The European and North American also had its troubles. Maine proved unable to build its section. In 1852 the New Brunswick government made a contract with the English {69} firm already referred to, under the style of Peto, Betts, Jackson and Brassey, for the construction of a line from Maine to Nova Scotia, at $32,500 a mile. The province agreed to subscribe $6000 stock and lend $9400 in bonds per mile; the contractors were to find the rest of the money in England. This they failed to do. The firm was dissolved in 1856, and the government took over the road, completing it from St John to Shediac, 108 miles, in 1860. The western half was not begun until August 1867. To return to the upper provinces. By 1851 the St Lawrence, the Great Western, and the Northern were under way, and more ambitious schemes proposed. The Guarantee Act of 1849, which was the first phase of Hincks's policy, assuring public aid for the second half of any road at least seventy-five miles in length, was proving inadequate, and the government was considering an extension of its policy. At this juncture the golden news arrived of Howe's success in securing the L7,000,000 loan at bargain rates. All hesitation was removed. No doubt was felt that the roads would pay, once they were built; the only difficulty had been to find the money to build them. And now L7,000,000 was {70} available--L4,000,000 of it for Canada, at probably 3 1/2 per cent. Paper computations soon proved that L4,000,000 would suffice not only to build Canada's third of the Quebec-Halifax route, but to build a trunk line from Quebec or Montreal through to Hamilton, whence the Great Western ran to Windsor on the frontier opposite Detroit.