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MR. LAFLAMME: Several. MR. PALMER: State one.

introduced by Mr. William Ewart, and carried by him in 1836, after being discussed in four successive Sessions. He would also remind that hon. member that the Bill was introduced and carried by Mr. Henry Aglionby, a private member, which abolished the old law whereby men condemned to death for murder were executed within fortyeight hours after receiving sentence. Fourteen days after that Bill became law, a man was convicted, whose inno

MR. LAFLAMME: I refer the hon. cence, in consequence of the time member to the Statute-book.

MR. SMITH (Westmoreland) said the late Mr. Sandfield Macdonald, when a private member, introduced a Bill relating to trials by Judges.

MR. DYMOND, in reply, said it would afford him the greatest possible pleasure to comply with any suggestion, within his power, made by the hon. member for Cardwell, especially as that hon. gentleman and other hon. members had dealt with the measure in so fair and cordial a spirit. The hon. member had suggested that the question should be left over for a year, and then dealt with by the hon. the Minister of Justice; but could the hon. gentleman predict who would be Minister of Justice twelve months hence? and he (Mr. Dymond) was not prepared to allow his Bill to incur these chances of a coming change which the hon. gentleman and his friends were almost daily prognosticating. The hon. member for Cardwell could not even foretell who would be member for North York a year hence; and, if the hon. member for Cardwell had his will fulfilled, there would be a change also in that direction. He hoped, however, the hon. member would be disappointed, and that he would meet the hon. member for Cardwell in the next Parliament. Without pretending to speak from personal knowledge of past events in this country, he was aware that a large number of Bills had been introduced by private members, more important and radical in their nature than his measure, He would remind the hon. member for St. John (Mr. Palmer) that the law in England which first gave prisoners charged with felony the right to be defended by counsel was

allowed by that change in the law, was afterwards commuted; and he obso far proved that his sentence was served by the newspapers a few days ago that this man-forty years after the trial-was said to have discovered, in New South Wales, the person who committed the crime for which he was committed. He might, if it were necessary, mention several other Acts of that kind which had been carried by private members, and which he hoped would justify him, in the view of the hon. member for St. John, for having introduced the Bill under discussion. The hon. member for Hamilton (Mr. Irving) had furnished him with one of the best arguments for the passage of the Bill, in stating that, probably, important changes in the criminal law, in that direction, would be made in Great Britain. With all respect for the manner in which those reforms were dealt with in the Mother Country, he ventured to remind the House that they were generally very tardy in coming into operation. No doubt Mr. Evelyn Ashley's Bill was shelved by being referred to a Select Committee; and amendments in criminal procedure were sometimes discussed for years in England before they became law; while, on the other hand, this House, in passing this measure, would be testing the principle in a manner which all legal members had said was open to the least possible objection, so that, when the time came and the country was ripe for a larger measure of reform, they would have had considerable experience from the step which he trusted the House was about to take. He thanked the hon. members for their very fair and generous treatment of his measure

Motion made and question proposed:- | time entailed a penalty of double stamps

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Order for second reading read.

MR. IRVING said that, after the Bill was read the second time, he would allow it to stand over for a few days, to admit any amendments to be made, in case they were proposed. The objects of the Bill were, comparatively speaking, very few, although contained in several clauses. By the statute law, it was necessary that a bill or promissory note should be stamped on the day upon which it was drawn, and that the stamps should bear upon the face of them, the date corresponding to the date of the note. There were very

considerable transactions wherein bills were drawn in the United States or other countries, and sent here for acceptance or payment, and, by reason of the time that must necessarily elapse between the date on which the bill was

drawn, and the date it reached Canada, it was wholly impossible for acceptors to affix the stamps the day the note was made. The Bill, therefore, proposed to supply this omission in the Statute, which, in some recent decisions in the Courts of Ontario, had been brought to light. The next clause referred to promissory notes drawn and payable in a foreign country, but which might come, in the course of business transactions, into Canada, and proposed to bring these notes or bills under the same law as that which related to bills of exchange-which provided that stamps should not be affixed to such bills. The third clause provided that the protective provisions of the statute law, which provided that bills not being stamped at the proper

