself the first man in it, than have the prospect before him of being forever excluded from the government under the Union. I hope and feel you all agree with me in the importance offer the . future founding our party, its hopes and its prospects, upon the Union of Canada and its Union with the Crown of England — Union now u;ider our beloved Queen, and Union under her son, when in the course of time and by God's providence he becomes our Sovereign." The list of extracts on the subject may be concluded with Mr. Macdonald's reference to it at St. Thomas. " Mr. r'hairman, I cannot press too strongly upon your attention the close connection that exists between Upper and Lower Canada. [Cheers.] Sir, I am heart and soul a Unionist. [Great applause.] After the governments, of which I have been a member, had settled the qitestions which agitated the country, there was scarcely any great principle left on which parties were divided. That is an un- wholesome state of things, where no great principle is at stake. When no great questions divide parties, politics are apt to become a perso- nal matter — people struggle for party purposes and not for the sake of principle. I am glad that, in consequence , of late proceedings and acts performed by a large and respectable party in Canada, we can again form ourselves into two parties — Unionists and Disunionists. t Cheers.] I, sir, as I said before, and the government with which act, are Unionists in heart and soul. We go for union w.th Eng- land and union with Lower Canada. [Cheers.] If you will only consider, you will perceive in what a position Canada is placed. We have one of the finest positions on the globe — the most magnificent system of inland navigation in the world — no where else can any thing be seen like our waters ; our great lakes, our magnificent St. Law- rence. And, sir, we are only in our infancy^-our untaught minds cannot appreciate the wealth our children will see rolling along those waters — the treasures of the West pouring down them, to be deposited in the great East. They will also see this, that from the extraor- dinary fertility of Upper Canada ; the mildness of its climate, the richness of its soil combining to render it the finest agricultural region in the world, it will develop itself as a great producer of food. In Lower Canada, they will see one of the greatest manufacturing coun- tries under the sun. You must know that many parts of Lower Canada have a soil as rich as the best portions of the Western Pro- vince, but a climate so severe and rigid, that it compels the hardy and industrious population to endure six months of enforced idleness. During the long winter they have scarcely any occupation, while at the same time they are anxious to work, being the most industrious, careful and frugal people in the world, handy and apt in learning the various arts. They have water power in the most astonishing quan- tity, and they have thus within their reach all the materials for a great manufacturing country.— Men, women and children can work in the factories durmg the winter; a certain portion of them can go to the- fields in the summer time. (Applause.) Hence it will be seen that the- farmer of Upper Canada must send his produce to be consumed by the manufacturers in Lower Canada. In return he will receive ma- nufactures, such as clothing, made in our own country. (Applause ) We shall then have a home market. At this moment we are alto<'ether dependant on the crop in England, or the crop on the Baltic Sea astO» 9b whether the produce of onr farmers is worth much or little. A single harvest on the continent of Europe, approaching in amount to that which we have fortunately, by the blessing of Providence, been able to reap in Canada, would render our wheat almost valueless. People there are close to England — the farmers are many of them serfs, living cheaper and more coarsely than we could ourselves, or would allow our servants to do — they can produce much cheaper than we can, and live upon less. Thus, as I said, we are altogether depen- dent on their crops as to whether the fruits of our industry shall be worth much or little. [Hear.] But when we have a home market, as I expect we shall, we shall be independent — we shall be able to sell our produce to our artizans, and our own tradesmen will supply us with the fruit of their labor in exchange. [Hear, hear.] Pardon me, if I again, and in conclusion, call your attention to the necessity of forming one great party of Unionists in Canada, I would say this, that I consider every man who says he is in favor of the union, of the complete union of the Canadas, and the complete union with England, to belong to my party, whatever his antecedents may have been. And though he may have fought side by side with me in Parliament, he is diametrically opposed to me if he raises his finger for the repeal of the happy union which now exists. [Long continued cheering.] " Appendix A. REPUESENTATION BY POPULATION. Speech' of Mr. Macdonald in the Legislative Assembly, 19th April, 186L Attorney General Macdonald rose and said : this important questioh had been fully and fairly discussed by members on all sides of the House. He had been in Parliament for seventeen years, and had never heard any subject so ably debated, from every point of view. So much so had this been the case, that if the speeches. had been fully reported, or, better still, if each member would take the trouble to prepare his speech, a volume would be formed which ■would be, for all time to come, a faithful repertory of all that could be said on the subject and almost a hand-book to our constitution. [Hear.] His hon. friend the member for South Simcoe could say that the attempt, if attempt there had been, to prevent ample discus- sion of his bill, had been a signal failure, and he had received the just reward of the zeal and sincerity with which he had pressed it forward. He had forever connected his name with Representation by Population. He was no trading politician — he had not used the '•questiori for the purpose of exalting himself or attacking a Govern- ment, but impressed with the importance of the subject, he had brought it forward upon its merits. It would be an ill-judged policy on the part of this House if, after the full discussion of this measure, it should not vote upon it according to its merits. It could be no longer said that discussion had been stifled. And it would be a cri- minal waste of the public time to let it go to a second reading for the sake of courtesy, when the whole debate would be had over again. [Hear.] For the subject had been exhausted, every argument had been used, every c 1 luse of the bill was understood, and its merits and defects were known. He, for one, should give his vote on the merits of his hon. friend's bill. [Hear.] Well, looking at the bill thus, he could not give his vote for it. [Hear, hear.] He would give the same vote as in July, 1858, against the introduction of a measure of this kind. It seemed to him that the measure was pre- mature, until such time as the census was completed, fully showing in what manner we could deal with the question fairly. If there was to be a readjustment of the representation of the country, it must 97 tW w.r '"'''",'■?*'' knowledge of all the facts. (ITcnr.) Bnt there wnfn TT/^""''""" ^^ '^^ '^"' i'«^'^- In the first place there was no limit to the amount of representation. If the raeLuro was carried out, we should soon have a parliament as numerous and Hnwn t7"' ""' '^f."^ ^'■^^^ ^"'''■■"- '^'^"^ ^-"^ "« maximum set r^Z^ihl was said that as the counties increased in population, so must the numbers of representatives increase. That was a vicious principle which had been dissallowed last session by that very House. Ihe principle of allowing a constituency to have more than one representative was dissallowed in the bill to divide Montreal. Quebec, and Toronto into separate electoral districts. The only principle by which the only true relation between the constituency and the representative could be established was by havin"- one re- presentative to one constituency. Mr. Foley.— That is a matter of detail. Hon. J. A. Macdonald.— It went to the very principle of the bill. In fact, to adopt the measure would be to take a retrograde step. Well, looking further than the bill, and at. the principle of represen- tation acoorijmg to population, he would say now what he had always said ; he was opposed to it and always voted against it. His hojio- raj)le friend from Cornwall had charged the Conservative party, the other day, wjth having pommeneed the agitation of tHe subject. That was not the case. The question was never mopted until it yr^a .brought up by the Baldwin administration in 18+9. From 18+0 to lBi9, the country accepted the constitution. ' It had been adopted by the representatives of the people of Upper Canada and by the gover- ning power in Lower Canada. There was a great deal of 4pubt and hesitation in the mind of Upper Canada at the time, and almost uiii- versal dislike to it on the part of Lower Canada, but both set t}iem- ;S€^}ves h;aaestly to work it out to the best advantage. And so they W^^ oa until 1849, when a measure to increase the number of re- pr-esfi^ijtatives in the House was introduced by the Lafontaine-Baldwin Government. He defied his honorable friend to ^s^iew that in any way whatever the Conservative party had supported that measure ; fin the contrary, they had always adopted a contrary course. In 1849, '50, '51, and '52, the Conservative party had voted against it as 0iie njiain, and were, in fact, so close driven that if one of them had changed his vote, the measure would have been carried. It depended, they might remember, on the question whether the Speaker had a easting vote or not, under the two-thirds clause, and Mr. Moria decided that, under the act of Union, he had not. Mr. GowAN — That bill did not involve Kepresontation by Popula- tion. " Hon. J. A. Macdonald— He knew that. But at that time Mr. Chauveau, an eli:ve of Mr. Papineau, moved an amendment involving Jlepresentation by Population. They would fiad,qa tlie 18l,h March^ ,1849, that he moved two resolutions. 7 98 1st. Mr. Chauveau moved, seconded by Mr. Laurin, and the question was put. ' " That it'is to be regretted the inhabitants of the late Province of Lower Ca- " nada have not been constitutionally consulted with, respect to the passing of " the Act of the Imperial Parliament re-uniting the two late provinces of Upper f and Lower Canada, and that the said Act contains provisions contrary to " justice, and to the rights of British subjects." " The only yeas on this were Messrs. Chauveau, Laurin and Pa- pineau. . 2nd. Mr. Chauveau moved, " That amongthe provisions which are contrary to justice and the rights of '" British subjects, is that which establishes an equal number of Representatives " for each section of the Province formerly constituting the Province of Upper " and Lower Canada, without taking into consideration their respective popu- " lation." .' [The division was the same.] Mr. Foley — Every one knew what that was for. « Hon. Mr. Macdonald — He did not know wha:t the hon. member meant by that. They were two resolutions on the solemn record of the House proposing a change in the quantity of the Representatives of Upper and Lower Canada, and the conservative party voted against them in the most distinct way, showing that not a single member of the party was in favor of altering the basis of the Union. The only motions from which it might be inferred that they were in favor of a change were one made by Mr. John Gfamble, and another by Sir Allan ',McjNab, that if a constituency had more than 20,000 people it should have two representatives. These resolutions w^ere how^ever moved as amendments, for the purpose of defeating the second reading of the bill to increase the number of members of Parliament. He had said, and urged it in his humble way, and warned the Lower Cana- dians at the time against such legislation. True, the increase was 'based on the principle of equality, but he had pointed out as strongly as he could that if they were at liberty to discuss the question at all they could not fetter themselves to the question of equality. The Union was a distinct bargain and a solemn contract, reduced to writing, and if it were meddled with at all — if they could exercise their independent judgment with regard to it — if they could alter it in the slightest degree, they could not bind the Colonial Legislature ; tjut must leave several questions open to be discussed ; the principle of equality being as liable to be brought up as the pririciple of increase. [Hear.] And so it had proved. [Hear, hear.] He was directly op- posed to the principle of Representation by Population as a conserva- tive, because it led by logical sequence to universal suffrage. His hon. friend the member for North York had attempted the other night to draw a distinction between the constituent body and the Repre- sentative body, and said the alteration in the one did not involve the alteration of the other. That was not a correct argument. In this 99 bill, tlie Representative body was to be altered as the'members in the constituent bodies increased. But that was not all. The represen- tation was to be based on the nuniber of people, men, women and children, which brought up the whole subject of universal suf- frage at once. It led directly to it, and as a conservative, he must oppose it with all his might. Dr. Connor — Absurd, absurd ! Hon. J. A. Macdonald — The hon. member might think it absurd, but there were gentlemen even on the Opposition benches who, though they migh^ not agree with the argument, would not think it absurd. [Hear.] He was opposed to universal suffrage, he repeated it. Experience had shewn that it left a nation weak and led it towards anarchy and despotism. Unless there was a middle power, unless property was protected and made one of the principles on ; which representation was Isased, they might perhaps have a people altogether equal, but they would soon cease to have a people alto- gether free. [Hear.] Mr. Foley — Perhaps before the Attorney General went further, he would allow him to read a resolution expressive of his views on Representation by Population at a particular time. When the mea- sure was before the House to equalize the representation of Upper I Canada. Mr. Gamble moved in amendment, seconded by Sir Allan MacNab— " That all the words after « That " be left out, and the bill be re-committed for the purpose of inserting the following words ^ " And be it enacted, that whenever the population of either section of the " Province shall exceed that of the other by one-third, every county or riding- " then containing within its limits a population of 30,000, shall be entitled tO' ^" send a second member to represent the county or riding in the Legislative " Assembly. And it shall be the duty pf the Governor in Council to divide sncla " county or riding into two ridings of compact and adjacent territory as nearly " as can be of equal numbers in relation to population, for the purpose of such " representation, and to designate the boundaries of such ridings as shall be " entitled to be represented, &c." v Among the yeas taken down was the name of the Hon. Attorney General West, and almost all the other Conservatives. [Hear, hear.] ' Still, the Hon. gentleman affected to place the House under the im- pression that he never voted for Representation by Population. [Hear, • hear.] Hon. J. A. Macdonald — The hon. gentleman might as well have ' saved himself the trouble of reading that resolution. He had pre- viously mentioned the reason for which Mr. Gamble brought it for- ward. [Hear.] Another objectioii he had to the principle