440 Our North Land. 



tion. But in the following year they broke their engagements and 

 carried an Act in the Legislature authorizing the construction of a 

 railway from Winnipeg south-easterly to the International Boundary, 

 contrary to the Canadian Pacific Charter and bargain. 



It is not the business of this work to discuss the wisdom or 

 folly of the original engagement of Mr. Norquay with the Ottawa 

 powers in reference to this matter, but I cannot too strongly 

 condemn the departure from that engagement by the former, for it 

 has created a want of confidence in his promises in the minds of 

 Dominion Ministers which has resulted in great damage to the 

 Province of Manitoba. Mr. Norquay saw that his acquiescence in 

 the Federal policy of C. P. R. protection was, wise or unwise, 

 contrary to the wishes of a large majority of the electors of Mani- 

 toba, and he did not hesitate to disregard his official obligations, 

 in order to float with the tide of public opinion. I am sufficiently 

 informed to be able to state that most of the ill-will recently mani- 

 fested in the North-West against the Dominion Government, 

 arouse out of the wretchedly bad management of Manitoba's affairs 

 at Ottawa by the Provincial Premier. If he was right in his last 

 actions, he was wrong in his first engagements, and if the Central 

 authorities persisted beyond prudence in enforcing their railway 

 policy in the ]Sforth-West, Mr. Norquay was principally blamable 

 for it, and he was of all men most inconsistent in his opposition to 

 it. Thus the beginning of discontent in Manitoba is directly 

 traceable to the action of Manitoba's Premier. Had he told Sir 

 John in 1879 that his Province would not blind-fold itself to the 

 railway policy of Canada so far as it affected the North- West, that 

 policy afterwards enforced might have been different, but in his 

 eagerness to obtain a petty increase of subsidy he agreed to abstain 

 from that which he within one year after carried out. 



By this means the Canadian Pacific, which has already become a 

 great blessing to the North-West, and which is destined to serve still 

 more important interests there, grew to be the source of agitated 

 discontent. The people of Manitoba gave unanimous expression in 

 favour of Free Trade in railways for that Province, and affirmed and 

 re-affirmed the right of the Province to charter lines of railway any- 



