The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-14 00:00:00

extent of such additional markets as 750,000 custo-
that they would receive only a fixed sum of 2 per
mers might afford—a number inferior to that of the
cent. per annum, or £40,000 a year, which he con,
sidered was a very foolish bargain. population of New York city alone.
The CHAIRMAN said the matter ha 1 been very " Whether from poverty, lack of public spirit, or
fully discussed at a former meeting of the company ignorance, Canada lags behind in the race of im-
before the agreement was entered into, and whether provement, and allows Massachusetts and New York
it was right or wrong it was now too late to corn- to divert from the natural channel of the St. Law-
plain of it. re:nee the immense and yearly-increasing trade of the
Major-General STUDD said that the statements states that border on the great lakes. The St. Law-
made at the Antwerp and Rotterdam Railway meet- Kenee and Welland Canals, which up to the year 1862
ing that the latter and the Est Belge would receive had cost the sum of $15,000,000, are not wide
£177,120 before the Sambre and Meuse portion, enough for the traffic that New York diverts to the
would increase beyond £40,000 a year, he thought Hudson River through the Erie Canal, and yield no
they would never get anything more than 2 per cent. revenue, although the public accounts, from the im-
per annum. perfect arrangement of the tables,would seem to indi-

Mr. HOTES said there was an apparent discrepancy
in the statements of the two companies, but he did
not consider it serious, as the Sambre and Meuse
would have a right to participate in surplus profits
beyond a certain amount, and as they worked rail-
ways cheaper in Belgium than in England, they had
reason to expect there would be a surplus in which
they would participate. He then asked for ex-
planations as to the sinking fund, and expressed an
opinion that the directors should give them more
information as to the Great Central of Belgium
Company.
The CHAIRMAN explained that the Great Central
of Belgium Company was originally intended to
amalgamate the Antwerp and Rotterdam, the Est
Beige, and the Sambre and Meuse companies ; but
the Belgian Government. refused to sanction the
fusion, and determined that each company should
be bound to stand on its own basis, so that until
the Great Central of Belgium Company possessed
property of their own, there was some difficulty as
to its legal existence. The difficulty would, no
doubt, be got over, but at present it was necessary
to provide additional rolling stock. With regard
to the redemption of the bonds the full interest of
£7,000 a year was continued to be paid, and £250 a
year for redemption, so that at the end of about 50
years the principal and interest of those bonds would
be entirely paid off. After some further explana-
tions,
Mr. HOYES expressed himself perfectly satisfied,
especially as the Chairman did not agree in the
statements made at the Antwerp and Rotterdam
meeting with respect to the operation of the agree-
ment made with the Sambre and Meuse Company.
Mr. AUSTIN, a director, stated that the board had
made the best terms they could with the Great.
Central Company, and he had no doubt they would
in a very few years participate in surplus profits
contemplated.
The CHAIRMAN believed that the estimate of traffic
upon which the agreement was founded would be
very soon realised.
The report was unanimously adopted, the dividend
was recommended to the general meeting for ap-
proval, and also the re-election of Mr. Austin and
Mr. Taylor, the retiring directors.
The proceedings concluded with a vote of thanks
to the chairman.

cate that some small sum is received over and above
the expenses. This deficiency is in striking contrast
with the great canal system of the State of New
York in connexion with the grain growing and ex-
porting West, which in 1862 showed a gross profit
of $5,000,000. The State of New York is con-
tinually improving its canals,:while Canada remains
content to do nothing. During the past 10 years
the New York canals have been deepened and en-
larged so :as to admit barges of 210 tons, where
barges of 84 tons only could previously navigate, an
improvement which has so reduced the rate of
freights in conjunction with the lower freights from
New York to Europe that it costs less to transport
a cargo of flour from Chicago to Liverpool via the
Hudson than it costs to transport it through the
Lakes and the St. Lawrence, via Montreal and
Quebec. Some improvements have, it is true, been
made in the St. Lawrence Canals, but these are of
no avail as long as the Welland Canal—the key of
the whole navigation—is left with locks of only 26ft.
