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Tous las autres eixemplaires originaux sont film6s en commenfant par la premidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant oar la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la darnidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le jymboie -h^ signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbols V signifie "FIN ". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film6s A des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul cBichA, il est film6 d partir de Tangle «up6rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut on bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n6cessaire. Les diagrammus suivants Hlustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 c CONSERVATIVE ADMINISTRATION 1 A REVIEW^ OF THE) SPEECH OF SIR RICHARD CARTWRIGHT BY MR. THOMAS WHITE, M.P. FOR CARDWELL, ONTARIO. ^ MONTREAL : GAZETTE PRINTING COMPANY. 1884. CONSERVATIVE ADMINISTRATION. A REVIEW 07 THE SPEECH OF SIR RICHARD CARTWRIGHT BY MB. TIIOS. WHITF, M.P. FOE CARDWELL, ONTARIO. Mr, Thos. White, M. P. for Cardwell, addressed an influential meeting of his con- stituents at Bolton Village f^" the evening of the 8th June. The ch. ii was occupied by Mr. Thomas Swinarton, ;j.;-l!,eeve of the Township of Albion, and formerly member for Cardwell in the legislature of Ontario, who, in introducing the speaker of the even- ing, referred to the manner in which Mr. White had fulfilled the promise which he had made on his ciijction in 1878 to visit the county from tin?e .,0 time. That promise had boen faithfully kept, and each succeeding visit was looked forward to with increasing pleasure and interest by the people of the -constituency. Mr. White 'tfter acknowledging the kind words of the chairman, proceeded to say that the opposition in parliament had evidently resolved to commence a series of political gatherings and addresses, in the hope of in- creasing the public sympathy with their policy and fortunes, especially in the Province of Ontairo. There could bo no possible ob- jection to their doing this, as the result would be an awakened interest in politics from which the conservative party, he felt satisfied, would not suffer. They had had the first gun of the campaign fired oft' a few evenings before in Toronto, the speech of Sir Richard Car' , '■ being evideritly the opening of the baii'e, and the matter of that speech was no doubt intended to be the key-note of the subjects upon which the attack was to be made. As that sj)eech professed to be the review of the session which had recently closed, he (Mr. White) could not do better than to follow the ex-finance minister in his statements and criticisms, and he believed that lie would have no difficulty in show. iug that the speech abounded in errors of fact and of argument. It divided itself naturally into two parts, the first prac- tical, relating to things in Canada, as they are supposed to bf, tlie second speculative, as relating to the future of Canada, and its constitutional relations to the mother country. OITNION CONCEItVI.NO THE PEOPLE OP CANADA, And first, it was evident that the opposition had not a very high opinion of the people of Canada. Sir Richard Cartwright confessed to holding the somewhat unpopular opinion, " that in some " important respects the people of Canada had " retrograded seriously in the li st few years." A somewhat similar opinion was expressed by Mr. Laurier, another leader of the party, in Montreal a few days before, namely that the people of the Province of Quebec were not patriotic, that they were not fit for indepen- dence, because, as he said, they on y elected fifteen liberals out of sixty-five members of the Legislative Assembly. (Tiaughter.) But both gentlemen, and indeed the party gene- rally, were unitea in regarding the peoi)le of Canada as a very bad lot. Sir Richard Cart- was especially hard upon the representative.^ of Ontario, because, as he said, they consent- ed to sacrifice Ontario' s interests. But what seemed to be forgotten was that they were in a majority in this province, that whatever the merits of their policy, it was the policy of the people, assented to by an overwhelming majority in 1878, and again assented to, after four years experience of it, in 1882 ; so that the charge resolved itself into this : that the majority of the people of Ontario and of their reprosentjitives hold one view as to the int(!rests of the province, and a minority the other. It was a new doctrine that the vaU nority slioulcl b(! lield to be right and the majority wrong. I'llOVINCIAL RIOHTS. And what were the evidences of this failure to protect tlie interests of Ontario ? So far as provincial riglits were concerned, they belong- ed equally to all the provinces, anew of that judgment that the Mc- Carthy Act was introduced and passed. Since then there had been a decision in the Hodge case, which seemed to contradict the other decision, and in view of the doubts on the subject the whole matter was, by the concur- rence of the Dominion a.id provincial authorities, to be submitted to the courts for their decision. That, therefore, was not an attack on