case

being affixed, should also be applied to the instruments spoken of in the first instance, drawn in foreign countries and payable here. The fourth clause provided that, in the of unstamped notes found among the assets of a deceased person, the circumstances connected with said notes not being known, the executor or trustee should have the power to give validity to these instruments by affixing stamps at once. The fifth clause proposed that, in the case of a suit to recover upon an unstamped bill, the Judge might, under certain circumstances, allow double stamps to be affixed, where, in his opinion, it was required in order to maintain the validity of the instrument. He was not clear whether, legally, that provision was absolutely necessary. It had been suggested to him by a learned Judge, for which reason he had incorporated it in his Bill. The last clause was one manifestly necessary. It provided that every instrument liable to stamp duty should be admitted as evidence in any criminal proceeding, although it might not have the stamp required by law affixed thereto. The Bill was a copy of an English Act passed some years ago, and was equally necessary here to make our Stamp Law perfect.

MR. MACKENZIE said the fourth

clause was one that required some first and second appeared to have been examination. The principles of the apply to promissory notes what already practically acknowledged, namely: to The hon. applied to bills of exchange the Finance Minister was not present, but, as the Bill was to stand over for a into and amendments suggested at a few days, it would be carefully looked later stage.

Bill read the second time.

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every two years instead of once in one year as at present exists, unless in cases of great public emergency, when His Excellency the Governor-General, by and with the advice of his Executive, shall have the power to call such extra Sessions as may be deeme expedient in the interim, thus saving to the country one-half the present enormous expense of legislation which may be said to cost annually, say, in round numbers, House of Commons $350,000, Senate $200,000, which amendment would be of great advantage in saving of time to the public men of the Dominion and would be the means of saving so large an amount of the public revenue as would materially help to build many miles, annually, of the Canadian Pacific Railway."

and, when they had used the pruning knife in other Departments, the total reduction would amount to, say, one million dollars.

Such saving and

economy would provide the means of
building many miles of the Pacific
Railroad. His object in bringing for-
ward the motion was to urge the hus-
banding of their pecuniary means, so
as to enable them to build that great
national highway across the conti-
nent, of which every Canadian would
be proud. They had sufficient evi-
dence that the road would pay in more
ways than one. It would prove remu-
nerative to the Custom-house by the
large influx of immigrants which
it would cause. The people of
this Dominion
now paying
to the Customs, more than any other
people, in proportion to their popula-
tion, in the world. The Dominion had
a public domain, which it was folly
and criminal to neglect; and, owing to
this neglect, the Americans were

were

He said he knew that all hon. members of the House who had the interests of their country at heart would support his motion. The finances of the Dominion required careful consideration at the hands of gentlemen on the Treasury benches, and it behoved them to husband the public revenue and resources of the country, and do away with the extrav-enabled to sell to Canada an immense agant expense involved in holding Sessions of Parliament every twelve months, when experience taught them that one Session every two years would amply suffice. The cost to the Dominion, under the present system, as he had shown by the resolution under consideration, was $350,000 for the Commons, and $200,000 for the Senate, annually. He would ask was their legislation worth that to the country? Was it worth even $50,000?

An HON. MEMBER: $100,000.