involved in his hon. friend's bill was thisj— that if Representation by Popula- tion were adopted, it must either increase indefinitely the number of representatives, or else coihpelled the adoption of the vicious system of altering the territorial lirnits of constituencies every time there had to be a readjustment. Now, it was of the very greatest importance, of 7* 100 primary imporfaince indeed, that the English system should be kept up in this country — that there sliould not be frequent changes in the limits of constituencies, and that people having a common interest should send persons to Parliament to represent that local interest, sia well us to deliberate. on theistale of the country at large. |TIear.] See what the consequence was of the adoption of the contrary prin- ciple in the United States, where instead of a, cluster of municipalities pending a representative to Congress on whom they could rely, they had mere geographical divisions, and had the horrid system of party caucuses or conventions at which those men were chosen to be returned by the divisions who were the most available for party pur- poses. There was anothsr reason favorable to county organizations. It was that, in them, men were trained to the duties of administra- tion — learned to bear and flirbear — learned how to make judicious compromises — and get all sorts of crotchets driven out of their minds. Let all these be thought of before we talkedof introducing a general system of breaking up counties into squares, to which system such a principle as that of this bill must infallibly lead. [Hear.] He was satisfied that the best means of securing good government was repre- sentative institutions, but rei)resentative institutions being merely a means to an end were liable to be altered, just as the experience of the country might dictate. There was no inalienable right ia any man as such to exercise the franchise. Otherwise on what principle could we say as we did say, that one man had a right to the franchise because he was assessed for £50 of real estate, wJule we deprived of the right a man who was assessed for JC4>9, a man whose natural capacity might be greater in every way 1 Yet no one in this House objected to that arrangement, unless, indeed, the junior member for Montreal, who, if he understood him rightly, had ex- pressed himself in favour of universal suffrage. The objection to that system was obvious, though perhaps on this continent, from the ge- neral diffusion of wealth among the peopUi, it was less obvious than in Europe. If the principle of representation by universal suffrage was adopted, the result would be in this country as it had been in other countries, that those who had no property would come to have the governing power, the power of imposing the burdens on those who had property. In all countries wliete universal suffrage had been introduced, it amounti;d in the long run to a confiscation of property, and men of property had been obliged as in France, to seek refuge in despotism, to rescue them from tho tyrannical power of mere numbers. White population was one of the chief elements on which represen- tion should be based, it was still only one of the elements, and the true principle by which representation should be regulated, was that all interests sliould ho represented, [Hear, hear.] That was the principle of representation in England, and under it England had , flourished, and had withstood the storms of revolution, of foreign war, and domestics dissension. From the time that England had repre- Bfelitative institutions in their present form, (he jirineiple that all inte- rests shcaild, be protected had- been the protection ami safeguard of Eiigland', even 'during; the periods when thfe' storm of revolution was i^eeping over-Eiirope, England had stood in that position because all' ifl'ttereslfs ^tiA all clafees ftund' protection in her legislation, and so he woiild haVfe it to'be in this' country. Onr' repi'eSentaiion of conn- ties' might be fairly said to protect the agricultural interest. So tlie nfeniberS'for oUr cities and to'wns might be heW'to represent the great commercial and manufacturing interests, antl those of our artizans and mechanics. And if it were thought proper to enlarge still further the representation in parliament, he would not only, continue but in- crease the system of burgh representation, giving a member to every considerable town having vitality! He would nut choose places like J^Tiagara, although he hoped his hon. friend' the member for that town would not consider he was speaking in disparagement of Niagara. Just as old Sarum and Gotten in England, when one was an old tree and another an old house, were the means of .introdircing great men: into parliament, so Niagara had returned an hon. gentleman, who was Worthy toi represent th« most important constituency in a country. Efe would be strongly in favour of increasing the.biirgb representation, aasd'giving representatives to, suoh towns as Brantford, St. Hyacinth, &lew NfOift^iaS regarded the questipn of representation by population so strdngly pifessed upon the attention of the House, while he be- lieved his hoji. friend, the member for South Simcoe, was sincerely and' truly,; heart and soul, attached ito the advocacy of that principl©, hecoUid not'pay the same cowipliment to the great body of hon. gen- tksmen opposite' w!ho formed Her Majesty's opposition. The member for North Oxford, in the most candid manner, announced his opinions, and not his own opinions alone, but those of the great body of re- formers of Upper Canada, when he said that representation by popu- lation was not astrfficient remedy, was not the remedy. That was settted long ago, jjot only by that hon. gentleman, brat by the whole beiiiy 'of Ihei refortoerS of Upper Canladaij at the. CcB],vention in 1859... .Hon* J. S. MAcnoNALD^Nbtall the Reformers of Upper Canada. 'Honoralile J. A. Matidonald said he understood' the hon. member Ibr Cor'p wall ■was rtot pireisent. But at all events' it was a very large, 'Verymimerous, •vsery respectable, and most influemtial collection of Reformers from Upper Canada, and the results they arrived at might be held to be a fair indication Of the opinions of the Reformers of tJ^^et Canada, on important questions. The Reformers in that (JOttVentiotl came to the conclusion that represention by Population ^Si to use the language of hon. getttJerUen opposite, no efficient remedy for the evils under which Upper Canada suffered, and the other day the hon. member for North Oxford repeated that 'Statement. He [Atty. Gen. Macdonkld] made bold to deny that -tipper Canada had been suffering under evils. When they asked 102 what these evils were, they were told that the interests of Lower Canada were mainly consulted, and that the ministry of the day, haying a majority from Lower Canada, had overridden Upper Canadian interests, had prevented Upper Canadian legislation in an Upper Canadian spirit, had introduced a system of French domination and had enforced French principles generally upon the people of Upper Canada against their will. But when hon. gentlemen opposite were asked to give an instance of French domination, they could not give one. The member for North Waterloo, being pressed on one occasion, instanced the Jury Bill. Hon. Mr. Foley — I could instance fifty others. Hon. J. A. Macdonald defied the hon. gentleman to point to a single measure carried by the present Government since they took office in September, 1854, which had given dissatisfaction in Upper Canada. Hon. Mr. Foley — I will mention one at ""once — the Clergy Reserves Act. Hon. J. A. Macdonald — If there was one measure of the whole of those passed by this- Government, which had met with universal acceptance throughout the whole of Upper Canada, it was the Clergy Reserve Bill, and when he retired from politics altogether, he should be glad and proud to have it said that he had been, in his small way, instrumental in having helped in the settlement of that question which was stated to have caused the rebellion of 1837, setting father against son and family against family. — Whatever other disputes might arise, that great question had been settled in a manner satisfactory— aye without exception — to every one. Hon. Mr. Foley — No ! No ! Hon. J. A. Macdonald — The hon. gentleman might say no, but he was willing to meet him in the presence of the hon. gentleman's own constituents, and ask them if they were not satisfied. He was sure he would receive from them an affirmative answer. The people of Upper Canada were satisfied with that measure ; in the first place, because it settled the question for ever ; in the second place, the different religious denominations and their clergy were sati&fied ; and then in the next place, instead of that enormous property being a matter of dispute and covetousness between difierent sects and •denominations in Upper Canada it had been wisely distributed among all the municipalities of Upper Canada, to be used by them for such useful purposes as they saw fit, to pay their honest debts, to educate their children, or to improve their roads. The question had been removed from the arena of party dispute, and had been settled in such a manner as to satisfy every party and every interest. [Cheers.] But the hon. gentleman also quoted the Jury Law. And what was the complaint in that case ? One complaint had reference to a Bill 103 which came down from the Upper House, permitting juries to render verdicts, although the jury was not unanimous. Hon. Mr. Foley — That was not the Bill at all, I voted with you on that Bill. Hon. J. A. Macdonald Went on to say that because he made a speech declaring that the Jury ought to be unanimous, and the majority of the House went with him and threw out the Bill, wishing to preserve ,the old Saxon principle which had prevailed from the time of King Alfred upwards, that the unanimous verdict of a Jury of twelve men should be required, and because the French actually voted that the law of England which had come down to us from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors should be main- tained, that was French domination ! The other Jury Bill, to which the member for Waterloo had referred, was introduced for the purpose of cutting down the enormous expenses of the old system, and it had been effectual in reducing them to a most remarkable ex- tent. This had again and again been proved. His hon. friend from Kent (Mr. McKellar) when he first got the Bill, rose in his place and said it was a great improvement on the old system. And yet '(he was sorry to say for the independence of that hon. member) he was after- wards whipped in by the hon. member for Toronto, his leader, and compelled to vote against the Bill at its third reading. And why 1 Because he was told it was an Upper Canadian measure of a Govern- ment which had not the majority in Upper Canada, and no matter how good it might be, it must be voted against in order to resist French domination, although it reduced the expenses of the Jury sys- tem by at least one-third or one-half And so it was with other measures he had introduced In one instance when he introduced a Bill which had met with universal approval in the profession, — that effecting an alteration of the Surrogate Courts, he saw his hon. friend from South Ontario (Mr. Mowat), and the hon. member for South Oxford (Dr. Connor), engaged in eagerly cutting up the Bill, as the word was passed along to oppose it — cutting up and hur- riedly reading the marginal notes, in order to see if they could find aothing, on account of which to oppose the Bill ; and the member for Cornwall then rose and said — '• Good Bill or bad Bill, law or no law, we will vote against every Bill the Government introduces," because forsooth they are not supported by a majority of Upper Canada. Hon. Mr. Foley — And a cumbrous bill it is. Hon. J. A. Macdonald — I venture to say the hon. gentleman knows nothing about the working of the Bill. Hon. Mr, Foley — I venture to say I know a great deal more about it than you do. Hon. J. A. Macdonald believed the hon. gentleinan opposed the bill without reading it, and he was pretty well satisfied he had not read it since. [Laughter.] This, however, had become a grave mat- 104. Ut, from the manner in which hon. gentlemipft oj^jiosite had treated itf. Threats, most disloyal threats, had been held out in ord'er to preVfent hon. Members from exercising their own judgment on the subject. [Hear, hear.] There had been threatening statements that the peo^ pie of Upper Canada would rise in their might and push him and his colleagues from their stools and put others in their place. Was that a right argument 1 Was it becoming for hon. gentlemen to rise am. threaten this House with an appeal to aims, that wthe same day they found the majority of the hon. gentlemen opposite "who voted with the hon. member for Toronto, voting in its support, . and the whole of the hon. gentlemen who formed the Lower Canada section of the Brown-Dorion administration voting against it. A motion was at that time made to give the Bill the three months' hoist, and Messrs. Thibaudeau, Drummond, Dorion, in fact the whole of the Lower Canada members of Mr. Brown's Government, and the- hon. member for Cornwall, one of the members from Upper Canada,, -voting to throw out the Bill on the first reading. Hon. Mr. Dorion — Not on the first reading. Hon. Mr. Cartibr— Yes, it was the very same motion. Mr. DuNKiN^-And moved by the same member. ' Hon. Mr. Macdonald. — Yes, they all voted to throw out the bill at once, without even giving it the consideration of a second reading. On the 30th day of July — but a few days after this vote was taken — they found the hon. Mr. Brown and the hon. Mr. Dorion forming an administration and attempting to grapple with the question on which, they had just before been seen to be hopelessly divided. How they did grapple with it might be inferred from the fact that after two •years' experience, after two years' cogitation, the hon. member for Montreal would give precisely the same vote that he gave on the 12th day of July, 1858, and that although on the 30th July he formed a government to settle the question he was now about to vote against representation by population, and in favour of the motion for the six months' hoist, which had been seconded by his former colleague, the hon. member for Portneuf. [Hear, hear.] So that it was quite clear that neither the present government, nor any other government having a. majority in the House, as at present constituted, could take up this question or settle it. He defied hon. gentlemen opposite to form an- administration possessing the confidence of a majority in the House, whatever might be the result of next election, no matter what might, be the character of their administration, whether it was formed exclu- sively by hon. gentlemen on the opposition benches, or whether it was a combination of parties of difierent political opinions ; under the- 112 feeling at present existing between Upper and Lower Canada, it was impossible tliat tbey could carry out the principle of representation by population. It niuat, tlierefore.be left to work its own way on its own .merits. If it had real merits, if it had vitality, if it was a correct principle, if it was just alike to the people of Upper and Lower Ca- nada, whatever might be the temporary feeling or prejudice against it, it would Ije found that in the long run, truth was strong and must prevail. As was the case in the other great questions it might take a long time to make a proper impression, but if it had truth on its side iteer;taialy must and would become sooner or later the law of tlie land. If hon. gentlemen opposite would but reflect for a single moment