'What's Hecuba To Me, Or I To Hecuba!' Well, I Answer To
That, Know Them, And My Word For It, You Will Like Them.
I have made
several journeys there, and I have seen much of the people, and the
more I have seen of them, the more I respected and esteemed them.
I
say, then, to these gentlemen, that if you desire any patriotism on the
subject; if you want to stir up a common sentiment of affection between
these people and ourselves, bring us all into closer relation together,
and, having the elements of a vigorous nationality within us, each will
find something to like and respect in the other; mutual confidence and
respect will follow, and the feeling of being engaged in a common cause
for the good of a common nationality will grow up of itself without
being forced by any man's advocacy. The thing who shuts up his heart
against his kindred, his neighbours, and his fellow-subjects, may be a
very pretty fellow at a parish vestry, but do you call such a forked-
radish as that, a man? Don't so abuse the noblest word in the language.
* * * * *
"But there is one special source of wealth to be found in the Maritime
Provinces, which was not in any detail exhibited by my hon. friends - I
allude to the important article of coal. I think there can be no doubt
that, in some parts of Canada, we are fast passing out of the era of
wood as fuel, and entering on that of coal. In my own city every year,
there is great suffering among the poor from the enormous price of
fuel, and large sums are paid away by national societies and benevolent
individuals, to prevent whole families perishing for want of fuel. I
believe we must all concur with Sir William Logan, that we have no coal
in Canada, and I may venture to state, on my own authority, another
fact, that we have - a five months' winter, generally very cold.
"Sir W. E. Logan demonstrated by a laborious survey the thickness or
depth of the whole group in Northern Nova Scotia to be over 2 3/4
miles, an amount which far exceeds anything seen in the coal formation
in other parts of North America; in this group there are seventy-six
coal beds one above the other.
"These exhaustless coal fields will, under our plan - which is in fact
our Reciprocity Treaty with the Lower Provinces - become, hereafter, the
great resource of our towns for fuel. I see the cry is raised below by
the anti-Unionists, that to proceed with Confederation would be to
entail the loss of the New England market for their coals. I do not
quite see how they make this out, but even an anti-Unionist might see
that the population of Canada is within a fraction of that of all New
England put together, that we consume in this country as much fuel per
annum as they do in New England; and, therefore, that we offer them a
market under the Union equal to that which these theorizers want to
persuade their followers they would lose.
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