the rights of anybody — it was simply an attempt to procure a complete legal decis- ion from the highest courts of the powers of the Dominion and provincial authorities respectively on a subject upon which grave doubts existed, and in relation to which it was most important to have these doubts set at rest. It was in fact an illustration of what he (Mr. White) had just stated, that the rights of the provinces are sale- guarded by 'lie constitution, and cannot bo infringed Uj)on by the Dominion or anybody else. (Cheers.) Then another ca«e wan given of an attack upon provincial rights by THK RAILWAY ACT OF 1883, which declared a number of rail- ways, theretofore local, to be for the benefit of Canada, thus bringing them under the jurisdiction of the federal authority. Now of the right of Parliament to pass this act there was no doubt,thc power was express- ly given bj the Union Act. and the only ques- tion was the policy of exorcising that power. What did this railway act amount to? It did not remove the railways ; they were there to fulfil their original function of develop- ing the coimtry. It did not assume any pa- tronage connected with them, because the pa- tronage, as well as the management, would continue to bo, as it had been, in thu hands of the corporations owning the railways. It simply declared that the same general laws which governed the trunk linos, which, con- necting two or more provinces, were already under federal jurisdiction, should govern the lines which were tor all practical purposes of commerce, branches of those trunks. As an example he mentioned the probability of the passage of an act establishing a railway com- mission. Personally he feared such an act would be another added to those sins of legislators of which Herbert Spencer had been writing in the Contemporary^ and would do more harm than good. But suppose parliament established that court. "With half the rail- ways under provincial and half under Dominion control, only the latter would be subject to the commission, and in any dispute, people would have to find out whether the railway was a provincial or a Dominion one. So with the admirable amendments to the Railway Con- solidated Act passed during the last two ses- sions, all of them emphatically in the interest of the people, and in restraint of the great rail- way coi'porations, these would apply only to the Dominion railways and not to the pro- vincial ones. There could be no two opinions that it was eminently in the interest of the public that all the railways, which being connected together formed one complete sys- tem, should be subject to the same general laws, and that was all that had been done in this railway act, under which, listening to the speeches made by the opposition, one would imagine that the Minister of Railways had put their local railways in his pocket and carried them ofl" to Kngland with him. (Cljoers.) Then Sir Richard Cartwnglit had referred to the DIFFICULTY OF «)0VERNIN(J CANADA. After quoting from the speech of Sir Richard Cartwright, an extract in which he had said "it would almost in a " political souse liavo bo^n better if the Do- <' minion had boon divided into three islands, " with the sea as a medium of comn. inica- " tion between them," Mr. White wont on to say : That was a remarkable state- ment, which will find few endorsers among sensible people. P>ut wo wore not three islands ; wo were not divided by seas ; we wore co-torminous provinces, and the re- markable thing was that Sir Richard Cart- wright's entire attack upon the conservative party when he came to deal with the finances, was in condemnation of the policy which sought, by uniting those provinces by the only means of commercial union possible, by a railway, to remove the difiiculties which its physical features presented to its easy and good government. There is no doubt, as Sir Richard Cartwright said, that the study ot the science of government is an important study lor those who are in public life, as the study of politics is to all ; but he must have trust- ed to an ignorance far more deplorable that he will find exists, when hi ventured to say, referring to the triumph of the conservatives in 1878, that it was " precisely the same as ' ' if the people of the United States, after a " full exposure of his deeds, had been pleased " to choose the late Mr. Tweed as President " of the United States, with Mr. Fisk as ' ' Minister of Railways, and Mr. Oakes Ames "as Secretary of the Treasury." It was said that this statement had been received with loud laughter. If the loud laughter was at the ex-finance minister, he (Mr. White) did not object to it; but no gentle- man, whatever his politics, could have lis- tened to this statement without feeling that a gross insult had been offered to the people of Canada, who, for a quarter of a century, have sustained Sir John Macdonald as the central figure in the government of the country. (Cheers.) He next came to Sir Richard' s TKKATMENT OF THE FINANCES, and- on this point he could not but regret that at a moment when the Finance Minister had gone to England to negotiate a loan for meeting the obligations of the Dominion, and ¥\ for the r»;dc'ini)(i«ni of Koirn; of its iiiiituiing bonds, ii geutlumaii who Kliouhl s,)wik with iiiitlioiity on this subject KhouUI liuve made tin; stutt;ments which lit! did nmko in Toronto. He had conii)aiod tlio financial position of Canailu witli tliat of tlio Unitoil iStates, tliat being now tiie favourite form of comparison witli tlie opposition. His (Mr. WHiite's) first complaint was that the comparison was for two difi'erent years, and was of ascertained expenditiue in the United (•'tates and estimated expenditure ni <'anaUa. With rare exceptions, it was known that the actual expenditure seldom reached the estimate, and tlie fair way was tt> take the ascertained expenditure for the same year, 188.'