MR. BUNSTER said it meant a hundred thousand dollars worth of broken promises given to the people of British Columbia, or rather a hundred thousand broken promises. He knew the motion he had proposed would not be very palatable to some members of the House, as it was a matter that immediately affected them now, and he might add that it would probably affect them more closely at the next general elections. He looked with confidence to the decision of the peo ple outside this House, whose mouthpieces they merely were, on his course in this matter. This question involved the saving to the country of the sum, at a moderate estimate, of $150,000;

amount of produce and cereals. Only
a few years ago a sum of $750,000 was
offered to the people of Vancouver
Island, to forego the building of the
railroad from Nanaimo to Esquimalt ;
but the people of that Province, believ
ing that the railroad would be carried
out in its entirety, according to terms,
And,
indignantly refused the offer.
to-day, the paltry sum of $500,000 was
placed in the Estimates for railway
construction in British Columbia. The
deficit, also, of $1,500,000, announced
by the hon. the Finance Minister, was
another reason why they should hus-
band their resources, as guardians of
the public weal. Those were suffi-
cient reasons for the adoption of his
motion. The development of the great
public domain lying west, which could
afford homes to an immense population,
was alone a sufficient reason to husband
the resources of the country, in order
to enable the Government to prosecute
the work of opening and developing
the great North-West, and thus con-
tribute, in time, to the realization of
the bright dreams of future greatness
and prosperity which had been indulg-
in by his lamented countryman,
late Thomas D'Arcy McGee,

others.

Motion negatived.

the

and

THE PACIFIC RAILWAY.

MOTION FOR RETURN.

DECOSMOS

MR. moved for a return containing a complete copy of every special and general report of the Chief Engineer and Acting Chief Engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway in possession of the Government, respecting the cost of constructing the line of the Canada Pacific Railway, (including the bridges) between the head of Bute Inlet and some place or port in Vancouver Island. He said the question that he proposed to raise was of more immediate importance than that of the hon. the member for Vancouver (Mr. Bunster) in favour of biennial Parliaments. He would state that the members on the floor of this House, the hon. the Minister of Public Works, the press, and the people generally, had been under an impression that, if the railway passed from Fort George to Bute Inlet, and thence to a firstclass port on Vancouver Island, it would be necessary to expend a vast sum of money in constructing the latter section. Now, he was persuaded, from reading the report of Mr. Fleming, issued during the past year, that he had never recommended that the railway should be constructed from the head of Bute Inlet to Vancouver Island at present; that there was nothing at all in the report to indicate that the railway should now be constructed on the mainland beyond Waddington Harbour; but, that thence, a ferry should be used to reach Vancouver Island until such time as the Dominion could afford to complete this section of the railway; and that thus a vast sum of money, which was said to be enormous-twenty millions of dollars need not be expended at all. It was to get the report in favour of Wadding ton Harbour being made a temporary terminus, if there was such a report before the House, that this motion was made, in order that they might at once have the evidence that the railway need not be located on a line objectionable and injurious alike to the Dominion and to the Province of British Columbia. In saying this he begged to draw the attention of the House to a matter of very great importance in connection

with selecting a port as the western terminus of this railway. He had before taken occasion to intimate to this House that there were only three ports south of British Columbia, in the territory of the United States, where a trans-continental terminus on the Pacific could be established. The first was San Diego, near the 32nd parallel, on the Mexican border, towards which the Texas Pacific Railway was now in progress. The next place where a railway terminated was San Francisco Bay. From that bay northerly, no other point could be made the terminus of a transcontinental railway, except Puget Sound, opposite Victoria. Now, they would discover from this fact that, if the Canadian Pacific Railway were to become a competing line with American lines, the greatest care should be used in locating the route of the railway, and more especially the port on the Pacific where it should terminate. He doubted whether those who gave their attention to public statistics or the commercial interests of the Dominion in this House, had ever turned their attention to the position of San Francisco,which, to-day,was one of the greatest commercial cities in the world. We had to look at the present position of San Francisco in order to form a correct judgment as to where the terminus of our Pacific Railway should be located. In order to give the House some idea of the business done by San Francisco, and the importance of that city, he would read some of its statistics for 1877, and would compare these statistics with those of the whole Dominion of Canada for 1877, now before the House. In the first place, he would take the imports. The imports of Canada amounted to $99,327,962, the imports of the port of San Francisco, not including treasure, were $75,713,292. That new country, scarcely thirty years old, had imported nearly as much merchandise as the whole of the Dominion of Canada. The exports of Canada were $75,875,393, while the exports of San Francisco, excluding treasure, were $61,911,237. The aggregate foreign trade of the port of San Francisco for last year was $137,624,509, within $40,000,000 of the aggre

