If Canada Shall Decline The Proposition, Then The
Stipulations In Regard To The Saint Lawrence Canals And A Railway From
Ottawa To Sault Ste.
Marie, with the Canadian clause of debt and
revenue indemnity, will be relinquished.
If the plan of union shall
only be accepted in regard to the north western territory and the
Pacific Provinces, the United States will aid the construction, on the
terms named, of a railway from the western extremity of Lake Superior,
in the State of Minnesota, by way of Pembina, Fort Garry, and the
valley of the Saskatchewan, to the Pacific coast, north of latitude
forty-nine degrees, besides securing all the rights and privileges of
an American territory to the proposed territories of Selkirk,
Saskatchewan, and Columbia."
So much for an outrage of a character unheard of and unparalleled. It
was the result of "uncertain sounds;" of "duffer" government.
Let me give some illustrations. Before we began the, finally
successful, movement for the Intercolonial Railway, the confederation
of the Provinces of North America, and the final completion of a
railway binding the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific together, the
Right Hon. C. B. Adderley, M.P., wrote a "letter to the Right Hon. B.
Disraeli, M.P., on the present relations of England with the Colonies."
It was a skinflint document, and here are a couple of quotations: -
Page 57. - "I would have the Canadian Government, in the right time and
manner, informed that after a. certain date, unless war were going on,
they would have to provide for their own garrisons, as well as all
their requisite peace establishments, as they might deem fit; and that
they should be prepared to hold their own in case of foreign attack, at
least till the forces of the Empire could come to their aid."
Page 50. - "Let Canada, however, by all means look to England in the hour
of peril also; but if the sight of English red-coats, at all times, has
become a needful support of Canadian confidence, and English pay has
ceased to be resented as a symptom of dependence, we must bow humbly
under the conviction that Canada is no longer inhabited by men like
those who conquered her."
Then I must quote my revered friend, Mr. Cobden, who, addressing his
relative, Colonel Cole (at one time administrator of New Brunswick), on
the 20th March, 1865, only thirteen days before his ever-to-be-lamented
death, wrote about Canada: "We are two peoples to all intents and
purposes, and it is a perilous delusion to both parties to attempt to
keep up a sham connection and dependence, which will snap asunder if it
should ever be put to the strain of stem reality. It is all very well
for our cockney newspapers to talk of defending Canada at all hazards.
It would be just as possible for the United States to sustain Yorkshire
in a war with England as for us to enable Canada to contend against the
United States.
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