cept one, which, though large enough for fifty, was sacred to a few railway magnates whose duty it was-and pleasure it should have been-to treat the ejected passengers as their guests, but who resolutely kept out the vulgar herd. It seems absurd in such nabobs to plead poverty before our legislature, or expect the men whose wives and daughters have been so treated to support their petitions.

MUNICIPAL RAILWAYS.

The municipalities, relieved from contributing to the Trunk Railway, were thus at liberty to embark in branch lines, and some rushed headlong in, seduced by men who saw how the thing was done in the Grand Trunk. Contractors controlled the board of directors and appointed the engineer; a scamped road, barely practicable for traffic, was made, on which the whole receipts for the present generation must be applied before it can be considered completed. To enable the municipalities to carry out their local improvements, the province virtually indorsed their bonds by exchanging them for others, in which it acted as a broker, undertaking to collect from the borrower and pay over to the lender. The by-laws by which counties, cities, and townships voted their loans or subscriptions to public works, required the approval of the governor in council before they could take the benefit of the Municipal Loan Fund Act. This provision was intended as a check upon extravagance, but the practical effect of it was to place the members from every county and city, seeking to avail themselves of the provisions of the act, at the mercy of the ministry of the day. Those who were most subservient obtained most money, and one village was allowed to borrow three hundred dollars per head for every soul of the population. Of course default was made in the interest on such loans, and one delinquent produced others; the province as indorser in the mean time paying for them, and in the end accepting, in lieu of the dues, an annual as

sessment of five per cent. Although loans of this doubtful character have been thus compromised, a rigid neutrality has been maintained toward those municipalities which, like Hamilton, embarked in good faith in similarly unfortunate enterprises upon their own unaided credit.

The following tables show that about six and a half millions of dollars have been contributed to railways by the municipalities in Upper and Lower Canada, out of the loan fund. Some three millions or more have been contributed by municipalities which did not borrow from the fund, so that the total investment by these bodies in railways cannot be far from ten millions of dollars.*

* Unfortunately, the municipalities do not make any return to Parliament of their investments in public works. This is the case also with road companies and several other joint-stock corporations. No good reasons are advanced why these bodies should be more favored than banks and railways.

TABLE SHOWING THE AMOUNTS TAKEN FROM THE MUNICIPAL LOAN FUND BY

MUNICIPALITIES IN UPPER CANADA FOR RAILWAY PURPOSES ONLY.

Arrears of interest in 1851. in 1861. Amount of loan. due Dec. 81, 1861,

TABLE SHOWING THE AMOUNTS TAKEN FROM THE MUNICIPAL LOAN FUND BY MUNICIPALITIES IN LOWER CANADA FOR RAILWAY PURPOSES ONLY.

This flagrant disregard of obligations, by so many municipalities, is not to be ascribed wholly to the inability of some, and the example of such upon others; nor to any proneness to repudiation; for these bodies have made great and successful efforts to keep faith with other creditors, and have only failed in cases where the debt was overwhelming. Little effort was made to pay the loan fund, even during the most prosperous days of the corporations, chiefly because no attempt was made to collect:the example of the government in conniving at the default being the prime cause of its present magnitude. To press a municipality was to drive it into opposition; and railway corruption had so thoroughly emasculated the leaders of the people, that they had not virtue enough left to do their duty. Moreover, at the time the money was borrowed supporters of the government had industriously sowed the impression that repayment would not be exacted, and this view gained ground after the lien on the Grand Trunk was abandoned. They could not see why the law of 1849, which treated all districts alike, should have been repealed for the benefit of the wealthier localities; and

* Boundaries changed since 1851.

Object of loan not stated; supposed to be for railways.

looked upon this move as an abuse of their political power by the majority. To these considerations, as well as to the feeling that the debt is due, in a great measure, by the people in one capacity to themselves in another, and not to individuals or a foreign government-and has moreover been pretty generally distributed over the provincemay be traced this otherwise disgraceful exhibit. The dimensions of many of the loans, as compared with the borrowers, go to show that the latter did not expect and were not expected to repay;-nor could many of them have been sanctioned by the popular approval, had they been considered as bona fide debts. The manner in which the guarantee has been distributed, as shown in the following table, has likewise tended to foster this feeling.

The debentures were sold at about twelve and a half per cent. premium, which would increase these amounts one-eighth. The province has abandoned its claim on the last two roads; the Great Western has ceased paying principal or interest,-the former from inability; the latter on the ground that its mail service has not been settled.

The Northern was not a part of the main trunk, but obtained provincial aid because it had been put under contract in view of the guarantee, before the repeal of the law