ed far
enough; failing this, the province, together with such municipalities
as wished, could undertake the extension; should both modes fail,
private companies might be given the privilege, with a provincial
guarantee of half the cost, covering both principal and interest. No
roads except those forming part of the Trunk line and the three already
under way were to be aided. The Montreal and Kingston Railway, in
which Holton, Galt, and Macpherson were prime movers, was chartered,
and also the Kingston and Toronto, but in both charters a suspending
clause was included preventing the charters from taking effect until
special proclamation was made--after the other plans had failed.

The next move was to arrange terms with {72} the other provinces and
secure the promised Imperial guarantee. How Hincks and Chandler's
mission failed has already been told. Hincks then made another sharp
curve and decided for company control. Before leaving Canada he had
made up his mind that the construction should be entrusted to British
contractors, and was authorized to negotiate with the Brassey firm.
Now that the Imperial guarantee had faded away, capital was needed more
than contractors. The Brasseys promised both, offering, if given the
contract, to organize a company in England which would provide all the
capital not guaranteed by the province.

This seductive offer was to prove the main cause of the financial
embarrassment of the Grand Trunk. It involved at the outset a dubious
connection between company and contractor, and also for two generations
an attempt to manage a great railway at a range of three thousand
miles. So fatal did it prove that in later years each party to it
endeavoured to throw the responsibility for the initiative on the
other, and enemies of Hincks declared that he, as well as Lord Elgin,
the governor-general, had been bribed to wreck the negotiations with
the British government {73} in order to take up with Brassey. Whether
or not Hincks was first to resume negotiations in London, it was the
contractors who had already taken the initiative in America, sending a
representative to Toronto, and taking part in the elections of 1851 in
Nova Scotia against Howe. It is clear also that the British government
was unwilling to consider anything but the unacceptable Major Robinson
line. Hincks was justified in looking elsewhere for capital, but he
was not justified in binding himself to one firm of contractors