In the tenth year of my labour in connection with this gigantic undertaking political or rather party exigencies compelled me to sever all official connection with it. I do not wish in any way, directly or indirectly, to allude to my retirement from the position I held. The subject can be of no interest to the general reader, but I may say that before I retired, in 1880, the problem of the practicability of the Railway had been grappled with and solved. The formidable natural barriers which lay before us had been penetrated. Construction had been commenced at several points between British Columbia and Lake Superior, within a range of two thousand miles; and, further, the completion of a length of railway of eight hundred miles, embracing some of the most difficult sections of the work, was assured within a very short period of time. The latter in the west piercing to the heart of British Columbia from the Pacific, and in the east opening up a way through Canadian territory for the influx of settlers to the fertile prairies of the North-West. As I am writing, the subject of the Canadian Pacific Railway is again before Parliament. Four years ago the Ministry entrusted the construction of the railway to a Company. The measure was carried by large majorities in both Houses. If I understand the argument advanced for this policy, it was advocated on the ground that a Company could carry on the work more efficiently and more economically than a Department of the Government. The facts disclosed in the recent discussions in the House of Commons establish that a Company cannot find money at less than double the cost at which it is obtainable by the Canadian Government. The Company has been raising capital at more than nine per cent. The Government can find money at four per cent. or less. That a Company can carry out a national undertaking more efficiently and economically than a government, if the argument be not a fallacy, most certainly implies that there is some defect in the system of government itself. The difficulty with our present system lies in the fact that the interests of party must be consulted, whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice. Party takes precedence of every other consideration. Party seems to cloud the judgments of men who, in many instances, are irreproachable in private life. Public men seem to act on the principle that there is one creed and language for the hustings, the press and parliament, and another for social intercourse.