ll, no homestead for their
families {104} to cluster round, no certain provision for their
children.

'A new aspect would be given to all the questions which arise out of
this condition of property at home, if a wise appropriation were made
of the virgin soil of the Empire. Give the Scotchman who has no land a
piece of North America, purchased by the blood which stained the tartan
on the Plains of Abraham. Let the Irishman or the Englishman whose
kindred clubbed their muskets at Bloody Creek, or charged the enemy at
Queenston,[3] have a bit of the land their fathers fought for. Let
them have at least the option of ownership and occupation, and a bridge
to convey them over. Such a policy would be conservative of the rights
of property and permanently relieve the people. It would silence
agrarian complaint and enlarge the number of proprietors.'[4]

To convey such emigrants, to give them work, to find them markets, the
railway was a necessity. To bring them over he urged government
supervised and subsidized steamers, 'the Ocean omnibus.'

{105}

These ideas he developed on his return to Halifax in one of the noblest
of his speeches. 'But, sir, daring as may appear the scope of this
conception, high as the destiny may seem which it discloses for our
children, and boundless as are the fields of honourable labour which it
presents, another, grander in proportions, opens beyond; one which the
imagination of a poet could not exaggerate, but which the statesman may
grasp and realize, even in our own day. Sir, to bind these disjointed
provinces together by iron roads; to give them the homogeneous
character, fixedness of purpose, and elevation of sentiment, which they
so much require, is our first duty. But, after all, they occupy but a
limited portion of that boundless heritage which God and nature have
given to us and to our children. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are but
the frontage of a territory which includes four millions of square
miles, stretching away behind and beyond them to the frozen regions on
the one side and to the Pacific on the other. Of this great section of
the globe, all the northern provinces, including Prince Edward Island
and Newfoundland, occupy but 486,000 square miles. The Hudson's Bay
territory includes 250,000 square miles. Throwing aside the more bleak
{106} and inhospitable regions, we have a magnificent country between
Canada and the Pacific, out of which five or six noble provin