6in. in width. The consequence of this all but culp-
able inertia—which is never :sought to be justified
by anybody, except on the plea of poverty—has
been that the St. Lawrence only receives about nine
per cent. of the immense corn and provision trade
that bursts rather than flows into New York and
Boston—partly for the supply of the wealthy eastern
States of the Union, and partly for the supply of
Europe. The New York system of canals has re-
ceived its utmost development. It is impossible to
widen or deepen them any more, or by any outlay,
however prodigal, to enable a sea-going vessel
to sail from Oswego or Buffalo to Europe by
way of the Hudson River. The Erie Canal has
an enormous traffic, and although immense quan-
tities of provision and flour positively rot in
the granaries of the West for want of tran-
sportation, or are burnt for fuel in default of
other means of making them of utility, the Erie
Canal has no means of providing additional trans-
port. Yet the St. Lawrence route, which, if the
canals were enlarged, could convey the whole quan-
tity were it doubled or trebled, languishes for want
of traffic. The trade of the Lakes, for which Canada
from her admirable position ought to have played,
has thus passed into the hands of a foreign rival, by
no means so well placed by nature to secure it, and
is for the present lost, and may never be regained.
In losing it the many expensive though insufficient
works which she constructed, with the fatal omis-
sion to make them continuous, remain in Canadian
hands, worse than unproductive, because they not
only yield, no returns, but cost large sams to pre-
vent them from falling into disrepair. Had the
Welland Canal been doubled in width, and deepened
to a little more than half the capacity of the channel
through hake St. Peter, which admits ocean vessels
drawing 20 feet of water to come direct to the
wharves of Montreal, the St. Lawrence route would
have been superior to that of the Erie Canal, inas-
much as vessels of 800 tons (and not of 210 only)
could have proceeded from _ Chicago, Oswego, and
other Lake ports direct to the ocean without trans-
shipment. Although these improvements and many
others have been urged by the Canadian depart-
ment of Public Works in every report it has made
since 1848, as well as by Mr. Young, both as a
Minister and a private citizen, and by some of the
most eminent merchants of the country, yet nothing
effectual has been done. The plea always put for-
ward has been want of funds. Yet, although six or
eight millions of dollars—at-44a e utmost would have
sufficed—there has been ro great difficulty in pro-
curing or becoming indebted for, at least half the
amount for the useless Parliamentary and other
public buildings at Ottawa. Even the purchase of
the North-Western territory from the Hudson's
Bay Company, for five millions of dollars, utterly
unnecessary as the purchase is, has failed to alarm
the Administration, and it has recommended it to
the Canadian peopie with the sanction of the
Crown."
In these statements are epitomised the opinions,
not only of many gentlemen engaged in the western
trade, but of many non-traders who recognise its
importance. The conclusion these gentlemen draw
from these facts and arguments is, that if Canada
formed a part of the American Union, American
capital and enterprise would undertake for the,eftnsi
system of the lakes and the St. Lawrence that which
Canadian capital is insufficient to perform, and to
which British capital is not and will not be attracted
so long as the forcible annexation of Canada to the
United States is one of the possibilities of a not very
remote future. " I know," said one of them, whose
loyalty to the British Crown would not be suspected
if I were at liberty to mention his name, that it is
not agreeable to the majority of the Canadian people
to believe that, for weal or woe, the progress and
well-being of Canada are far more intimately linked
with the United States than with the mother country.
But.as you have asked for my opinion I give it un-
reservedly. Canada is now a source of weakness to
England; and situated as Canada is on this conti-
nent, exposed to the calamities of war, should any
difference unfortunately arise between Great Britain
and America, England is also a source of weakness
to Canada. The Canadians ought to have more
pride as a people than to continue a relationship to
Great Britain which Great Britain does not greatly
prize, if it prizes at all. They ought also to have
more self-reliance than to continue to walk on the
crutches supplied by the mother country, rather
than use the limbs which nature has given them.
There is no antagonism to Great Britain, or any
ill feeling towards her, in my mind, or I think in
that of any Canadian. Our fault is that we love
England too well, or rather, I should say, that we
love her too selfishly, and have not the true manli-
ness to look our true destiny fairly in the face. If
Confederation lead to independence, I am in its
favour ; if it lead to incorporation with the States,
lam also in its favour. At the same time I be-
lieve that Confederation cannot be carried out, and
that when annexation comes it will be in the shape
of a gradual absorption of the Provinces one at a
time—Canada first, and the maritime Provinces at
a later period."
I have thought it right to reproduce these opi-
nions in order that I might present to your readers
the views of a minority of English speaking colo-
nists and natives of the Provinces, who look upon
the question of Confederation in the light of their
material interests, real or supposed, and who, with
the true cosmopolitanism of the mercantile charac-
ter, are not much affected by so local a sentiment
as patriotism. If they love England much, they
love wealth and their adopted country still more.
At the same time it is necessary to state that they
know themselves to be on the unpopular side, and
rarely give expression to their sentiments, except in
the confidence of business or friendship. Public
opinion; divided as it is on the mere question of
Confederation, runs strongly in favour of the British
connection, and annexation to the States is not
mentioned in public life or in the newspapers, ex-
cept to be denounced as folly, at the best, and as
treeason at the worst. So far as I have seen, only
two newspapers, and those of no particular note,
one published in London, Canada West, and the
the other at St. Catherine's, have ventured to re-
commend it.
The subject of canal improvement promises to
occupy for the future a much larger space in Cana-
dian politics than has hitherto been accorded to it.
The present Ministry and the Opposition are alike
in its favour, provided always that the money for
the purpose can be raised by public loan or by pri-
vate speculation. On Thursday last Mr. Holton,
late Minister of Finance, who while in office was as
supire as his predecessors and successors, moved an
amendment, on going into committee of supply, in
favour of the immediate eiplargement of the Wel-
land and the St. Lawrence Canals, as a means of

MANCHESTER, SHEFFIELD, AND LINCOLNSHIRE.
It appears that the contract for the construction
of this company's new direct line from Manchester
to Liverpool, authorised in the past session of Par-
liament, has been let to Messrs. Brassey, and that
the works are to be vigorously prosecuted until com-
pleted throughout.

The British American Provinces.

-----o---.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
MONTREAL, Aug. 28.
In my previous letters from this city, the true
metropolis of Canada, as well as from Quebec,
Ottawa, and Three Rivers, I have recorded my con-
viction, the result of extensive intercourse ;with all
classes of men, that the bulk of the people, both
English and French, Protestant and Roman Catholic,
are not so much hostile to the Confederation of
the Provinces as profoundly indifferent. I have
furthermore found reason to believe that this indif-
ference would speedily give place to earnest and
systematic opposition, if the majority were once per-
suaded, as some few already are, that Confederation
was sought for Imperial, and not for Colonial pin--
poses, and that Great Britain was not prepared to
pay the whole, or even the greater part, of the costs
and charges of the change. To Confederation per
se, there appears to be little dislike—no more than
the instinct of Conservatism usually applies to all
efforts at innovation that are not the results of an
imperative and overpowering necessity; but to Con-
federation, accompanied by any considerable in-
crease of the burdens of taxation, there is a strong
repugnance among all the non-politicians of the
country. If there be one thing more than another
that characterises both the great sections of the
Canadian people, and more particularly the French
of the Lower Province, it is their unpatriotic objec-
tion to pay the legitimate costs of the great liberties
they enjoy.
