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Date: 1862-12-13
By: Samuel Leonard Tilley
Citation: Despatch from Samuel Leonard Tilley to Sir Frederick Rogers (13 December 1862) in UK, HC, Return to an Address of the Honourable The House of Commons, dated 30 June 1864; for Copy of Correspondence between any of the North American Provinces and the Imperial Government, relating to their Application for Assistance in raising a Loan for an International Railway (1864).
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London, 13 December 1862.

Dear Sir,

As I must return home by this night’s mail, Mr. Howe and I have anxiously conferred upon the draft of the Treasury Minute read to us this morning. accurately describes the terns proposed to the Delegates in the various interviews with which we have been honoured by his Grace the Colonial Secretary and the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

As I understand the matter, the Delegates have obtained the assent of Her Majesty’s Government to every proposition they submitted, and there is no difference of opinion except on the single point of the sinking fund.

As the Intercolonial Railway is a work in which the Imperial and Colonial Governments are assumed to have a joint interest—as in the Provinces we regard it as indispensable to national defence and to the transportation country in winter of breadstuffs, in case war with the United States should ever arise, I hope that Mr. Gladstone nay be induced to reconsider the matter of the sinking fund, and trust that the Cabinet may be enabled to convince Parliament that, under ail the circumstances of this peculiar case, a sinking fund should not be insisted upon. But if it is, Mr. Gladstone having consented that this sinking fund may be invested in our own or other Colonial securities, 1 will not assume the responsibility of perilling [sic] or delaying this great enterprise by rejecting what the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Cabinet may regard as an indispensable condition.

I have, &c.
(signed) S.L. Tilley.