We may read later something of the cyclonic protests made in my native Province of Manitoba against the section of the contract which denied to any others the right to build railways south of the Canadian Pacific into the States; but, like many other movements, the one against this temporary monopolistic clause was, to say the least, lacking in proper perspective. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company, to enable Canada to keep faith with British Columbia and thus hold Confederation together, was struggling to build two thousand miles of road over a territory where there was little prospect for years of a paying traffic. It is hard to see that it would have been just, without adequate compensation to the Canadian Pacific, to allow other railways to hamstring the transcontinental by building in the only region where there was population enough to give a railway some reasonably remunerative business. A rather peculiar thing was that no one objected to the cash subsidy except those who attacked the whole business from end to end, as ruinous to the young Dominion. Reasonable onlookers, however, who knew something of the tremendous cost of construction over certain sections, thought the syndicate was mad to tackle it at almost any price. Later on these reasonable people found justification for their view in the fact that construction was costing in some sections half-a-million a mile—though even they would have gasped if they knew that in after years a single tunnel in the mountains was to cost over eight millions to construct. There were some who considered that the free gift to the company of several hundred miles of railway, built by the Government over a term of years, was too generous. But Canadian Pacific Railway experts in 1889 testified before an Interstate Commerce Inquiry, and said that parts of the Government sections were unwisely located, and the cost of joining up with these unwisely located sections was so great that the amount the sections were supposed to represent should be heavily discounted. It is possible that experts will always differ over this big contract of 1880 which, for years, furnished offensive and defensive political orators with abundant ammunition in party conflicts.