they would see that by the course they were taking, making this a question of party, they were causing this to be a matter impossible to be carried out, and declaring to a certain extent that they themselves and those connected with them must for ever remain in hopeless Opposition. Surely there were questions enough besides this for them to quarrel about and mjvke the subjects of party strife — surely they Hiiglit put this one question aside, like the Slave Trade question in iEngland, and not regard it as a question affecting one party more thaa another. They might leave this question to fight its own way. They conld take np other issues on which to quarrel and divide ; and if they would only adopt this course they would prevent the unwhole- some, the unholy agitation now going on ; they would avoid all the injury which would otherwise result to the nationalintefests of the country; they would avoid all the agitation on this subject as a matter of party consideration at the polls. By setting it aside from party politics, they would preserve peace, prosperity and quiet to the land ; but by making it a matter of party strife, they agitated the •country from end to end and frustrated every possibility of its becom- ing the law. Agitation would set interest against interest, sectipn against section, and prevent the possibility of its passing into law. THear.] Dissolution of the Union had been spoken of. But lie really hoped that this had been held out as an empty threat. He believed that the best interests of the Province were dependent on the conti- nuance of the Union, and that our national prosperity and future greatness were involved in its being preserved intact. But before •enlarging on this point, he desired to say a word on another subject. It was most unreasonable to expect the majority to yield to the minority. He believed that the majority of the people of Central Canada would be found to act with the Lower Canadians on this point. [Loud cheers from the Ottawa members,] If even, unfor- tunately, a dissolution of the Union were to take place, the people of Central Canada could not be expected to remain with Upper Canada. Supposing a dissolution to take place to-morrow, Uj)per Canada could not for a moment insist that the line should be ruu as in 1791. If the people of Central Canada desired to be connected with Lower Canada^ Upper Canada itijust yield. The whole of the interests .of 113 the country, from Kingston to the old Province line, the whole coun- try lying between the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, and the whole Valley of the Ottawa were inseparably connected with Lower Ca- nada. Central Canada neither bought nor sold in the West. Montreal and' Quebec were her markets^ and indeed every element of her pros- perity was bound up with the prosperity of Lower Canada. They could not expect for a moment that with all the advantages of trade and commerce in the East, Central Canada would consent to be joined to Upper Canada and allow herself to be cut off from the sea, and be separated from the sources of her prosperity, that, in short, she would look North and South, and West, and every where, but in the quartet- from which her only help would come. [Hear, hear.] Draw a line between the two JProvinces, and Upper Canada would be obliged to surrender this large and growing portion of her country, and it would also be found that the agitation for Representation by Population was worse than useless, for Central Canada would have given a preponderance of population to Lower Canada. Such must be the result of this cry of dissolution. (Hear, hear.) But he believed that that cry was a mere empty threat. He could not bring himself to believe that those by whom it was used were sincere. God and na- ture had- joined us together. Stretched the full length along the Northern Shore of the great lakes and commanding the mighty St; Lawrence, we possessed the same common interests — interests- which were only now beginning to be developed. Rapidly and Steadily Lower Canada was becoming one of the most important manufacturing countries in the world. Upper Canada was increasing in an equal ratio in agricultural prosperity. Such was the rapid' increase of this western world— such was the productive power of the ■v^est, that no European market would be found for its immense cereal; productions, and Upper Canada must therefore look for a whbtesoine interchange of commodities with the Eastern Province, Upper Canada being the producer and Lower Canada the consumer, Upper Canada would send to Lower Canada the products of her soil, and Lower Canada return the fruits of her manufacturing industry, and thus, year by year, the Union would become a greater and still greaternecessity. Would they consent to forego all these benefits, to scatter all these advantages, because of their determination to impose Reipiesentation by Population upon Lower Canada t Who could lay; his, , hand on any serious evils that had occurred under the Union t; For his part he was surprised at its marvellous success. When they considered that at the time of the Union the country was torn by domestic dissensions, and Upper Canada overwhelmed witl^ debt, and that now because of the Union the country possessed the best credit in the world after the mother country, \vo,uld they consent to a severance of that Union, because Upper Canada had a iiiajority of a tenth or thereabouts over Lower Ca,nada J We were now approaching to a, population of 3,000,000 of people— wa were approaching, to the popu- 8 114 lation of the United States at the time they declared their indepen- dence, we were standing at the very threshold of nations, and when admitted we should occupy no unimportant position among the nations of the world. Long might we remain connected with Great Bri- tain. He hoped for ages, for ever, Canada might remain united with the mother country. But we were fast ceasing to be a dependency and assuming the position of an ally of Great Britain. — England would be the centre, surrounded and sustained by an alliance not only with Canada but Australia, and all her other possessions ; and there would thus be formed an immense confederation of freemen, the greatest confederacy of civilized and intelligent men that ever had an existence on the face of the Globe. (Cheers.) He hoped to live , to see that day ; and it would surely come, if our statesmen would only be patriotic enough to lay aside all desire to do that which tended to rend the existing Union and allowed us to continue to progress as we had progressed since 1840. He believed his hon. friend from North Waterloo was one of those who entertained feelings of patriotism and love of country, and that, though a strong party man he could, when occasion demanded, Ie^t aside all party feeling for the good of the Province. He asked the hon. gentleman to carry out that principle on this question. Let him and all others return home, to the sphere of their influence and usefulness ; let them use every legitimate means for the purpose of carrying out their views on the other subjects on which they had set their minds ;. but do not in the name of our common country, do not make this a mat- ter of party agitation and party strife. Let each go home and imbue his neighbours as far as he could with his particular views on other matters ; but let them all set aside party feeling in a matter of such vital consequence as this, and work together for the common good on the principle of Union, and not on the principle of one section fighting and striving against and seeking to annihilate the other. (Loud cheers.) THE LAND PURCHASE AT SARNIA. Speech of Mr. Macdonald in the Legislative Assemblt, 17th May, 1861. Hon. Attorney General Macdonald moved that the House at its rising do adjourn until eleven o'clock to-morrow. He made his motion, he said, for the purpose of having an opportunity of making the statement which he had promised to the House in refer- ence to the purchase of land at Sarnia. While he was making a tour in the West last fall, he saw, to his surprise, certain charges against him, in different newspapers, as a member of the Government, and affecting others with whom he was connected, relative to this ' pro- perty. He took occasion to state to his own constituents at Kingston and also at St. Catherines, from general recollection, all the facts' 115 connected with the subject, and although there were some imma- terial errors in that statement, he found that, upon the whole, it was correct in the most important particulars. On looking over the file of the leading paper of the Opposition, he found the charges set for that full length, in an article published 19th December, I860. He pre- sumed most hon. members had seen the article. He should not, therefore, trouble the House by reading it at length, but as it wound up by asking a series of questions, which shewed the nature of the charges brought against himself and Messrs. Gzowski & Co., with whom he had acted in this matter, he would only read that portion of it. But before doing this, he might take the opportunity of saying that he had taken occasion to look into the whole matter as it affected himself and those gentlemen, and he thought he should be able to convince the House that the property had been acquired fairly and legitimately. He knew how important it was that his character should be free from stain, having been so long in public life, and holding as he did now, and had done, most a prominent position as a public man. And it was important, too, that the character of the gentlemen with whom he had been associated in this matter should also be free from stain, because two of them were men of high position in public life — one of them being the present Finance Minister, and the other the- Hon. Mr. Holton, a member of the Brown-Dorion Government, and the- other two, although not gentlemen of political standing, were gentle- men of high standing in the private walks of life, as would be under- stood when he stated that one was Mr. Gzowski, and the other Mr. Macpherson. He stated at Kingston, and at St. Catherines, that this property at Sarnia, in which he had an interest — although a silent interest — was acquired by these gentlemen who were known as the firm of Gzowski &; Co., before he was a member of the Government ; in fact, when he was in the Opposition. The Globe of the 19th December, 1860, contained extracts from several journals on this sub- ject, and an article of its own which wound up as follows : " A few questions dispose of the whole case : ' 1. " Did Mr. Macdonald, as a Minister of the Crown, recommend a sale of public lands, in the purchase of which he was himself personally interested ? 2. " Were these lands actually sold to himself and his partners at a merely nominal price ? 3. " Did Mr. Macdonald and his partners afterwards sell those lands to ^. Bankrupt Railway Company, at an enormous advance ? 4. " How was this extraordinary sale brought about ; what motives and. influences were brought to bear, to secure its accomplishment ? 5. " Did Mr. Macdonald at a public dinner given to him and his constituents^ allege that the purchase of the lands was made while he was out of ofBce,. when the truth was that he was Attorney General at tli« lime, and as sucb recommended the sale ? " These questions were pertinent to the matter, and he should discuss them one by one. The first set forth that he was interested as a 8* 116; purchaser with Messrs. Gzowski & Co. Now he should mention , shortly how he became connected with it, and he would show the ; House and the country, that Messrs. Gzowski had every right to pur- chase-^that they acted in a correct spirit — and that, they^ offdnded againstno lawiof the land^or of morality, or of property; or of homesty, or of honor; And that, being the caserr-if ithfise gentleniea acted onlyasthey hada right to actT— acquired pxopeirty, when they hada right to acquire it — he could not see. how it could be said, they: were, wrong in conveying an interest, in that: property to himself, or that he, was wrong in acquiring it. It must be known to every member of the House, who was at all. conversant; with the railway transactions of Upper Canada, that the firm of Gzowski .& Co., consisting: of the four gentlemen he had, named, originally became the contractors, under the local charter, of the road from Toronto to Guelph, and. which road wa^ afterwards extended to , Sarnia. Subsequently, as : they all likewise knew, this road became a portion of the Grand . Trunk Railway, and these gentlemen, who had a contract originally: from; the local company, afterwards became the contractors for the; construction of the Grand Trunk Railway from Toronto to Sarnia. Aa: he believed had been the case with the contractors of almost every railroad in Canada, they were obliged, not only to construct the road ; but to purchase the right of way all along the line of the road. Of course it was their interest to purchase the right of way on as cheap; terms as possible, and if it could be done, by voluntary arrangement. Where a Vj^untary arrangement could not be made with the propri- etors, the law laid down the course that was to be pursued, and gave; the company certain powers of acquiring Is^nds for railway purposes, which they (the company,) covenanted with the contractors to exercise on their behalf. In 18.53, after the firm of Gzowski & Co., became the. contractors of the Grand Trunk Railway, from Toronto to Sarnia, he (Mr. Macdonald) was employed in his professional capacity — he being then and having been for some years their legal adviser, to write formally to the respective officers or principal officers of Her Majesty's Ordnance, whose seat or head-quarters were at Montreal, respect- ing the purchase of all the property in their possession at Point Edward. At that time, as the House well knew, he was not a mem- ber of the Government, but was in Opposition, and continued so until the 11th September, 1831.. He applied accordingly on their behalf, and this, he might say, was the commencement of the transaction connected with the property at Point Edward, and of his joint interest therein. In discussing the matter with them at the time, or shortly afterwards, they being all mutual friends, they came to the conclu- sion that, from the fact that Sarnia would be a dep6t of the Grand Trunk Railway, as well as of the Great Western Kailway, it might, be a good place for those speculatively inclined to invest in. He ascertained that the hon. Malcolm Cameron had considerable property thele, and that it might be well for them all to have a joint account, ' 1117 'laHdliltefigstin that and such dther ^troperty as could be acquired ^there. At '.that time, thewhole of the military i lands were invested •in the principal 'Officers,' or as they were commonly called " The -Respective ' Officers " of Her Majesty's Ordnance. They had. sole 'control under instructiohs fVom the' War Office in En gland, and bought and: Sold; just as they pleased. Neither the Provincial Government inor the ProvinciaLLegislature had any thing to do in the matter, — • nor had the Province any legal or equitable interest whatever in ■ those lands. In this case, as in every other, the contractors attempted to make the purchase by direct communication with the parties ..interested, and on the- 6th of June, 1853,. he- wrote the following 'letter : KiKGST0N,'6th June, 1863. ' Oentlernen; — " The contractors for- the cdnstruc.tion of the Toronto arid'Sarnia Railway, find it necessary for their ipuifposes toi obtain the control of the! Marsh 'rtndiShoal at- Point Ed'ward, in Sariiia. " They are aware that this Shoal as well as the Point ibelonir to the Military '>Gov«mralent — .and have theiefore instrucieJ me lo apply for the right of oecu- ;pancy. .Itiis important that a title should be : given them fur' as much of the ■ Point and Bay, as is notabsolutely required for military purposes and'for what- ever may be reserved, for those purposes, they desire, to obiain a license of occu- ."patiDli 6n the'UsUal terms. " As the'f)lace applied for is of liftle'value, and as the dredging' and filling up bf the Marghwill increase the salrfbrrty of the vicinity, and thus preserve' the - heaHh- of any- garrison that may be stationad there, they trust there- will be no i'difBcalty itt obtaining their object. '"'The contractors are desirous of pressing their works with all speed, 'and 'Twillliherefore be imuch obliged by your talcing theirappHcation into your fa vour- ' able tbnitderadott as early as conveniently may be." I'have the honor to be, Gentlemen, -Your very obedient servant JOHN A. MACDONALD. Solicitor for C. S. Gzowski & Co., Contractors for the Western Section of the 'Gtalid TrUn'k Railway. 