it was only necessary to state the items for every sensible, candid and reasonable man, every man not blinded by party feeling, to see through its fallacy. The fallacy was clearly shown in the statement which he now placed before the House and before the country, and he challenged its contradiction. He asserted also that there was no period in the history of Canada where any Government was so eminso emin ently justified in a liberal outlay as was the Government that held the reins of office up to 1873. There was no period when the country had been so prosperous, when it experienced so rapid a growth and poured such a flood of wealth into the public Treasury; and there were no indications of that great crash which followed it except the natural indication that such periods of prosperity must be followed within a certain time by a corresponding period of depression; but whether they would come sooner or later it was not given to the mind of man to know exactly. The only person to whom it had been Vouchsafed to have that entire and correct prognostication of the future, the only person for whom the veil which hid the future was withdrawn, for whom the curtain was lifted that he might look upon futurity-look upon the seeds of time and tell which should germinate and which should not-was the hon. the Finance Minister. That hon. gentleman said what he (Mr. Plumb) should presently quote, a little while before the late Admistration went out of office—and they must take his utterances as those of the Government, because the hon. the Premier had claimed that the hon. the Finance Minister was acting in accord with him years before he took his position as Finance Minister in the present Government. The words of the hon. gentleman as reported, were as follows:

.. Mr. CARTWRIGHT deprecated the mixing up of matters connected with the Treaty in this discussion, the more so as the financial statement made this afternoon was one which all members ought to regard with great gratification. We were all aware that fears had been entertained, when the Confederation scheme was under discussion, that the financial arrangements were likely to be a source of danger to the young nationality, and he, for one, was glad to find those appre

The hon. the Finance Minister supported the scheme of Confederation, and he was therefore entitled to part of the credit. When the echoes of the speech of the Finance Ministernot then the Finance Minister, but probably probably feeling some prophetic shadowing of the honour that was to fall upon him, namely, that in the near future he would be selected by the Reform Administration as their financial authority in this House-had scarcely died away, the hon. the Premier (Mr. Mackenzie) arose and addressed the House, and this was his view of the situation. Mr. Mackenzie "spoke in the strongest language"-he used strong language in those days; but he was one of the Reform Opposition'of the speech of the Minister of Inland Revenue, and referred to the course he (Mr. Mackenzie) had pursued with regard to the subsidies to the various Provinces. He did not look with serious apprehension to any great national calamity; but the financial policy of the Minister of Finance was calculated to bring on a commercial depression." Again, in 1873, upon Mr. Tilley's Budget speech, the present Premier made the following remarks:

"Mr. MACKENZIE said that every onewould rejoice at the statements that had just been made, and every one would accept all those statements as being perfectly accurate, unless prevented from being so by mere accident. He wished, however, to ask the hon. gentleman whether, in calculating the amount of Customs duties, he had included free goods.

"Hon. Mr. TILLEY said the percentage he had named was for the whole imports entered for consumption.

"Mr. MACKENZIE thought so, and in that case the statement was quite illusory. One of the principal charges made against him by the inember for Vancouver (Sir F. Hincks) during the late electoral campaign, was that he and those acting with him politically were Free Traders, and persons likely to be concerned in the representation of any such city as Hamilton for instance. But what would the manufacturers of Hamilton

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Commons. He (Mr. Plumb) wished at this point to claim the attention of the House for a few minutes, while he spoke of a peculiar feature in this unusual action of the Finance Minister. A great deal depended, in all the examination into the financial affairs of this country at that time, upon the position which the country was in when the hon. the Finance Minister took the management of its finances. He brought down a statement showing what the expenditure of 1874-5 would be, and, in doing so, stated that the Government had been forced by the legislation of 1873 to make an enormous addition to the current expenditure of the country. But he made one very remarkable statement, which attracted great attention in the House and in the country. He said, in effect: "You cannot expect that, even with the great commitments of our predecessors pressing upon us and staring us in the face, I shall cut down the expenditure of the Department of my hon. friend the Minister of Public Works." Even in view of the terrible

disasters which were about to fall on the country, the present depression in trade, the decline in the revenue, the increase of indebtedness, they could not expect him to do this. Why that was one of the directions above all others in which the expenditure might have been reduced. There must have been many public works upon which, with great propriety and without disadvantage to the country, the expenditure might nave been dispensed with, or greatly reduced until some more fortunate condition of affairs enabled the country to go on with them. Although it was one of the most important, it was one of the easiest Departments to regulate; provided, always, that it was not overridden with political considerations, which prevented it from being properly dealt with. It might have been the pressure from the outside of hungry partizan contractors, which made the Finance Minister unwilling or unable to deal with it. He brought down He brought down Supplementary Estimates which were to be added to the expenditure of the current year 1873-4, and, with more ingenuity than candour, charged them against his predecessor, Mr. Tilley.

