h, now so unworthily held by the Hudson's Bay Company. Who cannot
see that Providence has entrusted to us the building up of a great
northern people, fit to cope with our neighbours of the United States,
and to advance step by step with them in the march of civilization?
Sir, it is my fervent aspiration and belief that some here to-night
may live to see the day when the British American flag shall proudly
wave from Labrador to Vancouver Island and from our own Niagara to the
shores of Hudson Bay. Look abroad over the world and tell me what
country possesses the advantages, if she but uses them aright, for
achieving such a future, as Canada enjoys--a fertile soil, a healthful
climate, a hardy and frugal people, with great mineral resources,
noble rivers, boundless forests. We have within our grasp all the
elements of prosperity. We are free from the thousand time-honoured
evils and abuses that afflict and retard the nations of the Old World.
Not even our neighbours of the United States occupy an equal position
of advantage, for we have not the canker-worm of domestic slavery to
blight our tree of liberty. And greater than these, we are but
commencing our career as a people, our institutions have yet to be
established. We are free to look abroad over the earth and study the
lessons of wisdom taught by the history of older countries, and choose
those systems and those laws and customs that experience has shown
best for advancing the moral and material interests of the human
family."[20]

As a member of the coalition of 1864, Brown had an opportunity to
promote his long-cherished object of adding the North-West Territories
to Canada. There had been some communication between the British and
Canadian governments, and in November 1864, the latter government said
that Canada was anxious to secure the settlement of the West and the
establishment of local governments. As the Hudson's Bay Company worked
under an English charter, it was for that government to extinguish its
rights and give Canada a clear title. Canada would then annex, govern
and open up communication with the territory. When Brown accompanied
Macdonald, Cartier and Galt to England in 1865, this matter was taken
up, and an agreement was arrived at which was reported to the Canadian
legislature in the second session of 1865. The committee said that
calling to mind the vital importance to Canada of having that great
and fertile country open to Canadian enterprise an