end of the session of 1848-49. Accordingly, in
April 1849 Hincks brought down a new policy, based upon a suggestion of
the directors of the St Lawrence and Atlantic. The proposal was, to
guarantee the interest, not exceeding six per cent, on half the bonds
of any railway over seventy-five miles long, whenever half the road had
been constructed, the province to be protected by a first charge after
the bondholders' lien. MacNab seconded the resolution; voices from
Bytown and the Saguenay mildly questioned the policy, but the
resolution passed unanimously.

Even with this aid construction did not proceed apace. It was still
necessary for the companies to complete half the road before qualifying
for government assistance. This the St Lawrence road effected slowly,
in face of quarrels with contractors, repudiation of calls by
shareholders, and hesitancy of banks to make advances. The Great
Western did not get under way until 1851, when American capitalists,
connected with the New York Central, took shares and a place on the
directorate. In the same year the Toronto, Simcoe and Huron, later
known as the Northern, began construction.

Meanwhile suggestions from the Maritime {56} Provinces had brought
still more ambitious schemes within practical range, and these led
Hincks to take the second step in his policy of aid to railways.

In the Maritime Provinces, from 1835 to 1850, many railways had been
projected, but, with the exception of a small coal tramway in Nova
Scotia, built in 1839 from the Albion coal-mines to tide-water, not a
mile was built before 1847. There, as elsewhere, the pamphleteer and
the promoter acted as pioneers, and the capitalist and the politician
took up their projects later. The plans which chiefly appealed to
public attention looked to the linking up of St Andrews, St John, and
Halifax with Quebec and Montreal and with the railways of Maine. From
the outset the projects in these provinces were much more ambitious
than the local beginnings in the Canadas. They were more markedly
political and military in aim, and in consequence depended in greater
measure upon the aid of the British government. When at last
construction was begun, the policy of provincial ownership was more
widely adopted.

When in 1876 Sandford Fleming drew up a record of the great work just
completed under his direction, the Intercolonial Railway, he {57}
called attention to the first proposal for such a road, found in