14 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. 



eration, the company this lime figuring under the name or 

 Ontario and Michigan Power Company." Again the upper house 

 was first honored with a request to pass upon the bill. But whether 

 because the Senate, in its wisdom, endeavored to carry out the reso- 

 lutions of the previous year, or whether for other reabons, which 

 need not here be entered into, the bill was defeated in committee, and 

 "the general advantage of Canada" lost another example of the 

 sort of violation which the spirit of the clause has so frequently 

 undergone. 



The same session also witnessed some memorable contests over 

 two railway charters— those of the Niagara, St. Catharines and To- 

 ronto Railway Company and the Hamilton Radial Railway Com- 

 pany — both of them Ontario concerns. The battle raged in these 

 cases over the more or less direct interference with municipal rights. 

 But, by this time, members of Parliament, and the public generally, 

 had become alive to the value of the Federal Railway Commission, 

 with wide powers controlled by capable Commissioners whose policy 

 has been to be fair to the railways without neglecting in the least 

 the interests of the province, the municipality and the individual. 

 Since 1883, when, for the first time, certain railways were declared 

 to be works for the generall advantage of Canada, so as to settle and 

 strengthen the charters of the leading trunk lines, various provincial 

 railways have come to Ottawa asking to be made Federal corpora- 

 tions. While there^was, therefore, much opposition to the Niagara 

 and the Hamilton Radial bills, yet the idea is obtaining in some quar- 

 ters that if some working plan could be devised so as to bring the 

 railway system of the country under the control of the Commission 

 we might be saved from many of the difficulties that beset our south- 

 ern neighbors, and, in the end, be enabled to deal much more fairly 

 by the railways. 



Whatever may be said in favor of raising provincial railways 

 into the federal field, by having them declared to be for the general 

 advantage of Canada, it is not by any means clear that other cor- 

 porations should be so freely dealt with. 



It might be here observed that, sometimes, unfortunately, party 

 passion, or unthinking prejudice, may tend to defeat the most 

 reasonable applications. In such a session as that of 1907-1908 ' 

 the face of an approaching general election, when ammunition was 

 incidentally being manufactured for every variety of spellbinde 11 

 over Canada, the discussion over applicant corporations for the 

 tutory declaration occasionally gave rise to extravagant attitudes a d 



