A quarter of a century ago, charged with the temporary oversight of the
then great Railway of Canada, I first made the acquaintance of Mr.
Tilley, Prime Minister of the Province of New Brunswick, whom I met in
a plain little room, more plainly furnished, at Frederickton, in New
Brunswick. My business was to ask his co-operation in carrying out the
physical union of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and through them Prince
Edward Island and Newfoundland, with Canada by means of what has since
been called the "Intercolonial" Railway. That Railway, projected half a
century ago, was part of the great scheme of 1851,--of which the Grand
Trunk system from Portland, on the Atlantic, to Richmond; and from
Riviere du Loup, by Quebec and Richmond, to Montreal, and then on to
Kingston, Toronto, Sarnia, and Detroit--had been completed and opened
when I, thus, visited Canada, as Commissioner, in the autumn of 1861. I
found Mr. Tilley fully alive to the initial importance of the
construction of this arterial Railway--initial, in the sense that,
without it, discussions in reference to the fiscal, or the political,
federation, or the absolute union, under one Parliament, of all the
Provinces was vain. I found, also, that Mr. Tilley had, ardently,
embraced the great idea--to be realized some day, distant though that
day might be--of a great British nation, planted, for ever, under the
Crown, and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Certainly, in 1861, this great idea seemed like a mere dream of the
uncertain future. Blocked by wide stretches of half-explored country:
dependent upon approaches through United States' territory: each
Province enforcing its separate, and differing, tariffs, the one
against the other, and others, through its separate Custom House; it
was not matter of surprise to find a growing gravitation towards the