.These may be strong epithets, but they
are no stronger than the truth, as many Canadians,
both politicians and non-politicians, are willing to
admit when the question of Confederation is fairly
argued. The politicians in office, and many who
are out of office, are exceedingly loyal. As the
phrase goes, they are " more loyal than the Queen,"
and are quite willing to make the people pay for
loyalty as they would for any other luxury. But
the people themselves, loyal 'because loyalty is the
fashion, are not desirous of any such change in the
working of the sentiment as would entail much
pecuniary outlay, present or prospective. Among
a smaller class, well affected to the British connec-
tion, thankful for the liberties they enjoy at a smaller
cost than any other civilised people in either hemi-
sphere, and averse from change of any kind, there
is a vague feeling, only expressed in private inter-
course, that whether the British provinces remain as
they are, or whether they confederate, as the govern-
ing party desires, and as the British Government
recommends, the inevitable result is annexation to
the United States. The result, though not in itself
what they would prefer, has no terrors in their eyes;
for though it might be accompanied by participation
in the public debt of the great country of which
Canada would become one of the constituent mem-
bers, it would also be accompanied by a partnership
in the immense resources of the Union, and freedom
from the incubus that now weighs upon Canadian
energy and enterprise, in the shape of a constant
liability to be involved in hostilities with the Federal
Government, not in consequence of any fault com-
mitted or offence given by Canada, but on account
of it forming a part of the British Empire. Among
the arguments used by this class of men, some of
them Canadian born, some of them settlers of a
quarter of a century's standing, many of them largely
engaged in the trade, manufactiire, or agriculture of
the province, and a large portion of them accustomed
to think for themselves, irrespective of the party po-
litics, with which they refuse to have any concern,
commercial considerations take a leadingpart. They
urge " That the general indebtedness of the Govern-
ment is on the increase; that the expense of the Vo-
lunteer force, small as it comparatively was, amounted
on the Ist July last to $750,000, a large sum in a
budget that does not contrive to equalise income
and expenditure; and that the various canals and
public works both of Upper and Lower Canada are
BO unsuited to the requirements of trade as scarcely
to defray
the existinthgetealt
'varying
management. They add that
between a duty of 10
t 025 and 30 per cent. upon British manufactures,
cannot be increased for purposes of revenue without
letting in the smuggler, givinc, an unwholesome bias
to the native manufacturer, and otherwise defeating
its own purpose. That Stamp and Excise Duties, re-
lied upon to supply the deficiency of revenue, how-
ever productive they may be, cannot contribute very
largely to the public necessities, when levied among
a population of no more than 2,500,000, the majo-
rity of whom are self-sustaining agriculturists, whose
commercial transactions are few and simple. That
the repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty, determined by
the Federal Government for spite, and for no nobler
reason, but which that Government has a perfect
.
right to abrogate without any reason at all, will soon I
be felt in the diminished value of all Canadian com-
modities which are not dependent for their price on
that which prevails in the British markets. That
Confederation, provided New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia were willing, might alleviate some of these
evils. by fuilitating future and expanding present
trade with the Maritime Provinces, but only to the

inducing the Federal Government to consent to the
renewal of the Reciprocity Treaty. The Ministry
opposed the motion, firstly, on the ground that it
amounted to a vote of want of confidence; secondly,
that it was useless to agree to the principle without
providing money to carry it into effect ; and thirdly,
that the renewal of the Reciprocity Treaty ought
to precede the proposed canal enlargement of which
it would be the best stimulant. These arguments
prevailed, and Mr. Holton's motion was defeated by
a majority of 78 against 20. The question is as
interesting to the people of England as it is to the
Canadians and Americans. With a cattle disease in
Europe, and beef rising in price throughout the
British Isles, it becomes a matter of international
concern that hundreds of thousands of barrels of pork,
as well as of flour, should not annually be allowed to
rot, or be wasted in lowa, Indiana, and Illinois, for
want of the means of transport, which the New
York canals, blocked up by a plethora of business,
are unable to afford, and which those of the St.
Lawrence are unfit to accommodate in default of an
essential and not very costly enlargement. Confe-
derated or unconfederated Canada and the Maritime
Provinces will never assume their proper commercial
position in the world, until they are able to take pro-
per advantage of the splendid waterway of the St.
