In Perhaps he anticipated the refusal of Her Majesty's government to countenance a deviation from the line adopted by Major Robinson; and thought it but fair that those who had planned that deviation should alone bear the responsibility of the change. If they succeeded in obtaining the guarantee they were entitled to the credit; if they failed, and he was not in England, no blame could attach to him. Had he been entirely untrammelled by other considerations, we think he was justified in declining to proceed. But there were other considerations to which some weight should be attached. the first place, he was worn down by travel, excitement, and fatigue; and in the next, his services were much required by the officer who, suddenly, and for the first time, had been called to the administration of the government of the Province. Had he gone, he must either have differed from his co-delegates, or have been compromised by their acts. By not going he left himself free to strike out an independent policy for his own Province, when that which had been forced upon Nova Scotia should, as he probably anticipated, had failed. The refusal of the Earl of Derby's government to give the Imperial guarantee for the line by the St. John; the quarrel between Sir John Packington and Mr. Hinckes; the contracts arranged between Messrs. Chandler, Hinckes, and Jackson, — followed in rapid succession. With none of these proceedings had Mr. Howe any concern; but, distrustful and reserved, he kept his own counsel, and Nova Scotia free from entanglements and partnerships; until the time arrived for the final adoption of those laws, under which her railroads have been constructed with her own resources; and without the character of the country being injured by corruption, deception, or fraud. In the meantime New Brunswick, after wasting two years in reliance upon those contracts, had to buy Mr. Jackson off at a cost of £90,000; and, adopting the policy of Nova Scotia, to push forward her roads as public works. The Grand Trunk Railroad through Canada has been made, but at a fearful sacrifice to all concerned, but the knowing ones who have had the expenditure of the money. The government has advanced £3,000,000, for which it has no security. The English shareholders, who, in good faith, advanced their money under a promise that they were to get eleven per cent., have yet received nothing; and the stock, brought out at a premium, has already sunk to fifty per cent. below par. Sir Gaspard Le Marchant assumed the government of Nova Scotia on the 5th of August, 1852. On the 25th, a minute of Council was adopted, pledging the administration to proceed with the construction of the railways east and west, in convenient sections; and authorizing contracts to be entered into, subject to the approval of the Legislature, for raising the funds and for carrying on the works. This minute was published, as a declaration of policy. It elicited two offers, to construct the whole of the works required. One from Mr. Jackson, representing Messrs. Peto, Brassey, & Co., and one from Messrs. Sykes, King, & Brookfield. It became now very important that the standing of the latter firm, and the extent of their resources, should be ascertained; and absolutely indispensable that financial agents should be secured in England, able to place the bonds of the Province at their proper value in the market, and to advance funds upon them whenever they should be required. To put the government in a position to satisfy the Legislature upon both these points, Mr. Howe left for England on the 28th of October; and, having executed his mission, returned home on the 27th of December. The session of 1853 was, to Mr. Howe, perhaps the most perplexing and unsatisfactory that he had ever passed through. He brought down the propositions of Messrs. Sykes and Jackson. He brought an offer from Messrs. Baring, Brothers, & Co., to negotiate the bonds of the Province to the extent of a million of pounds currency; and he introduced bills authorizing the government to construct, upon the most advantageous terms, railways upon our great thoroughfares to the extent of that sum. An organized opposition to those bills soon showed itself within the House, which was strenghened and inflamed by all sorts of influences from without. Canada and New Brunswick had handed over their roads to Mr. Jackson upon his own terms. The influence of both those Provinces was brought to bear to compel Nova Scotia to follow their example. This Mr. Howe steadily resisted, adhering to the cardinal principles with which he had started at Temperance Hall. 1. That whatever roads were made should be made as public works, paid for honestly, and owned by the Province. 2. That money should be borrowed on the best terms, and expended without any respect to who were the contractors. The opposition contended that if acts of incorporation were passed, with moderate facilities, Mr. Jackson and his friends would come in and construct our roads, as they were about to do those in the other Provinces. The resources of the great contractors were magnified-those of the Province depreciated; and all the arguments by which Canada and New Brunswick had been misled were reiterated here, with dexterous ingenuity, and powers of face worthy of admiration. When a doubt was suggested, or an argument required, it was only necessary to telegraph to Quebec or St. John to obtain a satisfactory reply. Promises the most mendacious, and offers the most generous, were reiterated in debate, or reduced to the form of deliberate business propositions. The House, though there was a clear majority to sustain the government, became equally divided and brought to a dead lock upon the railway question. A large committee spent a great part of the session collecting evidence, and were nearly as much divided as the House. The results are