!, in the two countries respectively. Sir Richard Cartwright complained that the ex- peniliture per capita in the United States was five dollars per head and in Canaila seven dollars, and he drew a doleful picture trom this contrast. In the first place, he should have stated that Canada's expenditure m- cluded subsidies to the provinces, which in the United States were met by direct taxes in the seveial states. Those taxes amounted to $G1,4:!4,(JI»5, and to that extent Sir Kichard had underestimated the American expenditure for purposes of fair comparison. There were two items in the Canadian expenditure winch should I e deducted, if we would be fair in comparing the two countries ; the first was the provincial subsidies, amount- ing to S3,(J0G,l)73, and the second the cost of collecting the revenue from public works, to which in the United States there was nothing to correspond, and which the revenue covered within about $145,000, amounting to !53,264j87G Deducting these from the ascert^iined expenditure of 1883, and we have an expenditure which may be fairly compared of $21,8r)'J,G09, or $4.85 per cai)ita, instead of seven dollars as stated by Sir Richard Cartwright. But COMl'AlUSOiNS WITH THE UNITED STATES were not fair comparisons. That country had already reached a very large population beft>re the era of railways, and it was able to offer the inducement of tliat large popula- tion to private capital for investment in rail- ways. In Canada we had been compelled from the first to compete with our neighbours without the advantages of that large popula- tion. So far back as 1849, an act was passed by the larliament of Canada, without division, although party spiiit ran very high in that year, offering the guarantee of half the cost of any railway exceeding seventy five miles in length. The Great Western, the Northern, and the St. Lawrence and Atlantic railways were built under that act, receiving in those early days a largo assistance from the treasury of the province ; and the Ciand Trunk was built under substantially the same act. The building of the Intercolonial Railway was, by the con- sent of both parties, undertaken as a public work, built at the exclusive charge of the public treasury ; and the Pacific Railway had in the same way been undertaken as a public work, both parties so regarding it. It was the necessity of meeting modern conditions over a wide territory with u sparse popula- tion which the United States, by the fact that they hatl a comparatively large population, befoie those modern conditions arose, have been saved from. Perhaps Sir Richard Cart- wright' s island theory might have prevented it ; but tlien we were not those islands and we had to make the best of our gcogiaphical position. The United Stiites gave aid in an- other way for the development of their west- ern lines. They gave large land grants amounting in the aggregate to 188, 32(5, 031 acres, which at the price which the opposi- tion have been in the habit of estimating the land grant to the Canadian Pacific Railway would make a considerable addition to the debt of the country. But with the exception, he believed, of a small money subsidy to the first Pacific railway, the United States, by the fact of their population, have been saved the necessity of building railways as state works. Sir Richard Cartwright ven- tured the opinion, when referring to the increase in try, during the the expenditure of the coun- three periods, the first and last periods of plenty, the second a period of famine, that "there never was a more dis- " graceful exhibit ;" and yet if he had taken the trouble to look at the earlier liistory of the United States, at the period before the war, which he tells us furnished an example of careful administration, he would have found that the expenditure increased from 1840 to 1850 by |1G,787,000, and from 1850 to 18G0 by $22, 190,000, the coimtry during that period exhibiting nothing like the de- velopment, as the direct results of federal expenditure, that Canada has shown during the last seventeen years. During that time we have increased our expenditure it is true by some $16,000,000. But we had on the other hand to show three new provinces, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba and British Columbia added ; the Northwest purcluiHcd and largely developed, the Interoolotiial Hall- way built, and the Canadian Pacific Railway approaching completion ; our canal system enlarged and improved at a cost