Document Information

Date: 1865-07-24
By: Ottawa Union
Citation: “The Ministerial Programme”, The Ottawa Union (24 July, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

The Ministerial Programme.

The Leader does not seem to be at all satisfied with the course of its friends in office. Confederation has, it says, failed, and the mission to England has failed, and yet, although the object for which the Coalition was formed has passed so far out of reach, that extraordinary alliance antagonistic elements remains. Our contemporary is afraid that, as it must justify its existence by some ambitious project, the Province will be called upon to submit to some enormous addition to its debt. When the union of the Provinces was being discussed in the House, members were comforted with the assurance that the principal items of expenditure were to be borne by the Confederation. If great defences had to be erected and great public were to be carried out, Canada at least would not have to bear the whole of the burden. But the fair visions floated before Ministerial minds have lost all their brilliancy since their introduction to Downing Street, and “now that all prospect of Confederation being immediately carried is over, Canada is to be asked to undertake alone works which were too considerable for the resources of the whole of British America to bear. We are to undertake defences of vast magnitude and cost, to buy the rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company in North-west, and colonize that territory. The delegates have agreed that we shall undertake all this, if the Legislature can only be got to assent. The enlargement of the canals, instead of being indefinitely postponed, is ignored altogether.” The Leader fears that the subserviency of the Legislature will lead it to vote any propositions ministers may offer—even to the addition of fifty millions to the public debt; and points out that if Canada assumes burdens greater than united British America could bear, she will render Confederation impossible instead of forwarding it; the great objection urged in the Lower Provinces against a union with Canada being the magnitude of our debt.—Mont. Herald.