well known. By a masterly retreat Mr. Howe abandoned the field, offering to pass the Facility Bills required by the opposition, and calling upon them to fulfill all the magnificent promises they had made. The position was a trying one - even more trying than that he had been called to assume when rescinding his own resolutions in 1838. But his nerves were equal to the strain, and his foresight and political sagacity were never more finely tested. The Facility Bills were passed, and though some surveys were prosecuted in the course of the summer by Mr. Jackson's engineers, no company was formed, no pledge was fulfilled; and, before the House met in 1854, the field was cleared of Mr. Jackson and his friends, and the sounder policy advocated by Mr. Howe rose again into the ascendant. Of many speeches made on the varying phases of these railway questions, during the session of 1853, we are not sure that any would be read with much interest now. We pass them over, to enable us to give insertion to one upon Free Trade and Protection, called forth by a very absurd report made by a select committee, but of which nobody ever heard after this review of it was delivered. -- Mr. Chairman, — The question now under consideration of the committee is one of vast magnitude, and I regret that my condition of body and mind-suffering as I have been for the past few days is not such as to permit me to do it that justice its importance demands. I could not postpone addressing the House longer, for it has become necessary, as rapidly as possible, to bring the business of this session to a close. I was not present last session when the subject was discussed; I can not charge my mind with having read the debates; nor had I an opportunity of reading the report of the committee until last evening. But, sir, after perusing that report when I came to compare the magnitude of the interests with the loose, casual, and desultory manner in which the question was treated yesterday I felt that I could not shrink from the performance, to this House and country, of the duty which my official position imposes. With all deference to the honorable and learned chairman of the committee [Martin Wilkins], he will allow me to say-for it is due to each other and to the country that we should speak our sentiments frankly that I read his Report with deep sorrow and regret; that I felt humiliated to see a Nova Scotian seeking to put on the journals of the Legislature what I believe to be a piece of systematic, though not intentional, misrepresentation and defamation of his country. True, we may see in the newspapers denunciations of the position, character, commercial resources, and advancement of our Province; and I believe these have greatly disheartened our people; setting them at variance with their condition and country; and leading them to believe that there is something abroad and beyond our borders infinitely superior to any thing that can be found at home. This, however, does not justify a legislator in stamping with the seal of official authority these aspersions; in sapping the springs of vitality and energy that alone are left to quicken or animate them; and by a steady, persevering system of selfabasement, inducing an utter absence of all hope. Sir, I believe that this Province is as progressive, as forward in the race of civilization and improvement, as half the countries that may be compared with it on the face of the earth. I find that the honorable gentleman starts with the assumption that Halifax is the Province of Nova Scotia; he takes the exports and imports of this city as evidencing the state of trade the Province over. The time was, prior to 1828, when all the other ports in the Province had their tables of foreign imports blank. There was no other free port down to that period but Halifax. Now Yarmouth, Shelburne, Lunenburg, Pictou, Sydney, Pugwash, all ports in the Province, are free warehousing ports; and therefore no comparison can be drawn between the exports and imports of this country, unless they are embraced in the calculation. Even in his comparison of the exports and imports of Halifax, he has made an error of about £33,467. Assuming the report to be correct of our imports in 1852 being £222,293, our real exports amounted to £119,385 instead of £85,918, or £33,467 more than the report states. This sufficiently proves the general looseness and inaccuracy of the report. Halifax has no natural export. It produces neither coal, plaister, grindstones, deals, agricultural produce, cordwood, or ships, which are produced and exported from other parts of the Province. It appears to me, sir, that the honorable member augurs the downfall of Nova Scotia on very insufficient premises. He would have us believe that the country is going to the dogs, because, according to his views, we do not manufacture stoves, leather, furniture. Sir, I revert to the period when free trade was first introduced into this country; what was our situation then? Can he point to a single foundry then in existence? Not one! Now we have some five or six. Look at Mr. Johns, who came here not a great many years ago, a poor Welshman; without friends, capital, or experience, he commenced in this city; now he owns a square; his steam engine goes night and day, and he has set an example to those of our countrymen, who, not possessing the steady energy to work their way up, turn their backs upon the land of their birth and flee abroad. I turn to Fresh-water Bridge, and can recollect the period when scarce a pound's worth of property was owned in that region; now there is £100,000 worth on the soil. A foundry is there also; does it need protection? It has sprung up within a year or two; and now I am told that it can supply the very iron pillars required to support this building cheaper than they can be obtained in the United States. In Pictou, |