A quarter of a century ago, charged with the temporary oversight of the then great Railway of Canada, I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Tilley, Prime Minister of the Province of New Brunswick, whom I met in a plain little room, more plainly furnished, at Frederickton, in New Brunswick. My business was to ask his co-operation in carrying out the physical union of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and through them Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, with Canada by means of what has since been called the "Intercolonial" Railway. That Railway, projected half a century ago, was part of the great scheme of 1851,--of which the Grand Trunk system from Portland, on the Atlantic, to Richmond; and from Riviere du Loup, by Quebec and Richmond, to Montreal, and then on to Kingston, Toronto, Sarnia, and Detroit--had been completed and opened when I, thus, visited Canada, as Commissioner, in the autumn of 1861. I found Mr. Tilley fully alive to the initial importance of the construction of this arterial Railway--initial, in the sense that, without it, discussions in reference to the fiscal, or the political, federation, or the absolute union, under one Parliament, of all the Provinces was vain. I found, also, that Mr. Tilley had, ardently, embraced the great idea--to be realized some day, distant though that day might be--of a great British nation, planted, for ever, under the Crown, and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Certainly, in 1861, this great idea seemed like a mere dream of the uncertain future. Blocked by wide stretches of half-explored country: dependent upon approaches through United States' territory: each Province enforcing its separate, and differing, tariffs, the one against the other, and others, through its separate Custom House; it was not matter of surprise to find a growing gravitation towards the United States, based, alike, on augmenting trade and augmenting prejudices. Amongst party politicians at home, there was, at this time, of 1861, little adhesion to the idea of a Colonial Empire; and the reader has only to read the reference, made later on, to a published letter of Sir Charles Adderley to Mr. Disraeli in 1862, to see how the pulse of some of the Conservative party was then beating. There was, however, one bright gleam of hope. That was to be found in the, still remembered, effects of the visit of the Prince of Wales, accompanied by the Duke of Newcastle, to Canada, and the United States, in 1860. Entertaining, with no small enthusiasm, and in common, these views of an Anglo-American Empire, Mr. Tilley and I were of the same opinion as to practical modes. We must go "step by step," and the Intercolonial Railway was the first step in the march before us.