of over twenty millionH of dollars, large expenditures incurred in the operating of railways, and in the maintenance of Indiant', besides numerous public works constructed throughout the Dominion. (Cheers.) He had pointed out that a comparison with the United States, which at the com- mencement of the railway era had already a large population, with Canada was a most unfair one. A more fair comparison would be with THK AU8TRAUAN COLONIES. He would not trouble them with details, but the aggregate population of the Australasian group was in 1882, 2,983,502, about a mil- lion and a half less than the population of Canada, and the aggregate annual expendi- ture of the colonies was $l00,38tj,()55, or $34 per capita, about the same as the expenditure per family in Canada according to the ex- aggerated statement of the ex-linance minis- ter. The debts of tho Australian colonies in 1878 w«re, in the aggregate, $337,575,005, and in 1882 they had increased to $495,860,- 410, the increase in those five years being $158,285,405, almost exactly the sum of the entire net debt of the Dominion, that net debt boing$158,466,714. (Cheers. ) Then as to the per capita debt, that of Canada was a little over $35 ; in South Australia it was $126.75; in New Zealand $290 , in Queens- land, $312 ; in South Australia, $210 ; in Tasmania, $100 ; in Victoria, $140, and in Western Australia $86. But he had seen a statement made in a Canadian paper that those debts had all been in- curred for remunerative public works. That statement was not quite accurate. Many of them were raised for public works, the governments having built railways, tele- graphs, harbour docks and other works of that I'ind. But a large part of the loano had been raised tor other purposes, notably for immigration. In New South Wales, for in- stance, no less than $43. 20 per capita of the debt had been incurred for other purposes than public works. But if that statement may be made as to Australia, as fairly justi- fying their debt, might it not with equal pro- priety be made of Canada. Our debt had in- creased smce 1867 by $82,738,073. Here were four items alone which had gone to swell the debt : — Debts assumed of other pro- vinces, that is the surplus debt of Ontario and Quebec, the increases allowed to other provinces as a compensation, and the debts allotted to new provinces coming in, amount- ed to $20,452,340; Pacific Utiilway expen- diture up to end of 1883, $:t(i,0lt8,842 ; Inter- colonial Railway, $28,080,650, and public works, chieHy canals, $29,33(5,266, making in all $113,908,098, or $31,230,025 in excess of the entire increase in the debt of Canada since confederation. He ^Mr. White) ventured the opinion that there was no country in the world tliat could show more important assets, in the shape of public works, which twlded enormously to the development ot the country, as accounting for the public debt. (Cheers.) But Sir Richard Cart- wiight had complain'jd of THK BXPBNOITUIIB ON IMMKIUATION and had gone into an elabo'*ate calculation to prove that nearly a quarter of a million of tho three hundred and fifty thousand immigrants that came to Canada in the last ten years had left us, and he asked why we should go on spending money on immigration with such a result. He (Mr. White) would point out that the policy of to-day, in connection with assisted immigration, is substantially the same as that adopted by the present miaister before he left oSice in 1873, was carried out by Mr. Mackenzie' s government during all the yeais of depression, and was continued now, with this difference, that the efforts of the de- partment are directed to restricting assisted passages to men fitted for agricultural labour, and to domestic servants. He could not un- derstand the motive which was prompting the opposition to piosent to the emigrating public of the old world the picture in such a way as to show, if possible, that the country offered no mducements for permanent settle- ment. Last session we had a very clever speech from Mr. Blake, the result, evidently, of great labour. He had racked his brain over fractions and percentages, over the dis- tinction between the foieign and native- born popalation, over the question of births and deaths and their relation to each other, over the accretions from natural increment and from immigration, and all with the view of showing that this unfortunate country was gomg to the dogs. (Laughter.) Everyone had felt when he sat down that it was very clever, but that it was a pity so much indus- try and ability had not been devoted to a more worthy object. He was not going to 8 (Ukcush whcthijr tho Hf?uroH were accitrato or iKit. Soiuo very clever lettein in the Mail, IVom its Ottawa correHpoiident, had whowii, as it Heemed io liiin, tliat they were not accu- rate. But, for the point he wihlied to nialie, tliis was of Heeondary importance. What he desired to point out was that TflB SYSTEM OF MIQUATION prevailed all over the contiijent, and, as he would show j)reHently, elsewhere as well. I'eoplc were moving constantly froia the older settlements to newer ones, and as, until recently, we had not those newer fields, so equipped with rail- ways as to compete in attractivene.ss with the Western States, [)eoi)le went to - those Western States. That was chanfj;inj.'