'Thai Respective Officers, "&c., &c., Montreal. This letter, it would be observed, was written by him on boha?f of 'iGzowski & Co., as their Solicitor, 'and was an application for the purchase of the whole of the lands on their account or at all events of such as they were disposed to sell, and for the lease or right of occupancy of such as they did. n{)t desire to part with altogether, as was very customary with reference to Ordnance property. Its receipt was duly acknowledged, but as it was inconvenient for him to carry on a correspondence with ^ the respective .officers' of Her Majesty's • . Ordnance, who were stationed ^ at 'Monlreal, the negotiation was ' .Carried on alteitwards in that city by Mr. Macph«rsdn and Mr. Holton, 118 two of the members of the firm. Having made this communication and received the usual acknowledgment, the application, he presumed, was forwarded to England. The next thing he heard of it was ■through a letter which he had received from Mr. Holton, at Kingston, where he was attending to his business. This letter was dated the 25th January, 1854, and the following was an extract from it : " My Dear Macdonai.d— Elliott told me to-day that authority came by last steamer to let us have all the land not required for military purposes we want at Sarnia, on fair and reasonable terms, and that he proposes going up in the spring to determine what would be fair and reasonable." Thus it would be seen that, in June 1853, he, on behalf of Messrs. Gzowski, made the application to the respective officers of Her Majesty's Ordnance, who, at that time had the sole disposal of this property, to purchase the whole of it from them, if they desired to sell it, and offering to lease such portion as they were obliged to retain, and that, in January, 1854, he was informed by Mr. Holton, who conducted the negotiations, that authority had come out to sell the property on fair and reasonable terms. He had, therefore, a right to say with truth as he did say at Kingston and St. Catherines, that Gzowski & Co., had made an offer to buy and rent, and the respective officers had accepted that offer long before he was in the Government. In 1855, a letter was received from the respective officers by the Government and there was a letter attached to it which came from the Lords Comniissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury to the respec- tive officers at Montreal, authorizing the disposal of the land. This was the first time he had seen it, for he had no means of knowing the correspondence between the authorities in England and the respective officers at Montreal. This letter was dated the 31st December, 1853, and was as follows : JNo. 277. (Copy.) OrncE OF Ordnance, 21st Dec, 1853. Gentlemen. — The Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, have authorized the sale to the Toronto and Guelph Railway Company, at a fair and reasonable price, of the portion of the Military Reserve, at Point Edward and Port Sarnia, which is necessary for the extension of the Line of Railway across the Reserve. I have received the Board's commands to notify the same to you, in reply to your letter of the 11th July last. ^ ■' I have, &c., „, „ (Signed) G. BUTLER. The Respective Officers, Montreal, Canada. This letter showed the carelessness with which business was transacted at the Board of Ordnance in England, because the applica- tion was made by him as the Solicitor, on behalf of the Contractors 119 of the Gjrand Trunk Railway, and not on behalf of the Toronto and Guelph Railway Company. Now, he had been furnished with so much of the correspondence between Messrs. Gzowski & Co., and the respective officers, as m ould indicate the course of the negotiations, and prove still further by whom and for whom the property was purchased. The first letter which he would read, was as follows : Office of Ohdnance, Montreal, 6th July, 1854. Messrs. Gzowski, & Co. Toronto. " Gentlemen, — I am instructed by the respective officers to return to you the plan of Port Sarnia reserve, upon which you will perceive the ground which it is necessary to retain for military purposes, has been marked (coloured yellow.) " The commander of Royal Engineers has also marked on the plan, (colored pink) the ground applied for on a previous occasion, and also the track proposed tor the railway. And the respective officers conceive there will be no difficulty in so running the line as to clear the space required for defence, and I am to state that on receipt of a revised plan, steps will be adopted to determine what portion can be leased, and what altogether disposed of to the Company. " I have the honor to be, " Your most obdt. humble sevt. W. W. BLANKOKNE." Another letter was as follows : Office of Ordnance, Montreal, 18th August, 1854. Messrs. Gzowsei & Co., Toronto. " Gentlemen. — With reference to your letter of the 9th instant, on the subject of Ordnance Land at Sarnia, we beg to acquaint you that no objection will be made to the establishment of the terminus of the railroad at the point A on the plan, but we are of opinion that the carriage-shop might be retired beyond the precincts of the block marked yellow, and the merchandize shed brought con- siderably nearer to the track and to the Point, with which alterations there would be no objection to letting the space outside the pencil lines with the res- triction against the erection of any other buildings. " As soon as your assent to these arrangements is notified to us, steps will be immediately taken by Mr. Elhott, to ascertain the value of the land to be sold and that to be let. " The plan is requested to be returned. We have the honor to be. Gentlemen, Your most obdt. humble sevt. WILLIAM BELL, Col. Com. R. Artillery. W. P. WULFF, Lt. Col. Com. R. Engr., Canada. W. ELLIOTT, 0. S. Hd. Qrs. W. W. BLANKORNE." 120 Here, then, allow him to repeat, was an offer made by the fipm-->of" i&zowski ,& Co., to purchase all the lands which the Ordnarase Department had to sell at Point Edward, and to lease suoh of the iprpperty as the ;Department desired to keep ; and following, that offer there was -a bargain struck and agreed to between ihe respective parties. At that time he' [Mr. Macdonald] was not a 'member of , the Government, but in hopeless Opposition. As he had already stated, when the negotiations were commenced, there was no ground to expect that any portion of the property would be handed aver to the Province. The negotiations for the sale were commenced in 1853 j. they did not come to an end until 1854, but they were fully completed before he took office as a Minister of the Crown. The bargain was ■made whilst he was in Opposition, although it was perfectly true that tho conveyance from the Horse Guards was -not received untile 1855. Now every lawyer and every business man will, know that a ibargain for a sale was concluded whenever the, parties to it 'agreed upon the sale. 'So here, the bargain was obligatory on both parties so soon as the terms were agreed Upon, and theconveyance-^bsequ^ntly received from Lord Panmnre was not the sale, but simply the voucher- or evidence that the sale had been made. He did not know why it took from 31st December 1853 to 1856 to complete the title deeds,, but presumed it was caused by the communications between the respective offices in Canada, the War Office and the Treasury. Those delays were constantly taking place in England, in consequence of the immence amount of correspondence which was passed between the different Circumlocution Offices in England and between England and Canada. There was however the agreement to buy and the agreement to sell, and this bargain would have been held good had ihe deed not been rnade out for five, ten, or any number of years. The conveyance had the plan attached to it or ^drawn on its baiek, shewing distinctly what was wanted for defensive purposes and what for Railway purposes, and of course, any siirplus land over those two requirements belonged to the purchaser, viz : the contractGrs,''&r their own use. The land conveyed amounted to some 600 or VOO acres. Hon. Mr. Galt — 600 acres. Attorney General Macdonald— 600 acres. The price was fixed by the Ordnance Officers themselves. They had a right to demand a large price or a mere nominal sum, or give the land away if they liked ; but whatever sum was asked and paid, he had personally nothing whatever to do with the negotiation, which was carried on- by those associated with him in the purchase who lived in Montreal and carried out the arrangements in that city. Of course they did' the best they could for their own interests, and in so doing they could not be charged with impropriety in making a good bargain. They were not bound to look after the interests of the Treasury. The 121 JTespective officers were able enough to do that which it was their •duty to do, but oould Gzowski & Co., act more fairly than by leaving tthe respective-officers the; power ofj fixing the price themselves ? The ,price demanded and paid could be a matter of no consequence toany -.©He in Canada or the Province. The Imperial Treasury was alone concerned in the. sufficiency or insufficiency of the price. He believed that there were- not many .members of the House who had had an .ippportiinity of examining, the property. But had they seen it as -he i^had seen it, .they would acknowledge that at the time the negotiations ..were! pending, the-land-was of little value, and that it was not likely 4o become. of value, except as the site of a railway terminus. The ,point, was sandy; and behind it there was a tract of swamp covered "with »ushes,.with occasional elevations or knolls with timber growing Wpon them. It was most uninviting and cheerless^ in appearance. In ■.l'iJ54 the I bargain and sale was concluded with the exception of the .)price, which was left altogether to the respective officers to fi-X ; he •would.'here -read .an extract from a letter addressed to Messrs^ Gzowski.& Co., on the l4thJuly, 1855: "'I smineti'ncted by the resDective: officers to acquaint you that there is no militaQf objection to the disposal of the tracts designated "swamp, water' and rushes and brush," on the enclosed plan ; and 10s currency per acre is proposed as the price to be charged tor the whole block, with the exception of the portion comprised within the radius of 300 feet (query yards .'') round the projected work of defence ior which an annual rent of i 10 currency per annum will be requited for a teim of 30 years renewable, but resumable whenever the land may be wanted for purposes of defence or military occupation." I'hecontraict was made between the parties before he (Mr. Macdoriald) Xvas a minister of the Crown, and the price was left by Messrs. •Xjrzow&ki & Co., to the Ordnance officers themselves, by whom it was decided. The price demanded was satisfactory, and the property-was -at once' accepted on those terms. Messrs. Gzowski '& Co., wished to 'WCtiuire the-.jjrdperty as railway con tractdrs, to biiild a station tind ■'to lay dtit building lots surrounding it, as had been done at other "iStatidns in Canada. It was a perfectly legitimate speculation. Like'all other contractors, they took the contract for the purpose of making: money out of it. Having stated thus much, he would allude to a charge which had been made. On the 23rd June, 1855, a letter was addressed by Mr. Meredith, to the officers of Her Majesty's Ordnance at Montreal, in which he stated : I am commanded by the Governor General to inform you that His Excellency has had under his consi- deration in Council your letter of the 22nd March last, inclosing a copy of a letter from the Board of Ordnance, authorizing the disposal to the Grand Trunk Railway Company of such portions of the Sarnia Reserveas maybe required for the Terminus of the Railroad in that loca- lity. In reference thereto I am to inform you, in reply to your inquiry upon that head, that no objection exists on the part ot the Provin- cial Government to the ratification of the sale or lease of thelands in question upon the proposed understanding that the 'purchase mouey 122 shall be held available for payment into the military or Provincial chest, according to the result of the arrangements now pending in refer- ence to the transfer of Ordnance Lands to the Provincial Government." That letter was published in the newspapers of this country, and com- mented upon. It was stated that he, as Attorney General, had recom- mended the ratification of the sale to put the money in his own pocket and to deprive the Province of the property. The previous explanation would have shewn that the arrangements were completed long before that letter was written. There was not the slightest necessity to have had any communication with the Government whatever. The Pro- vincial Government had nothing to do with the sale, and the only reason, as it appeared to him, why they applied to the Government, was their reading of the consolidated clauses Railway Act, which merely provided that no Railway could take possession of military or naval reserves without the sanction of the Governor and the approval of the military authorities, but the act in point of fact had no bearing whatever on the case, as this was a case of bargain and sale between the respective officers and the contractors. The following was a copy of the letter forwarded by the Ordnance Officers to the Governor in Council, authorizing the disposaf of the lands : — (Copy.) Office of Ordnance, Montreal, 22iid March, 1855. Sir. — We have the honor to transmit for the information of His Excellency the Governor General in Council, a copy of the communication from the Board of Ordnance, authorizing the disposal for purposes of the Grand Trunk Railway of those portions of Sarnia Reserve which are required for the Terminus of the work in that locality. And to state that all the necessary preliminaries huve been arranged as to the parts to be sold and the quantity of the Reserve to be leased, and that it only remains to be ascertained, with reference to the contem- plated transfer of Ordnance Lands to the Province, whether any objection exists on the part of Provincial Government to the ratification of the sale, with the understanding that the jjurchase money shall be held available for payment into the MiUtary or Provincial Chest, according to the result of the arrangements now pending. We accordingly request you will favor us by communicating the decision of His Excellency in Council upon this point as early as may be convenient. The Honorable the Provincial Secretary, Quebec. We have the honor to be, Sir, Your most obedient servants, (Signed,) W. R. ORD, Col. Cg. R. Eng. (Signed,) Wm. Bell, ^ Col. CowEN, Rl. Artillery. (Signed,) I. J. Elliott, O's. Hd. Qrs., &c. (Signed,) Wm, H. Blenham. 