of 1849;-a privilege which the Prescott and Ottawa as well as other companies might have obtained, had they added twenty-five miles or more in any direction to the length of their line (so as to make up the seventy-five miles required to secure them the guarantee), and contracted for the whole. When the advance to the Grand Trunk was fixed at £3,000 sterling per mile, the railway commissioners established a similar limit for the Northern, or a total of £275,000 sterling, which was more than that company then hoped for from the province. On the twenty-first of June, 1854, after two-thirds of the line had been in operation eight months, the engineer of the company reported that the remaining third was rapidly approaching completion, grading and bridging finished,-ties distributed and iron delivered, and one-half of the track laid ;-that he expected to open the whole length in August, when the harbor at Collingwood would be sufficiently advanced to be used; and showed the expenditure, including road, harbor, station and depot services and equipments, to be £698,810 58. Od. sterling. He also rendered an account as follows: Provincial guarantee, £275,000 stg.-currency at 9 per cent. £334,583 6 8 Received by company, to date Balance currency ...... .......... 284,166 13 4 £50,416 13 4 In the same month, the railway commissioners reported that the total amount to complete the works, including the rolling stock, was £716,530, of which the sum of £682,961 58. Od. had been expended, and recommended the advance of this balance, subject to the report of one of their own body, who was an engineer. This report was made on the twenty-seventh of September following, and it not only confirmed the advance, but declared that the roadwhich was so nearly completed, and which had been estimated by the board of which he was a member, three months before, at £716,530-would now cost £1,156,592 78. 7d. (or $4,626,369.52), the moiety of which, or full amount of guarantee by the provisions of the act, will be £578,296 38. 9d., of which the company has received (including the sum above recommended) £334,583 48. 3d. leaving to be ultimately provided by the province the sum of £243,712, 178. 1d. The company was paid the whole of this extra amount, £200,000 sterling, in debentures (over $1,000,000), within four months after this report was made. It is not often that a railway, or any public work, proves to have cost less than was estimated for it, seven years before, but the Northern is an honorable exception to the rule. The fiscal returns published by the inspector of railways, which are the company's own statements, show that the cost of this road and its equipments, up to the thirty-first of December, 1860, instead of $4,626,369.52, was $3,890,778.68, or $735,590.84 less. The company has received... One-half the cost as returned by them is.. So it would appear they were overpaid........ .$2,311,666.67 1,945,389.34 Ottawa, Prescott, Brockville, Cobourg, Peterboro', Port Hope, Niagara, Brantford, St. Catherine's, Paris, London, Barrie, Guelph, Stratford, Goderich, and the counties and townships adjoining them, which have not displayed much alacrity in repaying the municipal loan fund, will doubtless claim that the railways which they have interested themselves in should receive some of that consideration which has been so liberally bestowed on the Northern. The guarantee law of 1849 was very unguarded; so much so that contractors, by tendering at double the value, could make the half contributed by the province pay the whole cash outlay, and could thus afford to take payment in stock and bonds: this has been the result in the case of the Northern Railway. It became necessary, therefore, as we have seen, to restrict it to the main trunk line, and to provide not only for the approval of all contracts by the government, but that the estimates of work done and to be done should be submitted to it-well-meant but ineffectual provisos, as we have also seen. So, also, the manner in which the municipalities voted away their bonds, forced, after some three years' experience, a limitation of the amount for which the province would act as a broker. Some of the wealthier counties, careful of their credit, declined to pay eight per cent. for money, and thus derived no benefit from the municipal loan fund (if benefit it can be considered), while they contribute through the consolidated fund to pay its losses. During the Grand Trunk era of construction, from 1853 to 1859, the first Canadian age of iron, and of brass-the utmost activity was displayed in running into debt. The great success which attended the early years of the Great Western assisted every other Canadian road, and was doubtless the main instrument in preventing the Grand Trunk from being prematurely abandoned. Whatever loss of prestige or character the province may suffer from the almost universal failure of her railways, as investments, it is clear that in a material sense she has been benefited immensely by the early luck of the Great Western, and by the English infatuation about Grand Trunk; for without these the means for the construction of many miles now in use would not have been raised. The construction of the other lines simultaneously with Grand Trunk was equally opportune, because there would have been little prospect of getting them done after the bankruptcy of that road. RAILWAY MORALITY. So much recklessness was displayed, in sanctioning bylaws, and in exchanging what were really provincial for municipal debentures, as to give color to the charge that contractors were not the only ones personally interested in these issues. The years 1852 to 1857 will ever be remembered as those of financial plenty, and the saturnalia of nearly all classes connected with railways. Before the invasion of the province at the east by a deputation from the most experienced railway men of England, bringing with them all the knowledge and appliances of that conservative country, it had been penetrated on the west by some contractors from the United States, bred in that school of politics and public works which brought New York to a dead stand and Pennsylvania to the goal of repudiation. These "practical men" had built State canals with senators and even governors as silent partners, and were versed in all the resources peculiar to a democratic community. The convergence of these two systems on the poor but virgin soil of Canada, brought about an education of the people and their representatives more rapid than the most sanguine among them could have hoped for. One bold operator organized a system which virtually made him ruler of the province for several years. In person or by agents he kept "open house," where the choicest brands of champagne and cigars were free to all the peoples' representatives, from the town councillor to the cabinet minister; and it was the boast of one of these agents that when the speaker's bell rang for a division, more M. P. P.s were to be found in his apartments than in the library or any other single resort! By extensive operations he held the prosperity of so many places, as well as the success of so many schemes and individuals in his grasp, that he exercised a quasi legitimate influence over many who could not be directly seduced; or made friends of those he could not otherwise approach, by liberal purchases of their property, and thus, insensibly to them, involved their interests with his own. So he ruled boards of directors-suggesting, as the officers who should supervise his work, creatures of his own-and thus the companies found themselves, on settlement-day, committed by the acts of their own ser vants. Companies about to build a railway, and depending on the municipal loan fund, were led to believe that, if he were the contractor, there would be no difficulty in obtaining the government sanction of the by-laws to any extent, and therefore the exchange of bonds; or, if their charter were opposed, the great contractor only could set it all right. A few anecdotes will illustrate the impartiality of his levies. An English contractor was, without competition, about to pounce quietly upon the contract for the Toronto and Hamilton Railway, when his American "brother" demanded and received a royalty of £10,000 sterling, before he would allow a corporation to be so imposed upon: he was, however, subsequently obliged to disgorge this black mail, when seeking the co-operation of the same contractor in England for the celebrated but abortive Southern Railway scheme. The English contractors for Grand Trunk also were compelled, before they could risk the ordeal of the legislature, to promise the ever-present and never-tobe-avoided American one-third interest in their contract. This, considering the kind of payments and their prospective losses, the latter took the earliest opportunity to compromise for the consideration of £12,000 sterling. The Toronto Northern road was let to a company of American contractors at a price per mile, payment being made chiefly in the company's stock and bonds, and the government guarantee debentures. It was necessary, in order to secure any portion of this latter item, that onehalf of the work upon seventy-five miles should first be completed by the contractors. Having exhausted their means in reaching, as they hoped, this position, the contractors, through the company, called on the government for the advance; but, upon an inspection by the government engineer, the road was found to have been so "scamped," under the American engineer (who subsequently openly became a partner with the contractors), that the commissioner of public works refused to recommend the issue of the provincial bonds. Here was a fix! But the contractors sent for their American brother, who, for a brokerage of $100,000 of the first mortgage bonds of the company, undertook to obtain the guarantee. He went to his colleague in the government; the commissioner of |