. Mani- toba and the Northwest was beginning to at- tract a large emigration from the I'nited States, they presenting to-day the newest and most attractive Held. At such a time it was neither wise nor fair to Canada for public men to emphasize evils which were the re- sults of conditions over which we had no con- trol, and which were giving way to the new con*lition3 we had now to present. This ten- dency to migration among immigrants par- ticularly, obtained in the Australian colonies ([uite as much as here. It was a popular error that those colonies had the advantage of ho'ding the immigrants they obtained. But the facts he would give, as the rcoid of five years, from 1878 to 1882, would show that this was not the case : — Immigrants. Emigrantis. New Zealand 75,(147 ;{4,451 (■iueenUand 84,586 52,555 Tasmania 55,1)14 51,000 Victoria .260,077 222.270 Aud in South Australia and Western A-istra- lia, for which he had the figures for 1882 only, the immigration to the former was 14,870, and tne emigration 14, 13(5, and the immigration t<,> the latter was idered so important in the interests of con- f( deration that he would not m )ve an amend- ment which would have the etiect of inten- rupting it, that ISir Richard Cartwright had denounced as an act of wholesale bribery in his presence in Toronto. It was true that at the last moment h^* voted against it, and found himself with n ministerial majority of ninety-three against him. In that vote all Mr. Blake's friends from Quebec, ex- cept ©ne, all his frieuds from Nova iScotia and New Brunswick, and one of his friends from Ontario had deserted him and voted with the government ; and his leading lieutenant; Mr. Mill§, a very able man and certainly a very pronour.ced liberal, had left the house and shirked the vote. Having listened to their leader c "dating that the measure was so important in the interests of confederation that he would not move against it, they, more consistent than he, re- solved that they would support it. (Cheers.) Now there was the question of INCREASED CrBSIDIES TO THE PROVINCES, which 8ir Richard Cartwright had denounced as a mischievous act, intended to bribe the provinces into supporting the con- servative party. What were the facts in relation to them? When the provinces were united, in 18G7, they came into the union with a fixed debt each, whichwas assumed by the federal government. The actual debt of Ont:irio and Quebec was some ten millions of dollars more than this tixed debt, interest on which was charged against them and deducted from thei'- sub- si lies. In 1873 this excess of debt was assumed by the Domini'^n, but there had never been a complete settlement of accounts. Last year these accounts were made up, and the provinces complained that the difiterence of debt had not been assumed as from 1867. Mr. Ross, the Treasurer of Ontario, in his budget speech, declared that this should be done, and that it was a right of the province to have it done. Sir Richaru Cartwright himself, when finance minister, had assumed that to have been the intention of parliament, for Ive had paid the Quebec government, when Mr. Joly was in office, half a million of dollars, whichwas only done on the assumption that the excess of debt should be considered as having been taken over in 1867, and Sir Leonard Tilley finally consented to tako that view, and readjusted the subsidies accordingly. Ontario obtained an increased subsidy of $142,400 , Quebec, 1130,000; Nova Scotia, $39,668; New Brunswick, $30,225 ; Prince Edward Island, $re heinous sinner, Mr. Cau- chon. Then we had THE D'SPOSAL OF TIMBER LIMITS. When the conservatiA'^es were in power be- fore 1873 the policy with relation to timber limits was to sell them by public competi- tion. When Mr. Mackensie came in he changed tlie policy, and he (Mr. White) thought there were fai"* grounds for that change. Timber limits in the Northwest were not like those in the older provinces ; they were scatterod, and the discovery of them and their value involved considerable expense on the part of exploiers. It seemed unfair that, having gone to that expense and trouble, parties should be subjected to ordinary competition to obtain them. That at any rate was the view of the Mackenzie government when they adopted the poucy which had ever since prevailed, the changee since being rather in the direction of restriction than otherwise. And how did the government of which Sir Richard Cartwright was a member act in re- spect of those limits ? Their very latest act, after they had been defeated at the polls, Avas to give, as a matter of favour, no less than two hundred square miles of timber limits, subject to selection by the grantees over the whole Northwest, to political friends ; and the first act of the new government when they came in was to cancel that sale. And yt t it was the gentleman who, as a minister, was responsible for that grant, who now complain- ed of the disposal of timber limits to political friends. (Cheers.) THE INDEMNITY BILi.. Then we had the charge that Sii Charles Tapper had been