Lawrence, and of their contiguity to the richest food-
producing States of the American continent. It is
well, no doubt, to throw open to the immigration
of Europe the vast arable lands on the Red River
and the Saskatchewan, and to extend the frontier of
Canada to the bases of the Rocky Mountains ; but
as Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia are
not one-third or one-fifth peopled, it would seem as
if enterprise had a nearer and better field for its
display than the north-western territory, and that
it would be much more advantageous, especially for
Canada, to develope her canal system than to pay
$5,000,000 to the Hudson's Bay Company for a
barren acquisition that would merely enlarge her
boundaries without incrasing her resources.

RICHARDSON'S CLARISSA HARLOWE,

Reviewed—a Century after its Publication—
by " The Spectator,"
It is almost as much a change of air to turn from the
lively rattle of our railway novels to the solemn coach-
and-six of Richardson's full-dress genius, as to exchange
London for the old towns of Germany, where the outside
dress of the middle ages still abides, oven within hearing
of the express trains. What a gulf, for example, between
Richardson and Mr. Trollope ! And the difference is not
exactly in the rate of their own movement as authors, for
Mr. Trollope is tranquil and minute enough, and on proper
occasion Richardson can be as lively and effervescent as
any novelist of any day. The difference is in the move-
ment of the world which they describe. A • hundred
modern interests ripple the mind of
.to-day for every
one that swept across that of Richardson's day,
and hence he studied the breaking of a single
wave with as much care and art as a modern
artist would give to a whole storm at sea.
Richardson made men and angels lay aside their proper con-
cerns—almost brought the whole world to a standstill—to
gaze on the trial of one woman's virtue. Every one whom
he introduces, he introduces only with relation to this one
purpose. Clarissa's own family have their meaning only in
Clarissa. They live but to persecute her into dangers from
which she cannot escape, and to mourn over their own life
as a wreck when their stupidity and obstinacy have borne
their natural fruits. Lovelace, superior as he is as a dra-
matic creation to Clarissa and every other character, exists
only to tempt and betray her; Miss Howe only to receive
her confidences and sustain her by her sympathy ;
Belford but to show what was her persuasive power
over a dissolute heart. Enormous as are the
proportions of the narrative, one centred more completely
in one figure, and almost in one attitude of that figure, is
nowhere else to be found. The long eight volumes in which
it was formerly published are Wholly occupied with an ac-
count, the full size of life,- of every incident which contri-
buted to or impeded and delayed the denouement. While
Mr. Trollope travels rapidly and lightly over hundreds of
little incidents which are almost independent of each other,
and related only as illustrating the various characters he
has brought together in his tales, Richardson accompanies
slowly in his state coach the slow march of the single
temptation with which he occupies his story. No doubt
there are very few oven of modern writers who travel over
so much ground of miscellaneous incident as Mr. Trollope,
but even those who adhere most closely to the develop-
ment of a single story take care to give a constantly
changing attitude to the principal actors in relation to it ;
they do not magnify a single moral attitude with Richard-
/3011'0 magnificent pertinacity and 'Welt/at:Uri° minutonover
till they have exhausted its significance and sculptured it,
as it were, in solid marble; rather :do they give a series of
successive sketches of the same characters in different
aspects. As we have implied, much of this fixity of man-
ner may be due to the time. In that less busy age, the
leisurely classes made a great deal more of one purpose
than wo do of many, and hence the characters them-
selves were less mobile than now, fell into stiffer moulds,
brooded more over a few subjects, and made more solemn
and elaborate preparations for given effects. But still if a
Richardson would be more surprising than ever in the pre-
sent age, ho was a curious literary phenomenon even then,
almost as strong a contrast to Fielding as to our modern
writers. His imagination was microscopic, and required as
definite a focus to its object-glass as a microscope. If any
family nowadays could by any chance devote the time to
breaking in a refractory girl to a disagreeable alliance
which the Harlowes devoted to attempting to force Mr.
