Canada has been unusually generous to the promoters of the Canadian Pacific Railway. A free gift of five millions sterling: a free gift of 713 miles of, completed, railway: a free gift of twenty-five millions of acres of land: all materials admitted free of duty: the lands given to be free of taxation for twenty years: the Company's, property to be free of taxation: the Company to have absolute control in fixing its rates and charges until it should pay 10 per cent. dividend on its Ordinary Stock: and for twenty years no competitive Railway to be sanctioned;--summarize the liberality of the Dominion of Canada, in her efforts to bind together her Ocean coasts. The work is essentially an Imperial work. What is the duty of the Empire? CHAPTER V. _A British Railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific_. ("ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS," 1861.) My letter of the 15th November, 1860, to a friend of Mr. Thomas Baring, then President of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, gives concisely my general notions of opening up the British portion of the Great Continent of America. A while later a leading article written by me appeared in the "Illustrated London News" of the 16th February, 1861. The article was headed, "A British Railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific." I will here quote a portion of it:-- "'I hope,' said her Majesty, on proroguing Parliament in 1858, 'that the new Colony on the Pacific (British Columbia) may be but one step in the career of steady progress by which my dominions in North America may be ultimately peopled in an unbroken chain, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by a loyal and industrious population.' The aspiration, so strikingly expressed, found a fervent echo in the national heart, and it continues to engage the earnest attention of England; for it speaks of a great outspread of solid prosperity and of rational liberty, of the diffusion of our civilization, and of the extension of our moral empire. "Since the Royal Speech, Governments have done something, and events have done more, to ripen public opinion into action. The Governments at home and in Canada have organized and explored. The more perfect discoveries of our new gold fields on the Pacific, the Indian Mutiny, the completion of great works in Canada, the treaties with Japan and with China, the visit of the Prince of Wales to the American Continent, and, at the moment, the sad dissensions in the United States, combine to interest us in the question, and to make us ask, 'How is this hope to be realized; not a century hence, but in our time?'