123 It will be seen that Mr. Meredith's letter, which was published sometime ago and excited some remark, had omitted the im- portant words " all the necessary preliminaries have been arranged as to the parts to be sold and the quantity of the reserve to be leased." When this despacth was received, the Provincial Govern- ment had no objection — of course they could have no objec- tion — to the transaction. It had been said that the matter must have passed through his hands as Attorney General. But he had nothing to do with it as Attorney General. No point of law was in- volved, and it was brought before the Council as all other communi- cations received through the Provincial Secretary. The Government could not object to the sale — the property had been sold, and they were bound to carry out the contract. In fact it was a mere matter of form. The lands did not belong to the Provincial^ Governmentj and they granted the Order in Council as they were compelled to do. It was by reason of no recommendation or report of his that the Order was issued. It was issued simply to carry out the law of the land, for the Statute of 1856 which transferred the Ordnance lands to the Province, provided that such transfer was " subject nevertheless to all sales, agreements, leases, or agreements to lease entered into with the officers, or by the principal officers of Ordnance empowered by them." Then, there were other charges which did not affect him or Messrs. Gzowski & Co., but the Hon. John Ross. Mr. Ross — although he had no interest in the world in the matter — was said to have joined in the conspiracy for the purpose of putting a sum of money into the pockets of Gzowski & Co., by injuring and robbing the Grand Trunk Railway of which he was President. The Ordnance officcers took the same course with respect to the Grand Trunk Railway as they did towards the Government. They said that they had sold to Messrs. Gzowski & Co., so much land, and they wrote to the Grand Trunk Railway Company to ask if the conveyance to Messrs. Gzowski, & Co., would be satisfactory to them. It was absurd to say that the Hon. John Ross connived against the interests of the Province in order to pu.t money in the pockets of Messrs. Gzowski & Co., seeing that he had no interest in the matter one way or the other. Mr. Ross was not in the Government at the time. On the contrary, he was in decided Opposition. The Ordnance Officers sent to Mr. Ross, as President of the Grand Trunk, to know if the conveyance of the lands to Messrs. Gzowski & Co. was satisfactory to the Company. Mr, Ross sent for the Engineer of the Company, and desired him to look over the deed and see if it covered all that was wanted for a terminus and other railway accommodation. He replied that they were amply sufficient, and of course the Grand Trunk Company did not object. On this point, he had asked Mr. Ross for a note, and he had sent the following : 124 « Thoksdat, " TMly dear Macdonald — " In reply to your enquiry aboutthe deed from' the' Ordnance Departiiient' ^ 'Tor the -Sarma land, I need only saythatthe e6ntrao»ors,'Gzowsii & Co ,-were ■ bound in their contract to provide right of 'way and station ground, the quantity oftheJattertobedetermiedby the Engineer of the Company. Poor Philpotts -as you are aware was Soli6itor for :ihe Ordnance at Toronto, and in the autuma j 'bi 1856, he bi-ought to me the deed from Lord Pattmure to the contractors fori 'ihe.'-arnia, ana informed irie that the respective ofBoets had directed him to* •obtain frohi me a certificate of the sufficiency of the fleedy which after examina- tion I. gave; as it vested the '-property • in ' the comrafitors, who were thereby enabled to convey to the Company such quantity as might, by the Engineer, be required' for th" purposes of the Company. Philpotts ' did not shew me his correspondence with, or instructions from, the respective officers, and why 'they desired rtiy certificate I am unable to say. Philpotts was well aware that ' the Company could not legally hold more property'- than was needed for right ■ of way and station giound,i and must have been -aware, I Should think, that the 'tsoflhaictors^ in making the purchase, were acquiring- mole land than could be reuuii-ed'for Hallway purposes. " JOHN ROSS." The deed came from LetdPanmnre, because the land was not veste^j^ 'in the ' Province. Had it belonged to Canada, the deed -would hai^' bee-n signed under the great seal of the Province. But it -Waa* expressly exempted by the Act of 1856. To that act a schedule waa ■ 'attiafehed- of the property transferred from the I-ift'perial Government to the Provincia,! Government. The sOhedule -eoiitained a list of all the reserved lands, except the land Sold " to the contractors of the Grand Trunk Rarl-w-ay." That property was specially reserved in the lAot. It was iSold,' not to the Grand Trunk Railway, but to the con- tratJtors. -The'lette^rshe 'had read Shewed this — that the sale was to tSzowski '& Co., ' and '■ that - the- plan shewed that a certain qua:Stity Was to' be reserved for military purposes, an6ther 'quantity for - rail-, way puiFposes- a)nd all the test -to go to Gz(S<--wski & Co. He was personally ignorant of the mode > in which the negotiations were <''cairridd On, but had been kindly 'furnished with such papers by ; his partners ' as -were necessary ' for his and their defence. Ha had nomeans of getting at Or knowing the correspondence betwee^ '*he respective officers here- and the WarOfficef aihome, but he would f^tead aniext-racU frOm til el Montreal Commercial Adwtiser, the writer of which '-^vas 'apparently possessed of reli-able information : " So explicit was the understanding 'that one of the -Inspectors of Ordnance, ' C'olonerH^rness,'-*^ believe, alter all the preliminaries had been arranged, -repbrted -strowyy agttinst the exji^diertcy of selling to the Grand Trunk Rail- i"wa,y COffipiny, a square mile of -laYid itistead of thirty acres, for which consent -fhad beerl given, pointed -out how great the value- of -this land -would became 'from its siitiation at the tenninns of the Railway,'enfeibling them to create on it a city of 30,000 inhabitants, hostile in its interests to other parts of the country." From this extract it is evident that the ordnance officers were not deceived into the opinion that the land was wanted for Railway pur- 125 poses- only j for Colonel Harness is represented as stating that the land was not wanted for Railway purposes but was sufficient to build a city of 30,000 inhabitants upon, and he therefore opposed the sale. He, (Mr. Macdonaid) had not seen it, nor had.Gzowski & Co., seen it ; having said so much he would come to another point in the attack made upon the Government. One of the questions put to him by the Globe was whether he had not, to use a familiar phrase, put the ^ screw, as a member of the Government, upon an insolvent railway company to compel them to purchase the land at a large price. Now he had never sold the land or any portion of it to the Grand Trunk Railway or to any other Company or person, nor did he enter into any negotiation for the sale or speak to or attempt to influence any Company or person to buy. He sold to his partners Gzowski & Co., bU his share in the properties they jointly held at Sarnia and had no interest in any disposition they made of the property. He had no communication with its partners whatever except that the property was likely to turn out well as they had received an offer for a portion of it.. It must be remembered that he (Mr. Maodonald) was also interested in 2,008 acres of land at Port Sarnia which he had pur*, chased from the Honorable Malcolm Cameron for ^65050, The deed Conveying the property was dated September 24, 1K53, and the land ■ was bought on the joint account of Messrs. Gzowski and himself, as other land. When he sold out to his other partners, he sold out the interest he possessed in all the lands. He was not ashamed to state the reason which induced him to sell. It was because, like many others in Upper Canada, he had in 1852 and 1853 speculated too freely ; and when he received a fair offer for it from Messrs. Gzowski and Macpherson he was glad to dispose of it. If the sale to Gzowski and Company was a fair and honest sale, there was no reason why he [Mr. Macdonald] should not be concerned with them in the purchase, and if the Grand Trunk Railway had wished to get the whole of that property, there was no reason why he should not have continued his interests and have sold out at such a price as he could. But in the first place the Grand Trunk Railway could not buy more than Vvas wanted for Railway purposes — they had marked out tlie 43 acres they required and could not hold more without a direct breach of their charter — and in the next place the sale was not made by Gzowski & Co. to the (Jrand Trunk Railway. Gzowski & Co. did not even know who the purchasers were, and he would read a letter from Mr. Blackwell with which they had furnished him. for the purposes of showing this fact. Toronto, Aug; 18, 1858. C. S. Gzowski, Esq., Toronta^ Dear Sir.— Beferring to our conrersatiins on the subject of your proposals to sell to my friends in England that part of your property near the mouth of the St. Clair River, on the Point at Sarnia, I conclude at once to accept your offer of the 1084 acres (less the reserve for railway-purposes of 25 acres) for thfr 126 gross sum sum of thirty thousand pounds currency, five thousand pounds being paid down and the balance with interest at 6 per cent per annum -within ten years ; interest to run from the 1st October, 1858, and to be payable half yearly on the 1st of October and 1st of April respectively in each year; the purchaser having the right to pay oiFthe remainder of the principal before it becomes due on the first of October, 1858, in such sums and at such periods as he may find convenient, and in the event of partial payment being made, interest at the rate of 6 per cent per annum to be allowed thereon. On the execution of the deeds a mortgage for the remainder of the purchase money (viz. £25,000 cy.) in accordance with the foregoing terms to be exe- cuted and delivered. On receipt of a letter from you confirmatory of the foregoing arrangement, I will arrange for the payment of the deposit of £5,000 forthwith. I am, Dear Sir, Yours faithfully, Signed, Thos. E. Blackwell. These friends had evidently purchased, on private advices from Mr. Blackwell, and there could be no doubt that Messrs. Baring or Glynn or both were those purchasers. The means he had of showing that was the letter put into the hands of shareholders of the Grand Trunk Railway by Mr. Blackwell, as follows : Extract of a Letter from Thomas Baring, Esq., to Thos. E. Blackwell, Esq., London, 4th June 1858. PURCHASE OF LAND AT POET HDKON AND SAHNIA. " I presume the Company, as such, cannot buy, otherwise it would be ad- " vantageous for it to do so ; but at any rate a large command of space ought " to be reserved for the terminus, so as to have plenty of room. It might be " objectionable for a director or ofiicial to be a purchaser or speculator, but on " talking over the matter with some of my co-directors it is thought advisable to " make sure of the option of what is valuable, saleable, and eligible at either of " the above mentioned termini by paying a deposit on the purchase if required. " Perhaps the new Junction Company to Detroit may have the power of holding " land, which would add to the temptation of its shares. At any rate, relying " on your discretion, you are authorized to secure what you think fit, and to " draw for a moderate deposit on Baring Brothers & Company." The sum of £10,000 sterling has been paid, and appears in the Company's accounts. It was subsequently arranged that I should take the deed for the estate and give the usual mortgage, and that 1 sliould execute a deed declaring that I held the deed in trust for other parties for the benefit of the Company. These are the only sums the Grand Trunk Company has paid on account of these lands — the balance of the purchase money being spread over several years: and I as- sert that the money which has already been paid does not exceed one half of what they would have had to pay in cash for the quantity of land and frontage which the Company actually required and took at the time the line was opened to Sarnia. I therefore still consider the purchase to have been a good one ; and in this opinion I am bonie out by many others who are well qualified to express an opinion. Recent purchases have fully confirmed the view I took. (Signed) THOMAS E. BLACKWELL. 127 What the exact nature was of the reasons which urged Mr. Black- well to induce Mr. Baring to buy, he could not say, except so far as was shewn in those papers, and he concluded that Mr. Baring finding himself charged with acquiring property in speculation stated that he held it for Gran4 Trunk Railway purposes. He had since heard that the Grand Trunk Railway Company had repudiated the transaction. But he (Mr. Macdonald) had neither sold to Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Bar- ing or any body else further than giving up his interest to his partners. In order to clear away the last portion of this charge against himself he had taken occasion to write to Mr. Blackwell the following letter : (Copy.) Qdebbc, March 4, 1861. Mt Dear Sib — With reference to the purchase of the Point Edward property, at Sarnia, from Gzowski & Co., through your agency, you will oblige me by answering- the following questions : 1. Did I ask you, directly or indirectly, verbally or in writting, to purchase this- property or any part of it ? 2. Had I at any time, any communication, directly or indirectly, with you on the subject of this property or any part of it ? 3. Were you aware at the time of the negotiation with or purchase from Gzowski & Co., that I had any interest in the property .' You, of course, understand that I desire your letter for the purpose of using it for.- my own justification. Yours very truthfully, J. A., MACDONALD. - T. E. Blackwell, Esq., Montreal. The answer from Mr. Blackwell was as follows : Montreal, March 6, 1861. Mt Dear Sib. — With reference to the purchase of the Point Edward property at" Sarnia, referred to in your letter of the 4th instant, and the receipt of which I now beg to acknowledge, t have no difficulty in answering each and all of your questions- in the negative. The only persons whom I knew in the transaction were Messrs Gzowski and MoPherson, nor did I know, until the 28th of November last, when sailing out of~ Boston habor on my way to England, that you had even held any. interest in that or any other property at Sarnia. On the occasion referred to I was informed by a mutual friend of ours that ^oir. had once held property there, but for the reason I before mentioned, the information had no effect in reference to the purchase. I am confident that you never asked me, directly or indirectly, nor did any friends, of yours, in or out of the Government, so far as I am aware of, press upon me, re- commend or influence me in the judgment which I held, which I slill hold, and forr which I alone am responsible. I am, my dear Sir, Yours very truly, THOS. E. BLACKWELL. The Hon. John A. Macdonald. 