These Supplementary Estimates were double the amount-he might almost say three times the amount of any that had ever been brought down. They amounted to nearly twenty-five hundred thousand dollars to be added. Mr. Tilley stated, in his Budget speech the year before, that the Supplementary estimates made necessary by the legis lation of 187, would be somewhere about fifteen hundred thousand dollars. The system of bringing down large Supplementary Estimates was pernicious; it was one that should not be tolerated to any large extent; one that should not be resorted to, except under circumstances of weighty consideration. It was very evident no Parliament could have control over the finances of a country if, after having voted an expenditure that must be adopted, item by item, in full view of the current receipts of the country and its finar.cial condition, they should be called upon to pass amounts which had been added to the expenditure of the previous year. He did not say this on purpose to condemn any Government, but he said it was a bad system, a pernicious system, and one that ought not to be indulged in. In this he (Mr. Plumb) was sustained by the authority of Mr. Gladstone in his evidence before the Committee of Public Accounts in 1862. If there was an item of the Supplementary Estimates of 1873-4 which could properly be placed in the Estimates of 1874-5 the Finance Minister was false to his duty if he did not put it there, or if he refrained from doing so the purpose of a temporary triumph over the gentleman who was his predecessor, or for the sake of misleading a newly-elected House, not familiar with public affairs. If the hon. the

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Finance Minister did that for the sake of obtaining a political triumph, for making a point which was more or less objectionable against his predecessor, it ought to deprive him of the confidence of the financial world. The man who held the position of Finance Minister of Canada should be above party considerations, and should never allow himself to indulge in those party utterances marked by party prejudices which might be allowed, although objectionable, in his colleagues. He

ought to stand apart,and to hold himself above and aloof from party squabbles, in order to hold the confidence of the country, and he could not command that confidence if his power was used for party purposes or party triumphs. He had already given his authority upon this question of Supplementary Estimates. Mr. Gladstone-who, apart from certain erratic conduct which he had displayed during the last few months, held and deserved to hold a high place in all matters of finance in England-gave evidence in 1862 before the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons to this effect: Supplementary Estimates are one of the greatest evils that the House could endure." The objection urged against them by Mr. Gladstone, and which he had repeatedly pressed upon Parliament, was "that he regarded such Estimates with great jealousy. Though very plausible in theory, he thought that no practice tended so much to defeat the efficacy of Parliamentary control as the easy resort to Supplementary Estimates. To render this control effectual, it was necessary that the House of Commons should have the money transactions of the year presented in one mass, without which the House would not know where it was." They had constantly this evil presented to them by a Reform Government, and now, while they were taking the current year's expenditure, and were told that in certain items there was a large reduction, they had better wait until they got to the end of it, and sce what additions were brought down in the Supplementary Estimates, in order that they might know what the aggregate was, and then they could judge better and more intelligently as to the expenditure of the year in comparison with that of the years which preceded it. Of course, it might be, and it was necessary frequently to bring down Supplementary Estimates. It was necessary in 1873; the legislation made it necessary. But this was not the case in 1874. From the Schedule A of the Supplementary Estimates of 1874, he would read from among other items and things- Militia, Police Force in Manitoba, $60,000;" "Hudson Bay Company, $20,000." Admitting that

this latter was a proper charge, it did not belong to that year at all, but to the previous year, and it should not have been used to swell the abnormally large expenditure of 1873-4. Then there was the Red River Road, construction and working expenses $235,000. He should like to know how much of that expenditure accrued out of arrangements with contractors.

MR. MACKENZIE: Not one dollar.

MR. PLUMB: I did not say what the contracts were. I think the hon. the Premier is rather premature in his remark; this would seem to be a sore subject with him.

MR. MACKENZIE: If If my hon. friend will allow me, I may state that the whole of that amount was expended before the present Government came into office.

MR. PLUMB said then a good deal of it was spent during the troubles in Manitoba, and it was spent for a legitimate purpose. He did not insinuate that it was spent for anything else, but the hon. the Prime Minister seemed to feel it rather a sore point. He should show something further with regard to the Red River Route by-andbye. The increase between 1868 and 1873 was as follows: In items of the accounts open in 1868, grouped together for convenience and condensation, they found an increase in the following: