Briefly stated, the Government agreed to give the new syndicate the seven hundred miles of railway already built or under contract to be built by the Government, together with twenty-five millions in money and twenty-five millions of acres of selected land in the West. In addition, the syndicate was promised exemption from import duties on all material brought in for construction, from taxes on land for twenty years after Crown patents were issued, as well as freedom from taxes on stock and other property for all time, together with exemption from regulation of rates till ten per cent. had been earned on capital invested. To guard against premature competition by roads connecting with the States, the Government agreed that for twenty years no charter would be granted to any railway south of the Canadian Pacific Railway from any point at or near the Canadian Pacific Railway except such as should run south-west or westward of south-west; nor to within fifteen miles of the Boundary-Line. In Winnipeg, in my student days in the 80’s, I recall hearing many rather stormy discussions over this contract at public meetings, because the West was particularly affected. The two things most strenuously opposed, as being too generous to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, were the grant of land, which was said to be too large, and the section which prevented competing lines being built to the south. Neither of these objections ever seemed to me very reasonable. The land grant looked large; but land was worth very little before the railway came in to make it valuable. In my boyhood I knew that some of the land along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers (and there is no better land anywhere) was sold for fifty cents an acre. If the twenty-five millions of acres given to the railway were valued at pre-railway prices the amount would not be great. When the railway was built the price of land went up with a rush, but it must be borne in mind that it cost the Company millions to bring the railway in, to make the land worth while. And it should also be remembered that the railway made other people’s land as valuable as its own, although the increase to the other people did not cost them anything beyond their ordinary taxes. In any case the land went up when the railway came in, but the railway did not come in by magic. It is interesting to recall in this connection that Sumner, a famous statesman in the American Republic, once advocated giving half of one of the great agricultural States in the West to any one who would build a railway through it, as it was of little use till a railway would enter. What some people in Canada, who denounced the Government for giving twenty-five millions of acres, might have said if the Canadian Pacific Railway had been offered one-half of the Middle West, would probably be too incoherent to print.