128* He would now in conclusion agaiiif reply -briefly to the questions of the Globe. It asked.: 1st. " Did Mr. Macdonald, as minister of the Crown, recommend a •sale of public lands in the purchase of which he was himself person-- ally interested^ " That he did not-, in any way whatever. — There was no necessity, for the Government even being consulted about the sale, the question was never referred to. him as Attorney General, it was reported: on by the Provincial Secretary, and so much as a matter of course that lie -had utterly forgotten, until it was brought to his attention recently, that there had ever been an order in Council about the matter at all. [Hear.] 2nd. Were these lands actually sold to himself and his partners at -a merely nominal price." He had stated that the lands were sold at a price fixed upon by the ^respective officers; there was no huckstering about the matter at all — nothing was done to induce the officers to sell the lands except at :such a price as they chose, for no one knew better than the officers . themselves that they could not be forced to sell except they chose, -unless for strictly railway purposes 1 [Hear.] 3rd. " Did Mr, Macdonald and his partners afterwards sell these riands to a bankrupt Railway Company at an enormous advance 1 " The lands were not sold by him at all except to his partners, and those gentlemen did not sell to the railway but to Mr. Baring. [Hear.] 4th. " How was this extraordinary sale brought about 1 What mo- lives and influences were brought to bear to secure its accomplish- ment 1 " The motives he had explained — he had shewn that no influence had been exercised, and that he had no interest in the sale. 5th. " Did Mr. Macdonald at a public dinner given to him by his •constituents allege that the purchase of the lands was made when he was out of office, when the truth was that he was Attorney General -tit the time, and as such, recommended the sale 1 He had fully answered all that — the sale was completed — the •whole transaction was finished before he was in office — and could have been enforced by law against the respective officers in this -country. What he had stated to his constituents was therefore true dn every respect, true in spirit, true to the very letter. — [Hear, hear.] If there was any man in that House who could lay his hand on his heart and say conscientiously that neither directly or indirectly had he used his position, it was he — He stood free, as free as any one there, and as did also Mes.srs Gzowski & Co. his co-proprietors from any transaction except such as honest men in any position had a right to engage in. [Loud cheers.] 199 -,: MR. FOLEY JUSTIFIES MR. MAGDO.VALD. Legislative Assembly, 8th May, 1861. Mr, Foley rose and said— he regretted he was unavoidably absent, the night before, when the Attorney General West was making, hia explanations about what had been termed the Sarnia job — Mr. Speaker. — Order, order. - Mr. Foley begged pardon for alluding to a previous debate, but wished to say, in reference to the matter which was then under ■discussion^ — A Voice. — You (iid not hear the discussion. Mr. Foley said it was true he had not heard the discussion, but he had that morning seen the documents and the papers brought down by the Attorney General and read a sketch of the debate. , Mr. Speaker. — Order, order, order. Mr.; Foley could not let slip this the last opportunity he had in that Parlia,ment of saying that the explanations of the Honorable Attorney General met wth his hearty approval. [Loud cheers.] Appendix B. EEPOET OF THE MINISTER, OF FINANCE OF CANADA. To His Excellency, the Right Honorable Sir Edmund Walker Head, K. C. B., Governor General of British North America, SfC, SfC., SfC, May it please Your Excellency : I,li,aye now the honor to submit to Your Excellency the Public Accbuiits, and the Trade and Na,vigation Returns for the year 1860. , The Report of the Board of Audit, certifying the accuracy of the 'Public Accounts, and explaining the mode in which the transactions connected with the Public Debt are treated, is also herewith sub- mitted. The magnitude of the transactions connected with the Public Debt is such, That I corisider it will greatly simplify my analysis of the accounts for the year if, in my present review, they are entirely separated, and considered wholly apart. It vsrould,' manifestly, only 'lea4 to future coa,fusion, to treat these items as properly belonging to any one year. ' , ; 9 130 The intention of the Legislature, in sanctioning the operation, was mainly, if not wholly, with the view of introducing a great reform into the system of (jontracting Public Debt — to effect the best terms now as regards the annual charge for interest — and at the same time, to make an easy and lightly-pressing provision for its ultimate and complete future extinction. It now becomes my duty to show the extent to which the measure of conversion has been carried — the cost of the operation. — the annual saving effect64T-and the amount of Debt which, under the authority of Parliament, will be henceforward in process of gradual but certain liquidation. The Act passed in 1858 first authorized the issue of Consolida.ted Stock, but being found defective, it was amended in 1859, and Par- liament then sanctioned the creation of new 5 per cent. Stock, or Bonds, to be exchanged, at their relative value for our then existing Provincial Debt, both direct and indirect ; and also, for tl^ redemp- tion, in cash, of certain portions of the said Debt. Although a con- siderable amount of Debentures (about $2,900,000) were redeemed and purchased in 1859, it was not until the very close of that year that the state of the London Money Market permitted the attempt to carry out the main object in view. During the last Session, informa- tion was laid before Parliament of the steps taken in regard to the new Loan and conversion ; but from the nature of the terms offered to holders of the existing Debt, it was at that time impossible to fore- tell the extent to which the operation would be carried. The Ac- counts now show the result up to 31st December last; but being necessarily confined to the tranctions of the actual year, they would fail to convey a correct or complete exposition of the results arrived at, based upon the legislation of 1858 and 1859. ■ The Public Debt, in 1858, consisted of the following items : — 1. The ordinary ProvinCia:l Debt, bearing generally 6 per cent, interest, and including the Bonds issued in aid of the Railways ... $37,395,775 18 2. The Municipal Loan Fund Bonds, secured upon , those special funds, bearing 6 per cent, interest 9,057,792 00 3. Miscellaneous Securities issued for various Trusts, bearing 6 per cent., and in some few cases even a higher rate of interest - .- . . 1138 837 97 4. And thfe Imperial Guaranteed Loan of $7,300,000, bearing 4 per cent, interest, with a Sinking Fund of 4 per cent., in addition to accruing intpreist thereon ... ... 7,300,000 00 The charges upon the Revenue, in regard to the three first items, •>vere for iiitelrest only, and the mode in which it was proposed to de^ w;ith them^ consisted as regards — The First Class— in the substitutiptt, at their relative value of 5 per cent. Bonds or Stock, irredeemable for 25 years, and afterwards, at the option of the Government. 13i The Secorid and Third Classes — -to raise by the issue of undouhted 5 per cent, securities the means to purchase or redeem those which were of less valuable character, from wanting the direct engagement of the Province. In the case of the Imperial Loan, it was desired to efiect such a change in its terms, as would relieve the Provincial Revenue from the very heavy charge for the Sinking Fund, (4 per cent, per annum), and also to secure such an alteration in the investment of the Sin- king Fund as would cause it to become a source of Reveinue. As regards the. last item, the transaction has now been fully com- pleted, and its results can be distinctly stated. Amount of Loan $7,300,000 00 Portion of Sinking Fund applied in 1858-'59, in pur- chase of jG 174-, 000 India Bonds, at 4 per cent, in- terest - - - . - , - . . - - - 805,085 28 Sale of 3 per cent. Consols, £619,030 7-5ths Sterling, producing at 95 per cent., . . - - - 2,861,983 75 Balance required for purchase, of jB 1,326, 500, 5 per cent. ; India Stock, at 102^ - $6,614,530 00 Less - - 2,861,983 75 3,752,546 25 Proportion of cost of Management, and Discount on new Loan...... '. 53,678 00 Total cost 7,473,293 28 for finaL redemption of Imperial Loan, including, as shewn by the Auditor's Report, $150,630 72c. discount on 3 per cent. Consols, which must have been sustained either in greater or less degree, according to the state of the Money Market, whenever sold ; and also, $161,330 premium on Indian Stock, which is in like manner shewn as probably to be realised as the securities are sold to pay off the original Loan. Deducting the arnouxtk realised from the formerly existing Sinking Fund, new Debt has been created, for the purpose of making these investments, equivalent In amount, tp, the Imperial Loan, including all discount and charges, of $3,806,224 25c., creating an annual charge for 5 per: cent. , interest . and i per cent for Sinking Fund, of $209,342 33 c, in lieu of that previously existing, viz. : 4 per cent, interest and 4 per cent. Sinking Fund, on $7,300,000 or $584,000, or a reduction ;of immediate burden of $374,657 67c. ;B"or the perfect understanding of this transaction, it must bei noticed, that the former Sinking Fund would have amounted, at 31st Decern- 132 ber, 1859, to $3,817,699, yielding $114,530, while, by the change of investment, it now produces on the net amount, deducting discount on sale of Consols, $177,068, yieldiilg a positive gain of $62,538 per annum, until absorbed by the payment of the Imperial Loan. This will be gradually modified, as in future years the original Loan is paid off; but the immediate positive gain in investment, and relief in annual charge,: is very evident. ■'■ ' " ' The total amount of new Securities issued during the year, being the gross amount of the 5 per cent. Debt, has been as follows : ^ Bonds .... $24,937,8.57 70 Inscriptions of Stock, 2,326,154 07 $27,264,011 77 From this amount, deducting the sum raised in connection with the Imperial Loan....... 3,806,224 25 There remains 23,457,787 52 Of this amount there has been applied in re- demption of ^2,106,000 Sterling, of the for- mer 6 per cent. Debt, held in London, $11,504,245 59 shewn as follows : ^2,106,000 Sterling $10,249,200 00 Premium of Exchange of 5's for 6's, according to esta- blished rate of value 1,219,353 31 Expense of Conversion 35,692 28 11,504,245 59 And there remains the sum of. $11,953,541 93 "Which has been thus applied : Proportion of discount and management $ 300,359 00 Debentures redeetned in Cash 6,098 574 00 Applied to extraordinary Ser- vice of 1860 $1,263,332 00 Applied to ordinary Service . . 768,793 35 Excess of payments on Special Funds 13,121 00 Investments on Call 949,117 00 and Cash Balances 2,305,928 00 < 5,300,291 35 $11,699,224 35 The difference consisting of the unclosed accounts with the Agents. 133 Before, however, leaving thp question of the redemption of the 6 per cent. Sterling Debt, it, is , important to shew its future bearing on the questions, of its. present annual charge, and of the future Debt of the Province. There has been redeemed, the sum of (£2,106^000 sterling), $10,249,200 which bore Interest at 6 per cent .„. . . . . 614,952 To effect the redemptioin there lias been issued, as .sb„ewn, including all costs of operation, $11,504,245. wjiich bears 5 per cent, interest $ 575,212 and i per cent. Sinking Fund 57,581 Total annual charge $ 632,733 Increase of present charge.. $ 17,781 It will therefore be observed, that by the small annual additional payment of $17,781 over the former charge for interest alone of $614,952 — the means are absolutely provided for the entire liquida- tion in fifty years, of an amount of debt equal, before the conversion, to $10,249,200. The new Stock and Bonds are guaranteed to bear 5 per cent, in- terest for twenty-five years. After which they are redeemable on six months' notice by Government. Should, therefore, the credit, of the country improve, as may be hoped, it may hereafter be possible to replace them by securities bearing a lower rate of Interest — by taking advantage of a favorable money market. The Province is also protected against the risk of an .unfavorable market when the former debt matured — which being payable at a specific date, must h^ye been met., ; : i . . , • il r ■■■ The Auditqr's Report states the whole outstanding debt, direct and inidirect, at - - . - - - $65592469 But from this must be deducted the amount of Indian ! Government Stocks held in trust for the Province, by the Imperial Treasury, to p^y at maturity the , Imperial Loan of 7300000 ■ji" ,, ' Thp actual dgbt of the Province, inclusive of every en- gagement, direct and indirect, in the hands of the public for which its credit and revenues are in any way pledged, is therefore r - - - - 58292469 134. Of this debt no less a sum than - -, - - - is represented by the transactions for the conversion, and by the moderate Sinking Fund of J per cent., this large sum will be wholly extinguished within fifty years, provision having been thus made for its gradual liquidation ; there, therefore, remains the sum of - - - -'-■- to be hereafter paid ofTor converted. Gf this amount there were outsrtanding at the 1st January, in Mu-' nioipal Loan Bonds, which are called in and will be paid off from unappropriated proceeds of Loan, Reducing to - _ . - . the unprovided debt, and making the total - bearing interest at the following rates : Old Debentures 5 per cent., $922821 do 6 do 27130463 do 8 do 28630 New do 5 do 27264.011 Total, - Less. — Interest on Indian Stock, $356532 Deduct 4. per cent on Imperial Loan, - 292000 Annual Interest, Sinking Fund, new loan, ^ per cent, on $27264011 Total charge for Public Debt on Securities issued, 27264011 31028454 2936544 $28081910 $55345925 $46141 1627827 2"290 { 1363200 $3039478 64532 $2974946 $136320 $3111266 It is not necessary to advert here to the engagements of the Pro- vince towards Special Funds which are more or less under the con- trol of Parliament ; nor to the receipts on the Indirect Debt from the IVEitnicipalities, Railway, &c., these are noticed in the Auditor's Re- port as affecting the amount to be annually provided, but they do not modify the position of the Province to-vfards the Public Creditor, which it is my present object to state. The Ordinary Income and Expenditure of the year now closed pre- sents no unusual features, and, being set forth in full detail, requires no particular remark. 135 ORDINARY INCOME. Customs, $4756724 18 5^°i'^;e, 306536 35 Post Office, 405317 38 Territorial, 644806 41 fyWic Works, 286226 2b JNa^scellaneous — including interest on Investment and Advances, - 797411 37 Special Revenues, ---... 244907 34 Guaranteed, &c., accounts — less advances repaid, - 673796 03 $8115735 31 ORDINARY EXPENDITURE, Interest on Public Debt, and charges, ... $3803685 40 Sinking Jund — New Loan, .... 34066 67 Civil Government, ... ... 423100 02 Administration of Justice, East, .... 338168 15 JDo. West,- 313884 51 police, 30850 79 ■'^^enitentiary, 10172.1 45 Legislation, 472553 54 Education, Hospitals and charities, &c., ... 1001820 44 Militia, ... . . . . . 