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None of the passages in his political life reflect more credit upon him than his diplomacy upon this occasion. He had already declined, as we have seen, a seat in the Cabinet. Later, he had further strengthened his reputation by refusing the lucrative office of chairman of the commission to build the Intercolonial Railway.
Service, the leader of the federation movement, alike intercolonial and imperial, corrected me by substituting Australian for Victorian snow. But Mr.
"Well, Charles," said Hemenway, "you take my things and put them in the car. Careful with that gun now! The Lord only knows how much time this train's going to lose. I'm going ahead to see the engineer." Angus McLeod was a grizzle-bearded Scotchman who had run a locomotive on the Intercolonial ever since the road was cut through the woods from New Brunswick to Quebec.
Albert J. Smith was called upon to form a new government. Mr. Smith had been attorney-general in Mr. Tilley's government up to the year 1862, when he resigned in consequence of a difference with his colleagues in regard to the negotiations which were being carried on for the construction of the Intercolonial Railway. He was a fine speaker, and a man of ability.
In 1879 it had made a good bargain by selling to the Intercolonial the branch from Lévis to Rivière du Loup, which did not earn operating expenses, and by expending the proceeds in buying an extension to Chicago, which enabled it at last to secure the through traffic from the West for which it had been in large part originally designed.
If these railway interests could be combined, an Intercolonial railroad would be constructed from the Atlantic seaboard to the lakes, and a great stimulus given not merely to the commerce but to the national unity of British North America, In case, however, this great idea could not be realized, it was the intention of the Canadian government to make every possible exertion to induce British capitalists to invest their money in the great trunk line by a liberal offer of assistance from the provincial exchequer, and the municipalities directly interested in its construction.
The Intercolonial Railway still continued to engage the attention of the legislature, and correspondence with the secretary of state, with the government of Canada, and with the government of Nova Scotia, in regard to this great work, was laid before the House soon after the session opened.
The man chosen for the task of achieving this impossibility was Sandford Fleming. Appointed engineer-in-chief in 1871, he was for nine years in charge of the surveys, though for half that time his duties on the Intercolonial absorbed much of his energy.
Yet this was not the whole story. If the Intercolonial did not earn dividends, there were other reasons at work than government inefficiency. The road ran for long stretches through barren country where little local traffic originated.
No doubt we must have spent some days in Sydney, my father and myself; but from the Ariadne, and the parting with Nelly Fane and my other companions, memory carries me direct to the deck of a little intercolonial steamer, bound north from Sydney, for Brisbane and other Queensland ports.
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