permitted to hold his posi- lAon as a me... her of parliament and of the government, while High Commissioner. Tue circumstances connected with this case were no doubt familiar to them. During the ses- sion of 1883 Sir Charles Tupp^r's health gave way, and change of scene and work was urged upon him by his medical adviser. The High Commissionership had become vacant by the resignation of Sir A. T. Gait, and Sir John Macdonald urged that Sir Charles should accept the position, at least temporarily, and in order that there might be no question about the Independence of Parliament Act, the commission was given without salary, so tha* the offence which had been committed was that the duties had been performed, and pe-formed in a manner to militate to the great advantage of the country, at a salary of $7,000, instead of 1 10, 000 a year. There were some doubts as to whether there might not be some technical difficulty, and in order to save Sir Charles Tupper from the annoy- ance of vexatious law suits, the house having decided that be had not vacated his seat, passed a bill which could be pleaded in bar of any action brought against him. The Independence of Parliament Act had been passed to prevent ministers from purchasing the support of members of parliament by giving them con- tracts or employment. But certainly the spirit of the law was not violated in the case of the Minister of Railways who, being al- ready a minister, did not require a bribe to induce him to support himself. (Cheers.) In the very first session of parliam.ent under Mr. Mackenzie an indemnity act had been passed in the cafie of Mr. Periy, of Prince Edward Island, 'vho was not even a legal candidate, but who was made a member of parliament by act of parliament ; and in 1877 an indemnity act was passed to save a number of friends of the government from the penalties which they had incurred by becom- ing co!itractors for the government while members of the House of Commons. Sir Richard had certainly been hard pressed for grounds of complaint against the government w hen he had cited this case as one entitling them to condemnation. (Cheers. ) Then as to THE SECTION B CONTRACT, railway, and the 14,000', 000. After the work had made the facts were these. The original contract was for sixty-five miles of very difficult contract price was it was let and some progress, the gov- ernment became very anxious to hasten its completion, in order to utilize the road on either side, which had cost some $10,000,000. Changes were made with this view. The rock bottom base, with structures, which in 14 the origiDal contract was to cost $960,477, was changed to rock borrow and pile stiuc- ttires, costing $449, 106 ; and riome changes were made in the location of the line, by which some $500,000 more would be saved. The contractors complained, first, that they were deprived of what they had regarded as their most profitable work by these changes, and that the failure to complete the adjoining section within the time specified in the contract, thus incurring for them largely increased cost in getting in their supplies, had resuhed in further loss. The matter was referred to arbitration, the government Sv^lecting Judge Clarke, the con- tractors Mr. Brydges, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court ippointed Mr. Liglit. After an exhaustive enquiry the arbitrators awarded the sum oi" $395,000, for which the government took a vote of parliament, on the 'inderstanding that as Judge Clarke had Hot concurred in the award, the matter would be referred to the de- partment of justice for report, before it was paid. That was the case of this Section B contract. If the full award is paid, the work will still have been completed at con- siderably less than the original amount of the contract, certainly an unusual result in the cast of contracts. Then as to THE BOBITAILLE FARM about which so fierce an attnck was made, it was sufficient to state the simple tacts of the case. Some years ago the farm had been set apart as a supply farm for the Indians, and some money had been spent in impveving it. It was found, however, to be unprofitable ; to be in tact a source of serious expense to the government, and it was re- solved to sell it There were about 4,500 acreo in all, and Governor Robitaille offered $10,000 for it. The government objected to sell it, as it was within the twouty-mile belt ; one half of it belonged to the Canadian Paci- fic Railway, and there were also the school and Hudson' s Bay sections, which could not be sold. A Mr. Stimson mafle an offer about the same time, but after Governor Robitaille' s offer, of $12,000, The matter was finally referred to the Deputy Minister of the Interior, who is certainly not a Conservativ , who came into the office as private secretary to Mr. Mills, but who is a most excellent officer, and he recommended that 2, 360 acres, which was the proportion which the government coritr jlled, should be sold to Governor Robitaille at $3 an acre, leaving him to makj the best bargain he could with the Pacific Railway Company for the balance, that is, it was sold at the rate of $14,209 for the whole. It seemed difficult to make