The new gold fields in our own territory on the extreme
west, and California, also within reach: India, our Australian
Colonies - all our eastern Empire, in fact, material and moral, and
dependent (as at present it too much is) upon an overland
communication, through a foreign state.
"Try to realize, again, assuming physical obstacles overcome, a main
through Railway, of which the first thousand miles belong to the Grand
Trunk Company, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific,
made just within - as regards the north-western and unexplored district
- the corn-growing latitude. The result to this Empire would be beyond
calculation; it would be something, in fact, to distinguish the age
itself; and the doing of it would make the fortune of the Grand Trunk.
"Assuming also, again I say, that physical obstacles can be overcome,
is not the time opportune for making a start? The Prince is just coming
home full of glowing notions of the vast territories he has seen: the
Duke of Newcastle has been with him - and he is Colonial Minister: there
is jealousy and uncertainty on all questions relating to the east,
coincident with an enormous development of our eastern relations,
making people all anxious, if they could, to get another way across to
the Pacific: - the new gold fields on the Frazer River are attracting
swarms of emigrants; and the public mind generally is ripe, as it seems
to me, for any grand and feasible scheme which could be laid before it.
