vernment would by
no means object to its forming part of the plan that it should include
provision for establishing a communication between the projected
railway and the railways of the United States.' The colonies were to
bear the whole cost of the loan, and were to impose taxes sufficient to
provide interest and sinking fund, and thus ensure against any risk of
loss to the United Kingdom.

Howe returned triumphant. The British government would guarantee a
loan of L7,000,000, which would build the roads to Portland and to
Quebec and perhaps still farther west. He hastened to New Brunswick,
and won the consent of its government to the larger plan, went on to
Portland and allayed its murmurs, and with E. B. Chandler of New
Brunswick reached Toronto, then the seat of government of the province
of Canada, in June 1851. His eloquence and the dazzling {64} offer of
cheap and seemingly unlimited capital soon won consent. The
representatives of the three provinces agreed to construct the road
from Halifax to Quebec on joint account, while Canada would build the
extension from Quebec to Montreal, and New Brunswick the extension to
the Maine border, each at its own risk, but in all cases out of the
L7,000,000 guaranteed loan.

Then suddenly the bubble burst. The Colonial Office, late in 1851,
declared that Howe had been mistaken in declaring that the guarantee
was to extend to the European and North American project. The British
government had no objection to this road being built, but would not aid
it. The officials of the Colonial Office declared that they never
meant to promise anything else.

It is difficult to assign with certainty responsibility for this
serious misunderstanding. Possibly Howe's optimism and oratorical
vagueness led him to misinterpret the promises made, but his reports
immediately after the interviews were explicit, and in dispatches and
speeches sent to the Colonial Office and acknowledged with high
compliments, his version of the agreement had been set forth clearly
and for months had gone {65} unchallenged. He cannot be freed from a
share of the blame, but the negligence of Downing Street was at least
equally the source of the misunderstanding.

The whole plan thus fell to the ground. The consent of the three
provinces was essential, and New Brunswick would not support the
Halifax and Quebec project if the Portland road, running through the
most populous and influential sections of the