Document Information

Date: 1865-03-18
By: Edward Cardwell
Citation: Despatch from Right Hon. Edward Cardwell to Lieutenant Governor Arthur Gordon (18 March 1865) in UK, Parliament, Correspondence respecting the Proposed Union of the British North American Provinces (London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1867).
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No. 3.

Copy of a DESPATCH from the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell, M. P., to Lieut.-Governor the Hon. ARTHUR GORDON.

(No. 60.)

Downing Street, March 18, 1865.

SIR,

I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch No. 23, * of the 27th of February, in which you request instructions whether provision will be made for the completion of the Intercolonial Railway in the Act of Union, or be embodied by the Imperial Parliament in a separate Act.

In reply, I have to acquaint you that Her Majesty’s Government have expressed their cordial approval of the proceedings of the Conference at Quebec, and have engaged that if, as they hope, the Provincial Legislature sanction the scheme of the Conference they on their part will submit to the Imperial Parliament the measures which may be necessary for carrying that scheme into effect.

Of the resolutions adopted by the conference the 68th provides that the General Government shall secure, without delay, the completion of the Intercolonial Railway.

Her Majesty’s Government have understood that Resolution, with reference to the correspondence which had previously passed with the Governments of the several Provinces. While, therefore, they have entered into no new stipulation on the subject, they have by no means accepted the 68th resolution, from the general approval which they have expressed of the entire scheme, or from the engagement expecting it to which I have above referred.

What steps it may be proper hereafter for Her Majesty’s Government to take in pursuance of this engagement cannot be stated positively until it shall be known what course has been taken by the Provincial Legislatures, and until Her Majesty’s Government shall have received the communications which they hope to receive a persons deputed by the Governor-General to give to Her Majesty’s Government the benefit of the counsel upon the various measures necessary for carrying the Resolutions of the Conference into effect.

I have, &c.

(Signed) EDWARD CARDWELL.

Lieut.-Governor the Hon. A. Gordon,

&c. &c. &c.