“‘May lead at any time to an open rupture.’ And what might that be to Brantford? Read the selections from the report of the committee of Congress on page 4 of this journal. ‘An open rupture’ means the probable sequences of war; the stoppage of all through traffic on the Buffalo and Lake Huron railroad, whose central works are at Brantford. It means the enemy’s occupation or bombardment of Goderich town from Lake Huron. It means the approach of an army of invasion from Buffalo and Port Dover, and all the ports on the north shore of Lake Erie towards Brantford and Hamilton; and a battle perhaps the bloodiest in the annals of time, the Thermopylæ of Canada fought on the banks of the Grand River near the village of Caledonia, or between that village and the lake shore, but more probably in and around Brantford town. Then will every brick of that place be battered to rubbish heaps, in the battle which decides which army shall hold the key-ground of Canada West. The key-ground of Canada West extends from the Grand River below Caledonia, by way of Brantford to Paris, and northerly to Guelph; from thence to Toronto eastward, and to London westward. The three railways, Buffalo and Lake Huron, Great Western, and Grand Trunk, will be kept open to the last extremity, for though we may be terribly tried, Canada will submit willingly,—never. “I will not describe in these columns the probable disposition of forces. I direct the reader’s eye through the curtain of the future to take that one glimpse, because of the fervency of a terrible apprehension that the wilful negligence of the Government of Canada to organize, or provide means for organizing a defensive force, may leave the Province to the appalling hazard of seeing a time of war with insufficiency of means to resist the invasion at the beginning. “What, to Great Britain, are the aspects of the contingency of an ‘open rupture’ or Roebuck’s ‘declaration of war?’ War with the United States, the Southern blockade broken, and secession achieved, involves either the defence of Canada by all the might of the Mother country or abandonment. Abandonment means, the confiscation of every man’s estate, every child’s heritage. * * * * * “Then we may see Alabamas playing havoc on the wrong side. The sordid traitors to their Queen and country who, in 1862 and 1863, have built them on the Mersey and the Clyde, in breach of British neutrality, standing accursed in the presence of the British Empire immersed in the three-fold baptism of convulsion famine and pestilence, weird offspring of havoc and of war. “Such, Mr. Roebuck, of Sheffield, would be the probable result of your crazy counsels. Such, Mr. Laird, of Birkenhead, will possibly be the early convulsion of nations in which your sordid iniquity is preparing to plunge the British Empire.