and accepted. On July 16 the correspondence exchanged between Mr. Blair and the prime minister was made public and explanations offered in the House. There were specific differences of policy between Mr. Blair and his colleagues. Every member of the cabinet had a railway policy, and the Minister of Railways could not be behind. During the winter of 1902-03, he had declared himself in favour of an immediate extension of the Intercolonial to Georgian Bay, linking up by water in summer with the Canadian Northern, and the gradual building of a new government-owned road from Quebec to a Winnipeg junction point and perhaps eventually through to the Pacific. He was opposed to the Moncton extension, opposed to immediate construction of the Quebec-Winnipeg section, and opposed, not so much to entrusting the enterprise to any private company as to entrusting it to the Grand Trunk. While in favour of state construction, he was not committed to state operation, holding open the alternative of lease to any private company. While his colleagues were prepared to enter partnership with the Grand Trunk, Mr. Blair preferred to link up with the Canadian Northern. Still more fundamental as a cause of the break was the lack of complete confidence. Mr. Blair declared to Sir Wilfrid in his letter of resignation:

The Grand Trunk proposition had been made to you, and you had consulted with other ministers and these ministers had met Mr. Hays on several occasions, as I am advised, with your knowledge and approval, long before you made me aware that negotiations or discussions on this subject had been en

tered upon or were being prosecuted. ... I reconciled myself to the very obvious slight which had been cast upon me on the ground that probably your knowledge of my views on the general question did not encourage you to expect I would look with much favour upon, or render much assistance toward carrying out, the object you had in view.

Certainly this ignoring of the Minister of Railways in framing a railway policy required an explanation, but the explanation was not the one Mr. Blair supplied. The reason for thus ignoring him in the earlier stages and the ultimate reason for the retirement was simply that in view of the character and ambitions of some of the men who had made Mr. Blair their friend, Sir Wilfrid was not prepared to confide to him the power to determine the general question of policy, or the privilege of allotting or guiding any contract that might require to be let. He was determined that there would be no second Pacific scandal.

No more serious blow could have been inflicted upon the government than the resignation of the Minister of Railways a fortnight before its railway policy was to be submitted to the House. Yet there could be no drawing back, and on July 30 Sir Wilfrid laid the plan before parliament.

That a transcontinental road should be built, Sir Wilfrid declared, all were agreed; agreed further that it must be wholly on Canadian soil. But that it should be built immediately not all were agreed:

To those who urge upon us the policy of to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, to those who tell us, wait, wait,

wait; to those who advise us to pause, to consider, to reflect, to calculate and to inquire, our answer is: No, this is not a time for deliberation, this is a time for action. The floodtide is upon us that leads on to fortune; if we let it pass it may never recur again. If we let it pass, the voyage of our national life, bright as it is to-day, will be bound in shallows. We cannot wait because time does not wait; we cannot wait, because in these days of wonderful development, time lost is doubly lost; we cannot wait, because at this moment there is a transformation going on in the conditions of our national life which it would be a folly to ignore and a crime to overlook; we cannot wait because the prairies of the North-West, which for countless ages have been roamed over by wild herds of the bison or by the scarcely less wild tribes of red men, are now invaded from all sides by the white race. They came last year one hundred thousand strong and still they come in still greater numbers. Already they are at work opening the long-dormant soil; already they are at work sowing, harvesting and reaping. We consider that it is the duty of all who sit within these walls by the will of the people to provide immediate means whereby the products of those new settlers may find an exit to the ocean at the least possible cost and whereby likewise a market may be found in this new region for those who toil in the forests, in the fields, in the mines, in the shops of the older provinces. Such is our duty; it is immediate and imperative. It is not of to-morrow but of this day, of this hour and of this minute. Heaven grant that it is not already too late; Heaven grant that, while we tarry and dispute, the trade of Canada is not deviated to other channels and that an ever-vigilant competitor does not take to himself the trade that properly belongs to those who acknowledge Canada as their native or their adopted land.

With this somewhat perfervid beginning, indicating the strain of expected criticism not only from the Opposition but from his former colleague, Sir Wilfrid proceeded in more matter-of-fact terms to analyze in detail

the terms of the contract, and to meet objections. It was charged that the Moncton-Quebec line paralleled the Intercolonial: it must be remembered that the route of the Intercolonial had been determined by military, not by commercial considerations, that the new route would be a hundred miles shorter and from thirty to seventy miles distant, with a mountain range intervening. The short line built by the C. P. R. through Maine to St. John could not serve: it might at any time be rendered useless by a denial of the bonding privilege; only a week before, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in a letter to the London "Times," had threatened this withdrawal if the policy of inter-imperial preference in trade was continued and extended. That menace could not be borne; a commercial route wholly within Canadian territory to Canadian seaports must be secured: "I have found that the best and most effective way to maintain friendship with our American neighbours is to be absolutely independent of them." It was urged the cost would be prohibitive: the cost would not be more than seven years' interest on the mountain section and seven years' rental on the eastern section,-$13,000,000, or a single year's surplus; for the rest, "We give our credit and nothing else." It was urged that little was known of the wilderness through which the government was calmly proposing to build a standard road: not so, as detailed and authoritative reports on the climate, resources and topography of this new Northern empire made abundantly clear. Why should not the country itself build