onsider it right to give
their support to this proposed Atlantic and Pacific Railway for the
reasons herein explained, or from any other cause,--the great benefit
that Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Canadas will derive from having
open to them a free and easy access to the Atlantic and the Pacific,
will, I trust, occasion such an activity of mind and such an employment
of matter, that in the general good arising therefrom, all thoughts of
former ill treatment or unkindness from the Mother Country will soon be
forgotten.

The great question, however, is, and will be on all sides, Where is the
money to come from?[see Note 56] and that question I am weak enough to
fancy is easily answered. Let us consider this subject a little. Let us
remember, first, that England expended 630 millions during nineteen
years in war, and, notwithstanding which expenditure, the country got
richer and richer every day;[see Note 14] and if the country is not
poorer now than it was in the years when it was able to raise the sum of
150 millions in a single year--the greater part of which it could afford
to expend in one year in war, and grow richer all the time--surely such
a country can afford to expend some few millions for the benefit of
those colonies on account of whom she was lately ready to go to war, and
on whose account she did actually expend about two millions, caused
merely by the rebellion and disturbance of a few discontented spirits.
But the money that England would be called upon to advance in the
proposed undertaking would secure to her not only the attachment of her
children in the North American provinces, by making it as well their
worldly interest, as it is their natural feeling and wish, to remain
Englishmen; but that money, and the interest of that money, could be
secured to her by proper arrangements being entered into with the
Hudson's Bay Company, and with the North American provinces, and be
ultimately reimbursed to her by the formation of the proposed Company.

Up to the present moment England has, I believe, only expended the
sum of L148,000,000 on her Railways, and, I believe, nearly 5000 miles
are finished; and on an average these Railways are said to give a return
of about four per cent., and "with the increase of the national
wealth and population, and with the increase of habits of social
inter-communication and the transit of goods, the traffic on Railways
would increase, and the profits and dividends would