gate foreign trade of the whole of this Dominion. In drawing attention to this fact, he again drew attention to the importance of selecting a port in the Pacific Ocean where we could sucessfully compete with the ports of the States in a trans-continental and transPacific business. The total Customs revenue of this Dominion from all ports was $12,000,000 and over, the total Federal revenue received from the port of San Francisco alone was $8,803,034. If they took the port of Montreal, our largest commercial city, they found the total Customs collected there last year amounted to $3,878,507, while the port of San Francisco, in Customs alone, paid to the Federal treasury $6,692,432. As As our object in taking this railway to the Pacific was not merely to open up the intervening country to settlement, but to engage in the commerce of the Pacific, he would show what proportion of the commerce of San Francisco went to other countries than the States and territories of the United States. There was merchandise, exclusive of treasure, to the amount of $44,351,425, sent from that port by sea to Europe and foreign countries on the shores of the Pacific Ocean; $2,999,312 to New York by Panama; $2,561,500 to New York by clipper; and $12,000,000 sent east by rail. The foreign imports of San Francisco amounted to $34,012,496; the domestic imports-by Panama $3,700,788; by rail $18,000,000, and by clippers $20,000,000. One half of the imports came from the United States, and the other half from foreign countries round the shores of the Pacific Ocean and elsewhere. Another fact, showing the great country we had to contend with in building a terminus on the shores of the Pacific, was that the estimated value of the productions of California, of all kinds, in 1877, was $144,650.000. The treasure exports in that year were $57,688,783, the treasure imports $6,242,855 and the total coinage of silver and gold at the San Francisco mint, and the largest coinage ever made at one mint in one year by any nation of the world was $49,772,000. With regard to the shipping—and if anything would show and prove conclusively to this House

and to this Ministry the necessity of selecting the most capacious and accessible port on the Pacific as our western terminus, it was the statistics of the arrival of vessels alone at San Francisco;-the arrivals of American vessels from domestic ports last year numbered 3,482, with an aggregate tonnage of 1,099,205 tons; American vessels that came from foreign ports 274, an aggregate of 348,234 tons; foreign vessels from foreign ports 246, with a total tonnage of 236,858 tons; American vessels coming in from fishing voyages 18, tonnage 4,501; American vessels from whaling voyages 16, tonnage 2,270; making the aggregate number of vessels 4,036, with a total tonnage of 1,631,068 tons. Now, if a young community like San Francisco, only 30 years old, had grown up to be such a giant in commerce as to employ 4,036 ships with a tonnage of nearly two millions, to do her business, it could be easily seen by this House that we required a first-class port on the Pacific in order to do the business of this Dominion. But he would further claim the indulgence of the House in order to give some idea of the business done by railways which supplied the great port of San Francisco. The leading commercial newspaper of that city, in its admirable annual report of its commerce and navigation for 1877, stated as follows:

"Our railroad progress during 1874 was the most marked of any year since the completion of the trans-coutinental road. During it, several narrow-gauge roads have been projected and built, while the Southern Pacific has been completed over hundreds of miles of territory and finished as far as Fort Yuma in Arizona, to which point trains with goods and passengers are now constantly running, The heavy imports of steel rails, noted in another column, shows the vigour with which the work has been pushed. No long time will have elapsed before the Iron Horse has reached the Rio

Grande on the borders of Texas, Then an immense tract of country, abounding in minerals and with large quantities of fertile lands, will be open to settlement, while the trade of San Francisco will extend to New Mexico, Colorado, and even Western Texas. The following extract from the report of the points with regard to the railroad system Railroad Companies gives more important of the State:

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