107380 55 Public Works, - 679029 41 Ocean and River Steam Service, - ^ . - 483658 38 Collection of Revenue, except Public Works and Trust Funds, - - : -^ - - . . - 927579 46 Miscellaneous, 167019 89 Total, $8884518 66 It will be gratifying to observe the large and steady advance made in the revenues derivable from those sources which best indicate the material progress of the country. — The Customs and Crown Lands Keturns shew the extent to which the great interests of the country have revived from the shock of the successive bad harvests and crisis of 1857 and 1858. The reduced Returns from the Public Works is wholly attributable to the liberal policy adopted last year of. removing the burthen of 136 Tolls from the trade of the country, and was fully anticipated. The- effect of the relief thus afforded to the trade, and consequently, the benefit derived to the great agricultural interest, is best shewn by the Trade Returns, which give the following comparative results : 1858 1859 1860 Tonnage of Property up and down Canals 2,025,254 2,147,794 2,583,701 " Vessels " " 2,712,393 2,455,021 3,031,100 Total - - 4,737,647 4,602,815 5,614,801 Considering that it was the latter end of May when the new policy came into force, and that therefore the early spring trade had already received its direction, it is very gratifying to observe the marked increase. And from the great activity now observable among our shipowners engaged in the -vvrestern trade, it may be hoped that from its magnitude the small loss of revenue will ere long be partially — or in whole — made up, even at the very reduced rates now in force. In all cases where burthen has been removed in other countries, the loss of revenue has necessarily been immediate, while time could alone shew the effect of the relief. In the present case, the increased movement through our Canals has given a great development to our commerce, and must have amply compensated even during the present year for the nominal loss of revenue. The amount received for Ocean Postage has proved less than was anticipated, owing to difficulties having arisen in the detail of mail exchanges with Great Britain and Foreign Countries. These are now wholly removed, and there seems no reason to doubt that the increased subsidy granted last year to our Ocean Line will be fully met from foreign postages. The expenditure from Special Funds has been $990,721 09 The receipt of do have been 977,600 07 The following items of outlay, peculiar to the year, have also taken place : Permanent Public Worksat Ottawa and elsewhere 721,151 00 Reception of H. R. H. the Prince of Wales 204,884 07 Purchase of Tug Steamers 1 93,544 OO Advances to Ocean Line of Steamships on security of new ships to be repaid from subsidy of 186 1 189,6 1 9 98 New Coinage 10,727 59 Miscellaneous advances 43,406. 18 $1,263,332 82 The Post Office is also charged with the settlement of outstanding accounts with Railways, prior to 1858, of 2§6,891 97 137 The item of Miscellaneous Revenue appears increased by sale of new coinage and profit thereon, $229,691 33. The summary of the year's transactions, excluding the special funds and redemption of debt, Public Works, and other items, for which special Parliamentary provision has been made — or which are, in the nature of advances to be covered by the authorized service of 1861 — and also excluding the arrears of Mail service for 1856-'7-'8— will be found to amount to $8,884i,518 66~against which the Receipts from all sources, ordinary and incidental, have amounted to $8,115,725 31. The apparent deficiency, $768,793 35, is, however, really subject to considerable reduction^upon the final adjustment of the Interest accounts connected with the conversion of the Public Debt, as referred to in the Auditor's Report. It has in great part arisen from the increased charges for Interest on the Public Debt, which are fully borne upon the Accounts for 1860 — and which, as has been shown, will present in 1861 a much decreased charge. As the year now commencing is that wherein the results of the last decade are demonstrated by the censufs returns, it may not be considered improper briefly to review the state and progress of the Provini-e, as shown in its Departmental returns, as well as in the Accounts of its Revenue and Expenditure during the period since the last census. The following Table gives the results of the, .Immigration by sea during each of the last ten years. It is instructive as showing the extent to which it has fallen off, and indicates the propriety of adopting measures whereby the surplus population of Europe may be induced to select new homes upon the fertile lands' of -Canada. To Emigration the Province is principaly indebted for its .progress ; and in no way can the material wealth of the country be so rapidly increased, and its burdfens of taxation so easily diminished, as by the introduction of industrious and frugal emigrants from the British Isles and Europe. No doubt the diminution in numbers for the last_ three, years is mainly attributable to the failure of the harvests in 1857 and 1858, and consequent entire absence of employment for those emi- grants who have to rely at first upon their daily wages ; but, now that this cause is happily removed, it may be hoped that the diffusion of information, coupled with a systematic plan for protecting and caring for those who seek our shores, will speedily again restore the flow of capital and labor, by which the Province has heretofore gained so largely. 13S COUNTET.' 1351. 1852. ' 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 1857. 1858. 1859. 1860. England Ireland Scotland Germany Norway.. Lower Provinces. . 9677 22381 7042 |870 1106 9276 1S9S3 5477 7256 1182 9585 14417 4745 7456 496 18175 16165 6446 11537 857 6754 4106 4859 «3597 ^267 691 10353 1688 2794 4537 2806 261 15471 2018 3218 4961 6407 :24 6441 1153 1424 92!2 2656 814 4846 417 793 966 1756 6481 : 376 979 533 1781 ... Total 41076 39176 36699 63183 21274 22439 32097 12810 8778 10150 In connexion with immigration, it is interesting to note the progress of Settlement in the two sections of the Province ; and there is, therefore, subjoined : ' ' SCHEDULE of Lands Surveyed and subdivived into Farm Lots, from 1851 to 1860, inclusive. ■J' Year. J-iOWEE Canada. Upper Canada. Acres. Acres. 1851 .... 130400 , 9liRai^R 1852 .... 644700 421275J . 1034906 311326 179830 5609551 . 290B90i . 307559i . 717046 1853 .... 35.5250 185t.. , .... 220950 1856 .... 471916 1856 .... 280420 1857 .... 210000 1858 .... 254608 1869i. .... 366495 I860 .... 328639 Total Acres .... .... ^wv-rxf • 3123378 4495794 .... 139 Of the lands thus surveyed, and with those previously open for settlement, the following Statement shpws the disposal,: S ° M o50CO-^t*QOCrSlO(N '^ to « Tjt ci to l> T< W OS.IO ic to OJ "* M lO •-> rH rl O 'in oi i> pfs Tp CD ^ O I!" Ji « -i 2 o« a tn ^COOCOOi-iOO aJCOOCOt-OOOlO^ m t—m ic3 coin CO ^ ^-1 Tj' CO Ol ^-1 OS CO CO OOiO lOCO iS(N ooo y c^ ^ W TO .- O tM to t- cooio fiO^'G) CO O c w m H Sp ©? ,t- c j; lo to i> o '-' ■* *< -t-fCOrCO C- IC w lO'QO-tN co;o CO m Gi t- -^ 1-i to n ot €©■0 GO OJ 'ft" QOCO CJO ■^ OO '-' CO j«COCOO'-(t-0 CO 00 CO —» CO o to . to CO C^ C- ( — CIO* 00 to lO lO lO fN Ho 5j^ ^lOCCOOOC^COiO . (N O Ol lO t- « 00 r-H — 1 C- lO lO »Q l> 3oit-cocot-'*co *OQOOOeO'-Hr- qoCT W 00 t- Wco *3 1-1 W CO CO W TO ■^ t- ■«* lO O cq (N «* • vo — r- c?) ^^ OO K — ; M 00 CO 00 o, Eto CO CI l> CO lO ji CO Tfi CI -^ 00 t-i . 3 T3 -^ -U 5 J B S * '' o 2 140 To render the unoccupied parts of the country accessible, there have been construojted, since 1853, under the name of Colonization Roads— In Upper Canada, 481 miles of new Road ; and, in Lower Canada, there have been either constructed, or aided, 1,458 miles — the amount of outlay in the^two sections being equal ; but, in Lower Canada, not confined with equal strictness to Roads through wholly new territory. The development of the vast trade in Lumber is well shown by a Comparison of the gross receipts from Woods and Forests : — " 1856, including slides, $246,801 1857 - - - 244,922 1858 - - - 308,830 1859 - - - 309,486 1880 - - - 371,841 The Returns furnished in this year's Report of the Postmaster- General, indicate the progress of the country, as shown by its corres- pondence — while the rapid increase in the number of Ofiices, and miles of mail travel — prove the efforts made to meet the demands and necessities of the country, I copy from that Report the following — Comparative Table, shewing the extent of Service, number of Letters, and amount of Postage Revenue, and Expenditure in Canada, for the last ten years. 1851 - $108,620 1852 - 164,958 1853 - 247,429 1854 - 183,028 1855 - 202,427 Number Postage Total Expendi- ; No. of Miles of of Revenue ture for Salaries andCommissiong, No. of Miles of Annual Letters after Ordinary Mail Year. deducting Kemarks. Service, and all OfBces. Post MaU by Post other objects, per Dead exclusive of koute. Travel. Annum. Letter.". Railway Service. $ cts. $ Ctl. 1851. . '601 . 7595 2487000 2132000 1852. . 840 8618 2930000 37000U0 230629 00 First year of Ac- count under Provincial con- trol 276191 78 1853. . 1016 . 9122 3430000 4250000 278587 00 Charge on News- papers reduced one-half. .... 298723 56 1854. . 1166 1293 10027 11192 4000000 4550000 6100000 6000000 320000 00 368166 00 361447 97 1865. . Nevi'spapers con- veyed without charge 449726 16 1856. . 1375 1506 1656 1638 ' 1698 11839 13253 13600 13871 14202 4800000 6383000 5520000 6604000 5712000 7000000 374295 00 8500000 462163 00 9000000 !.54ii.'i3 on . 486886 62 1857. . 622570 81 1858. . 546374 49 1859. . 8500000 9000000 678426 98 668451 99 529290 88 1860. . Additional 2 cents rate on Unpaid Letters, and charge made on newspapers. .. 634681 26 141 The Education of the people has also proceeded in alike satisfactory manner. The Returns are not yet available for 1860, but the previous nine years shows the following results : Comparative Statement of Schools and Colleges in operation in Upper Canada, for 1861. 1 1852. ': i 1863. 1854. 1865. 185^. 1857., 1858. ' ■ 1859. Grammar Schools Common Schools 54 3001 7 60 3010 8 64 3127 8 64 3244 9 65 3325 10 61 3472 12 72 3731 12 75 3866 12 t 81 . 3953 13 1 1 M Comparative Statement of the Number of Students attending Schools, Colleges and Universities in Upper Canada, for 1851. 1852. 1853. 1854. 1856. — r 1856. 1857. 1858. 1859. Grammar Sohpols Common Schools Colleges, 1 Universities, ) 2191 168159 632 2643 179587 751 3221 194736 766 4287 204168 806 3726 227864 1100 3386 251114 1335 ' 4073 272637 1336 4459 293683 1335 4381 301892 1373 i42 lO ,4, 1> Tf<0O 94 *^mc5 s § lO CO CO . 00 -H ^ ■ TttlO'* €^ CO O CO i s o OSOOCD s s s? s O i SI ■< 1-1 iS Ph g ^ ."^ lOCOM o O \a 00 «rooo CO «-*Q0 00 o 00 §is CO 5 i = • CO o = :§ « , o oo CO 9 "s |i| a '5. a 5 143 The efforts made to develop oilr commercial, facilities By tHe com-- pletion and maintenance of our Canal System, the construction of numerous Light Houses, both in the Lower St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and niany other works of an extremely useful character, can be best judgedby a reijital of the sums expended by the Boards of Works in 1852 and 1853." |i,959,2S9 1854 and 1855 3,217,306 1856 ];629,124. 1857... .i;365,640" 1858 ■ l.,04i2,656 1859 ■ -844,769' 1860 ,l,45iJ,2H . Total $11,510,958 In connection with the outlay exclusively from- Provincial sources- upon public works, it may be well here to note the extensive intro- duction of Rail ways, which has occurred since 1851, in which, yean there were only 91 miles in operation. In 1852 there were opened 98 miles 1853 do 212 do 1854 do 330 do 1855 do 236 do 1856 do 435 do 1857 do 70 do 1858 do 140 do 1859 do 251 do 1860 do 29 do Total now open for traffic, 1892 miles Of these undertakings the following are indebted for Provincial' aid : The Grand Trunli, including the St. Lawrence and Atlantic, and^ Quebec and Richmond Lines, 853 miles $15,172,931 The Great Western, 228 do 2,810,500 The Northern, 96 do 2,311,666 . . $20,295,097 The whole, expenditure incurred upon Railways has probably not: been less than one hundred millions of dbllars, of which a large pro- portion has been ejcpeiided: within the Province, in; labor and mate- rials, tending to develope its resources, while supplying the greatest facilities for the internal trade of the" Countty. The Commerce of Canada, since 1850, is shewn in the subjoined :: u^ Statement of the Imports and Exports and Duty collected from 1851 to 1860, Duty. Bate per cent. Imports. Exports. 1851 .... 2955727 13i 14i 13 12 10 10} 10 lU 13i 14 $ 21434791 20286493 31981436 40529325 36086169 43584387 39430598 29078527 33555161 34441621 12964721 1852 . .. 2956633 15307607 1853 .... 4119131 23801303 1854 .... 4900769 23019190 1855 .... 3527098 28188461 1856 .... 4510128 32047017 1857 .... 3927208 27006624 1858 .... 3368157 23472609 1859 .... 4456326 24766981 1860 .... 4756724 34631890 Upon this statement it is satisfactory to notice the fact, that, not- ■withstanding the changes that have taken place in the Duties levied -on various articles, the proportion of charge upon the whole importa- tion of the Province is not now higher, than it was in 1851 and 1852, proving that the large engagements contracted in the various impor- tant ameliorations in the physical condition of the country, have not been attended by any increased pressure upon its industry. Taking another view of the question of Taxation by Customs Duties, it may be remarked that the amount levied ^er head in 1851, was about one dollar and sixty cents, or eight shillings ; whiles in 1860 it will cer- tainly not exceed $1.70, or eight shillings and six-pence, notwith- standing the enormous increase which has undoubtedly taken place in the aggregate of individual wealth within the last Decade. The Foreign Trade has also been satisfactory, as is hereby shewn : Ships Inwards. Wo. 1647 1461 1798 1890 1168 1494 S047 1657 •171S 1992 Tonnage. 593255 541144 622579 705342 419553 550673 748425 613813 641662 831434 Ships Outwards. No. 1704 1,524 1821 2018 1219 1532 1848 1662 1618 1923 Tonnage. 637447 574126 6588,53 781755 451241 573H48 731367 632046 640571 821791 U5 The Internal Trade by the Canals appears to have experienced an almost uniformly steady augmentation. It has been as follows : Statement showing the Gross Movement of Tonnage Vessels and Property passed on and through the Provincial Canals, exclusive of the Rideau Canal, for ten succeeding years, viz " Burlington Year. Welland. St. Lawrence. Chambly. Bay. St. Ann's. Totals. Tons. Tons. Tons. . Tons. Tons. Tons. 1851 1464250 967610 201417 540018 208340 3390635 1852 .... 1637253 1078041 170132 631632 207703 3724761 1853 196914Q 1181000 223754 307026 263463 3944383 1854 1744948 1376124 167574 246866 274425 3799927 1855 1900800 1196758 254285 443262 277551 4072656 1856 2155802 1349577 280736 547147 347087 4680349 1857 2049506 1283683 291761 212161 325801 4162902 1858 2033883 1363368 286668 212287 337147 4203353 1859 1566529 1377404 374746 ,196589 291822 3807089 1860 2182593 1558061 456643 264327 436765 4898389 N. B. — The Rideau Canal Returns are not includijd, having only been in charge of the Province during the last three years. In considering the above Return, it must also be borne in mind that during the last three years a large movement of Tonnage has taken place by rail, which cannot appear in the ordinary Trade Tables. The Revenue and Expenditure have, in common with all the great interests of the Province, experienced a progressive increase. The form in which the Public Accounts were su mitted prior to 1858 prevents a complete comparison, but the following table has been prepared of the Income and Expenditure of the Consolidated Fund, since ] 850. Statement of Income and Expenditure of the Consolidated Fund, from the 31st December, 1850, to 31st December, I860. YEAR. INCOME. EXPENDITURE. 1851 . . 3882321 . . 3050449 .. 1852 .. 3976706 .. 3069081 . . 3478726 ., 4171941 . 4779522 ., 6143624 .. 5692942 . 6433274 . 6099670 . 7536179 . 1853 , . 5282637 . . 1854 . . 6088110 . . 1865 . . 4870166 . . 1856 . . 6989543 . . 1857 . . 5352794 . . 1868 . . 4929709 . . 1859 . , 6248679 . . 1860 . . 7047930 . . JSI. B.