out of that transaction a case justifying the over- throw of the conservative party and the restoration of Sir Richard Cartwright iand his friends to ofHce ; especially so when it was c ii ..asted with the sale of abovt 100,- 000 acres of land by private arrangement, in the County of Hastings, to a political friend, Mr. Coe, by the liberal government of Onta- rio. (Cheers.) THK QUESTION OF INDEPENDENCE. And now he (Mr. White) had but a few mo- ments to refer to the speculative portion of Sir Richard Cartwright' s speech, the portion in which a feeler wae put out in order to test the public sentiment on the subject of inde- pendence. He had suggested thiee conditions for the future of Canada. One was impe- rial confederation, which he had dismiss- ed rather summarily in view of the fact that Mr. Blake was on the platform with him. Then he had touched upon the theory of an Anglo-Saxon alliance, defensive and offensive ; but pleasant as was the picture drawn by him, he did not evidently consider it a very hopeful scheme. The independence of Canada was the solution v/hich appeared to have most charms for Sir Richard Cart- wright, and a large section of the press of the party had endorsed that view. He (Mr. White) had no hesitation in saying empha- tically that he was opposed to that proposal. He desired to live and die a British subject, and he sincerely prayed that he might be permitted to do so. [Loud cheers.] Sir Richard was hardly logical ; he spent the greater part of his time in proving thai the financial obligations which Canada had incurred were altogether beyond our resources, and he suggested as a remedy that we should assume the additional expenditure of an independent national existence, with the cost of an army and navy and of a foreign consular service. What would independence give us that we did not possess to-day ? We were told we should have the right to make treaties. How were we prevented from making treaties now ? What people seemed to forget who talk about the importance ot independence as giving us the power to make treaties was that it took two people to make a bargain. Our difficulty to-day was that 15 the people with whom we wanted treaties did not want them with us. So far as the United States was concerned the treaty of 1854 had been made by Sir Francis Hincks, and the interests concerned were purely Canadian. Since the abrogation of that treaty Sir A. T. Gait, Sir John Rftse, Sir William Rowland, and Mr. George Brown had all gone to Washington to make a treaty, and the dif- ficulty was not our colonial position, but the unwillingness of the Americans to renew treaty arrangements. We had now, by are- cent coiK' ;ssion of the Colonial Office, the power to make intercolonial treaties. England, an independent nation, failed in ht eflbrts to make i:ommercial treaties both with France and Spain for years, simply be- cause they could not agree as to the terms. Would we be any the more likely to succeed if we were independent to-mgrrow ? Suppose we were, and that we sent a deputation to Wash- ington to make arrangements. We might offer a continental policy. We might propose to abolish all the custom houses in the interior, retain them on the ocean frontiers, charge the same dutieb, and divide the proceeds on the basis of population or some other basis. What would be the answer ? We should be told that we had better come in to the con- federacy of states if we wished thQ advantages we sought ; and having given up the glorious heritage of being subjects of the great- est empire of the world for the sake of this so-called continental policy, we ivould not hesitate for a moment to give up the form of independence we had assorted, in order to get that policy. Independence, in our condition, meant simply a few yer "-s of uncer- tainty, of futile attempts at accomplishing what we had sacrificed so much to accom- plish, and then union with the United States. It would be more honest, from the lowest standpoint of mere material and com- mercial advantage, it would be more sen- sible, to accept annexation at once. No position could be better than that which we now enjoyed. Subjects of an empire on which the sun never sets, ow- ing allegiance to a monarch whose prestige and glory are recognized the world over, pro- tected by a flag, the symbol and emblem of power and freedom wherever it floats, and enjoying at the same time the most abso- lute liberty to manage our own affairs within our own borders, according to ©ur own liking, it would be impossible to imagine conditions more favourable. He was an enemy to Canada, who sought at a time like this, when all our energies were necessary to work out the problem of development which lay before us. to create distrust and uncertainty in relation to the fundamental law of our political condition, and he (Mr. White) mistook the sentiment of the people of Canada if the liberals did not realize that they had made a terrible blundnr in the selec- tion of this new plank of indepondence upon which to build their political fortunes. [Loud cheers.] A vote of thanks to Mr. White and the chairman, and cheers for the Queen, brought a most successful meeting to a close. <^vl