advantages for the people of Upper
Canada, especially of the Kingston district. The Grenville canal on
the Ottawa was the natural continuation of this canal, as it ensured
uninterrupted water communication between Bytown--now the city of
Ottawa--and Montreal.

The heavy public debt contracted by Upper Canada prior to 1840 had
been largely accumulated by the efforts of its people to obtain the
active sympathy and cooperation of the legislature of French Canada,
where Papineau and his followers seemed averse to the development of
British interests in the valley of the St. Lawrence. After the union,
happily for Canada, public men of all parties and races awoke to the
necessity of a vigorous canal policy, and large sums of money were
annually expended to give the shipping of the lakes safe and
continuous navigation to Montreal. At the same time the channel of
Lake St. Peter between Montreal and Quebec was improved by the harbour
commissioners of the former city, aided by the government. Before the
LaFontaine-Baldwin cabinet left office, it was able to see the
complete success of this thoroughly Canadian or national policy. The
improvement of this canal system--now the most magnificent in the
world--has kept pace with the development of the country down to the
present time.

It was mainly, if not entirely, through the influence of Hincks,
finance minister in the government, that a vigorous impulse was given
to railway construction in the province. The first railroad in British
North America was built in 1837 by the enterprise of Montreal
capitalists, from La Prairie on the south side of the St. Lawrence as
far as St. John's on the Richelieu, a distance of only sixteen miles.
The only railroad in Upper Canada for many years was a horse tramway,
opened in 1839 between Queenston and Chippewa by the old portage road
round the falls of Niagara. In 1845 the St. Lawrence and Atlantic
Railway Company--afterwards a portion of the Grand Trunk
Railway--obtained a charter for a line to connect with the Atlantic
and St. Lawrence Railway Company of Portland, in the State of Maine.
The year 1846 saw the commencement of the Lachine Railway. In 1849 the
Great Western, the Northern, and the St. Lawrence and Atlantic
Railways were stimulated by legislation which gave a provincial
guarantee for the construction of lines not less than seventy-five
miles in length. In 1851 Hincks succeeded in passing a measure which
provided for the building