— The charge for 1860, includes $490,218 additional Interest, transferred by the conversion of Debt from guaranteed Account to ConSolidsitftl Fund. 10 146 It does not fall within tlie scope of a Report npoh the Finances and Tradfeofthe country, to advert particularly to its legislation, but as She two important questions of the Clergy Reserves and Seignorial Tenure, both have had a vital bearing on the peace and progress of the country, and have also materially affected the charges upon the Revenue, it may not be amiss to record the fact, that, the Clergy Reserves were settled in 1854, by a measure of commutation of all existing claims, leaving the residue of the funds and lands, to the Municipalities of Upper and Lower Canada. Under this Act there Sias been paid to the Municipalities of Upper Canada the sum of. $2,825,697 60 And a further sum is in hand for distribution at 1st July, 1861, of 310,060 33 Total $3,135,757 99 "With an estimated dmount to be hereafter realized from Lands sold, and to be sold, of no less than. . 2,565,959 00 In Lower Canada the funds have been applied by Parliament to the erection of Court Houses and Gaols in the new Judicial Districts. The Seignorial Tenure was also partly adjusted in 1854, by the ifcapitalization of certain local funds, with an aid of $600,000 ^£ 150,000) from the Public Exchequer, arid an equal amount to tlie Upper Canada Building Fund. But its final settlement took place in 1S59, when the claims of the Seigniors were fully provided for by the grant of 6 per cent permanent annuities by the Province to aii ^estimated amount of £30,000 ($120,000) per annum, coupled with a ;jgriint of equal amount to the Consolidated Municipal Loan Fund of fjpper Canada, and the repeal of the Lower Canada Municipal Loan "Fund, under which the right to borrow about four millions Of dollars remained still Unexercised. As it appeairs not to be generally understood how far the repeal of the Lower Canada Municipal Loan Fund afforded the means of ad- justing the Seignorial Tenure question with fairness towards Uj)per Canada, it may be proper to state' "that under the Upper Canada Municipal Loan. Fund Act, the Municipalities of that section had ■borrowed almost the whole- sum authorized, $7,294;800 00, whereas in 'Lower Canada the .amount borrowed has been, up to this date, oniyt$2,262,540 00. ; Of the difference of $5,05'}' :460 still remaining for Lower Canada, the power to borrow was repealed to the extent of about $4,000,000 th6 bEiiande being held for By-flaws sanctioned, but nOt acted upon up -to this time. The interest at six per cent., therefore, on the Upper Canada Debt, is $437,888 ; on the Lower Canada, $135,752. By the 147 Auditor's Report, the rate of one skillinf in the pound will yield, ia Upper Canada, $240,285— and in Lower Canada estimated; a^ $100,000, leaving a deficiency for Upper Canada of $197,603, and fw Lower Canada $35,752. In view, therefore, of the excess of charge for Upper Canada, a sum equal to the Seignorial Permanent Annuities was placed at the credit of the Upper Canada Fund, and, to prevent any increase of liability from Lower Canada, their Act was repealed; while, to com- pensate the Upper Canada Municipalities, — who were not debtors tO" the Province, — the revenues of the Municipalities (Clergy Reserve) Fund were expressly made over to them, to. the exclusion of all those in default, — an arrangement which, at the valuation made of the- Fund ($2,565,959) with the addition of $511,332 68, paid' in I860,, and payable in 1861, indemnified them for their share in the reliei' afibrdjed to the Municipalities in default. It was also provided that whenever a Municipality discharged its default to the Province, its- interest in the Clergy Reserve Fund revived. Having adverted in general terms to the progress of Canada during- the last ten years, as evidenced- by statistical returns, I now proceed to trace the gradual increase in the Public Debt, with a brief resumfe of the- Legislation by which it ha? . been created. It is the more necessary to do so, because in alpjQst every, case where an indirect liability has become chargeable on the. Revenue, it has occurred afteB.- the expenditure of the money bqr.ro\(fed had. ceased ; and the public only learn the nature and extent of jaurdens arising out of past Legis- lation simultaneously with the.^i}sp.e;ision,of an outlay, which, while it lasted, gave, it may be feared , an uny(bpl^some stimulus to specu- lation. Thus the increased, charges required to mept these demands,, have arisen when the country was least, prepared, for them, and no- doubts has caused a feeling of dissatisfaction with present legislation, whichi if justifiable at all, really appertains to the acts of former Parliaments. It does not become the undersigned, in his official report to Your Excellency, to offer any criticism upon what the Legislature has- been pleased to sanction ; but it is his duty to point out, with a view- to the future avoidance of the evil, that, with the exception of the comparatively small sums received from the Municipalities, the whole- Indirect Debt of the Province — upwards of thirty millions of dollars,, created prior to 1855 — has become an absolute charge upon the country, although at the time the obligations were incurred, it was not anticipated that any part would ever become payable. To elucidate the progress of the debt, I submit the three following statements, from 1851 to 1859. The year 1860 is omitted because it 10 • 148 contains the transactions connected with the conversion of the debt, and would only produce confusion in any comparative review ; it has also been fully stated in the first part of this Report : — Statement of the Public Debt from the year 1851 to 1860. Year. Direct. Indirect. Total. 1850 Existinif Debt.. . . $ cts. $ cts. $ cts. 18782565 53 1851 17807847 53 . . . 18664773 05 . . . 18485161 72 . . . 17415797 15 , . . 17242546 13 . . . I8S13214 92 . . . 21470256 52 . . . 24430975 17 . . . 25535031 16 . . . 2673625 25 . . . 3690640 55 . . . 11437591 22 . ., 21436036 63 . .|. 28612671 22 . .'. 29944404 63 . . . 30864655 30 . . . 30461429 98 . . . 28607013 30 . . . 20481472 78 1852 1. 22356413 60 1853 29922752 94 1854 38851833 78 1855 45855217 35 1856 48757619 55 1857 52334911 82 1858 54892405 15 1&59 •. j. . 64142044 46 AMOUNT OF DEBENTURES REDEEMED, In 1851, $341425 27 1852, 76939 01 1853, 1310331 55 1854, 1244404 50 1855, 2766006 43 1856, 49S262 47 1857, 816390 00 1858, 204753 34 1869, 2897840 69 $10156353 26 A Statement of all Debentures issued from 1861 tc UNDER WHAT ACT. Date of Acts. 1851. 12 Vic. Cap. 6 Public Works 9 Vio. Cap. 65 ... , Rebellion Losses .... 25th April, 1849 19th June, 1846 9lh Derember, 1843 26th April, 1849 $ cts. 381593 05 290 67 500 00 9335 68 19128 00 7 Vie. Cap. 34 Welland Canal Provincial Debentures, Lower Canada.. . .Turnpike Trusts, &c. . 13 and 14 Vic. Can. 2 Public Works 10th August, 1850 14th June 1853 16Vic. Cap. 157 do 18 Vic. Cap. 4 do 18th Deer., 1854 (Jo do 18 Vic. Cap 3. Seigniorial Fund .... 12 and 16 Vio. Cap. 68 and 17 Public Works 25lh April, 1849 ^ 10th Novr., 1852 ( 30lh Mny, 1849 > 10th Augt., 1850 5 do do 11448 00 25400 00 12 Vio. Cap. 112 & 13, & 14 Vio. Cap. 94.. .Court Houses, L. C. . 14 and 15 Vic. Cap. 73. . .St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad. . . Great Western Railroad 18 Vie Can. 164. Court House. Montreul 30th IVlav 1855 lOlh Novr.. 18531 16 and 18 Vic. Caps. 22 and 13 do do L. C. 18 and 20 Vic. Caps. 22 and 64 Law Society j S3 Vic. Cap, 31 do do do 19lh May, 1855 ( lOlh June, 1857 < 4ih May, 1859 19 and 20 Vic Can. 86 Public Works 1st July, 1855 lOih June, 1857, 16th August, 1858 4lh May, 1859^ SOVic.Cap. 17 do 22 Vie. Can. 93 do Totals. r 447735 40 It would be almost impossible, in the earlier years, to distinguish how much of eacl Act passed, and how much was on account of later years, or lor redemption of Debentui character. In the analysis below, I have, therefore, considered the issue of each yea Guarantees, and Municipal Loan Fund, With regard to the aid to the Great Western I the original Act, and the amount repaid in 1858, (»936,833 33) to be chargeable against Third Parliament of Canada, ...... .Ordinary Serivces of 1851 and 1852. Railroad Guarantees Fourth Parliament of Canada. • Ordinary Services of 1853 and 1854. Railroad Guarantees Municipal Loan Fund, U. C Fifth Parliament ........••• Ordinary Services of 1855, 1856 and 18 Railroad Guarantees Municipal Loan Fund, L. C Sixth Parliament, .............. .Ordinary Services of 1858 and 1859. , 150 These statements shew that the Public Debt at 31st December, 1850, was $18,782,565.53 Since issued 45,515,832.19 $64,298,397.72 Since redeemed - $10,156,353.26 Debt at 31st December, 1859 . - - - $54,142,044.46 Tn proceeding to analyse the mode in which the Public Debt has been contracted, I shall first consider the whole issue of debt, — $45,- 515,832.19, — subdividing it according to the several Parliaments under whose acts it has been created. The period antecedent to 1st January, 1851, was that in which the works of internal navigation were commenced, and in a great mea- sure completed. It also covered the legislation of a local character, for Roads, Harbors, Bridges, &c. The policy of assisting Railways received its first sanction in 1849, when the guarantee Act was passed, though no issue of securities took place under that Act. It was subsequently amended (14 & 15 Vic. cap. 73) by extending the guarantee to the principal, and by the issue of Bonds bearing the direct engagement of the Province ; whereby the Great Western, Northern, St. Lawrence and Atlantic, and Quebec and Richmond Railways were proceeded with : For these objects, prior to 1851, a debt had been created, amounting to -^ $18782565 53 And as is shewn in the foregoing statement, there has been issued for ordinary services of 1851 and '52 1325199 24 For Railroad Guarantees 8285500 00 28393264 77 Less redeemed in 1851 an 1852; .... 418364 28 Total debt authorized prior to 1852. - 27974900 49 A new Parliament was elected in the autumn of 1851, and closed in 1854. In 1852, the Grand Trunk Act passed, granting a limited amount of Provincial aid, which was afterwards increased by the sum of je900,000 sterling in 1854, in the first Session of the following Par- liament. In 1853, (16 Vic. Cap. 22) the Municipal Loan Fund system was introduced in Upper Canada, unlimited in amount. The ordi- nary Public Works — Canals, Piers on the Lower St. Lawrence, Sec, were also provided for. The Legislation of this Parliament, produce during its own continuance, a Debt of - - - $13689714 72 And as is shown, has subsequently caused the creation of Debt in fulfilment of the public faith to Rail- ways and the Upper Canada Municipal Loan Fund, 2608325 34 $16298040 06 151 During this period there was rejdeemed, - - - 2554736 05 Inciegse of Debt frpm Legislation of 1852-4 - $13743304 01 The Parliaments of 1848 to 1854 were particularly characterized by legislation in the nature of guarantees — the effect, was an imme- diate influx of capital, and great inflation during the two or three following years ; but the result has shewn the danger of thus lending the Provincial credit. A new Parliament was called in the autumn of 1854, and dissolved in 1857. The guarantee policy was partially continued by extending the Municipal Loan Fund system to Lower Canada — coupled, howr ever, by limiting its amount in each section to £1,500,000 sterling, with other restrictions. A further loan was also made, as already stated, of ^6900 ,000 to the Grand Trunk Railway Company. The years -1854, 1855, and 1856, were very prosperous — good harvests, high prices, and a vast expenditure by Railway Companies and Mu- nicipalities. In 185fi, however, the Grand Trunk became unable to raise money to complete its works, and the first Relief Act was passed, followed in 1857 by the second Relief Act ; both, however, relating to the previously existing debt created under the legislation of 1850, 1852 and 1854, and not adding thereto. The amount of public debt created during the continuance of the Parliament of 1854- 57, was, - - -$14697336 26 And there has since been issued, under the authority ' of Acts, then passed 640540 00 $15337906 26 The redemption of debt during the same period was - 4080658 90 $11257-247 36 The present Parliament, elected in the winter of 1857-8 has seen the conclusion of the Decade. Its Legislation has, in a financial point of view, been confined to provisions against the heavy charges unex- pectedly arising from the vast guaranteed Debt. It has repealed the laws permitting their increase. It has provided for the conversion and final , liquidation of the Public Debt on terms involving no in- creased charge upon the Revenue. And it has readjusted the Impe- rial Guaranteed Loan on such terms as to afford a very sensible relief in the amount of annual charge. The only serious increase of lia- bility has been that arising out of the Seigniorial Tenure, rendered necessary by the Legislation of 1854, which was, however, accom- panied by the repeal of an indirect engagement under the L. C. Mu- nicipal Loan Fund Act, of double the amount thus assumed. The crisis and bad harvests of 1857 and 1858 most seriously affected the Province, and caused Parliament to limit its expenditure to works 152 <^onsi*iered of pressing importance, curtailing eren these in the most stringent manner. Notwithstanding the reductions efiected in expen- diture, the failureof Revenue ar&ing from the sta,te of the country, coupled with the necessity of providing at the same time'for the in- tferest on Thirty Millions of gual-anteed and indirect Debt, produced for the years 1857-8, a very serious deficiency in the Ilevenue, amounting to about $4500000, which though materially reduced in 1859 and 1860, has still continued the cause of anxiety and regret.' The debt created for Public Works, and for the service of the country Kas amounted to - $4269186 63 'And there has been redeemed, exclusive of the trans- actions of 1860 connected with the conversion of the Public Debt, 3102594 03 $1,166,592 60 It is however, proper to remark that in the redemption of the Pu- blic Debt, is included the Debentures assumed from special funds amounting to $2,435,152, the interest on which as is shown in the Auditor's Report, still has to be provided by the Province. In concluding his remarks upon the Public JDebt, the undersigned desires to submit the following summary of its position as affected by the legislation of past years. The legislation, prior to 1852,has produced a debt of $27,974,900.49 From 1852 to 1854 $16,298,040.66 Less Redeemed 2,554,736.05 13,743,304.01 From 1854 to 1858 15,337,906.26 Less Redeemed 4,080,658.90 11,257,247.36 From 1858 to 1859 4,269,186.63 Iss'd as shewn in 1860, $27264,011.77 Do. Cons. M. L. Fund, L.C 71,500.00 27,335,511.77 Less — Redeemed 1858-9 3,102,594.03 31,604,698.40 Do. Do. I860 15,885,086.42 Do. Do. India Gov'ment Stock 7,300,000.00 26,287,680.45 _L_J 5,317,017,95 Present Debt $58,292,469.81 153 Against which are held funds to redeem the outstanding Municipal Loan Fund Bonds, $2,936,544. Of the present debt, nearly one-half, or $27,264,011, is issued on terms providing, for its ultimate liquidar tion ; and under the authority already granted by Parliament, it may be expected that the whole remaining debt will be gradually placed in a similar position; while the results already obtained conclusively prove that no increased charge of any importance will be placed upon the Revenues of the Province. Canada has, during the past year, been blessed with a most abun- dant harvest the effect of which is seen on every side. It has already, for the first time in her history caused the exports to appear in excess of the imports ; and with the industry and intelligence of the people combined with the rapid developement of the resources of the coun- try, the Province may reasonably look forward at the commence ment of a new decade, with the hope that its close will afford still greater evidence of progress and prosperity. All which is respectfully submitted. A. T. GALT, Minister of Finance. Quebec, 12th April, 1861.