Sohnes on Clarissa, certainly no other artist could repro-
duce those tedious months with the patient exactitude of
Richardson. Precisely three months given up to family
councils, voluminous letters, interviews, negotiation, diplo-
macy, protests, protocols, threats of war, and this only the
introduction to the real story ! The first two volumes of
the old edition are like the Schleswig-Holstein blue-books,
only that Mr. James Harlowe, jun., was much more peremp-
tory than Lord Russell. And this is all prelude. Clarissa
does not take up the attitude in which Richardson really
designs co sculpture her till after her flight from home,
till after the rash step when, as she pathetically wails in
her letter to Miss Howe, "your Clarissa is gone off with a
man." Then, the delicate but respectful inflexibility with
which she has resisted the mixed prayers and bullyings of
the family league, is changed into an equally keen
but more proud and suspicious resistance to Lovelace's
gay frauds and deep-scheming passion. Yet even in the
introduction she is thrown into the attitude which Richard-
son thought the most characteristic of feminine purity,—
one of perpetual guard against masculine encroachments;
but while the earlier struggle is a mere test of pertinacity
under almost brutal pressure, the engagement with Love-
lace is one which calls for subtlety, skill, vigilance, and
the courage of despair.
It is easy to criticise Richardson's conception of a para-
gon of feminine excellence in Clarissa. Her notion of purity
is clearly legal, her humility is far from genuine ; she is
evidently as conscious as her biographer that she is a
spectacle for angels and for men, and her demure saintship
when she devotes herself with almost the relish of an epi -
cure to dying in the way that may heap the most glowing
coals of fire on her persecutors' heads, though never
without a certain transparent beauty and sweetness, is still
full of didactic triumph. Then, in spite of the real sweet-
ness, there is a drop of feminine venom, of which
Richardson himself is scarcely aware, at the bottom of
Clarissa's character from beginning to end. In her very
first letter, before her sister Arabella has begun her ma-
lignities, Clarissa dissects the vanities and radical
vulgarity of her sister's mind to her friend
Miss Howe with the most unflinching hand. And
at the very last, though she professes to have forgiven all
her enemies, she launches little poisoned arrows at them in
her pious will and farewell letters which render the title so
often applied to her of " divine lady" not a little amusing.
This, for instance, is the red hot coal she bequeaths to
her sister's maid, Betty, who harassed her much through
the preliminary home persecution:—" To my sister's maid,
Betty Barnes, I bequeath £lO, to show that I resent not
former disobligations, which I believe were owing more to
the insolence of office and to natural pertness than to per-
sonal ill-will." That is a pretty effectual retaliation for a
saint to launch at a waiting maid from the tomb. Towards
her betrayer, Lovelace, of course something of natural
horror might fairly be mingled with her Christian forgive-
ness, but the actual state of her mind seems to us to have
in it more of lingering spite and less of Christian forgive-
ness or profound pity than the author wished to delineate.
The nice little dramatic scene in which she intends her
own corpse shall play the most impressive parts, looks to
us rather more like feminine revenge than it seemed to
Clarissa's admirers :—" I could wish, if it might be
avoided without making between Mr. Lovelace
and my executor, that the former might not bo permitted
to see my corpse. But if, as he is a man very uncontrol-
lable, and I am nobody's, he insist upon viewing her
dead whom he ONCE before saw in a manner
dead, let his gay curiosity be gratified. Let him behold,
and triumph over the wretched remains of one who has
been made a victim to his barbarous perfidy, but let some
good person, as by my
desire, give him a paper while he is
viewing the ghastly spectacle, containing these few words
only—' Gay, cruel heart !' Behold hero the remains of the
once ruined yet now happy Clarissa Harlowe ! See what
thou thyself must quickly be, and REPENT.!' Yet to show
that I die in perfect charity with all the world, I do most
sincerely forgive Mr. Lovelace the wrongs he has done
me." That is, she forgives him in the sense of reserving
to herself the complete monopoly of wounding him by
verbal taunts and stings, posthumous or otherwise.
That privilege,
even though it require little theatric
arrangements over her coffin, she cannot give up.
But all this is only criticism on Richardson's conception of
feminine perfection, not on the picture of Clarissa, which is
studied with absolute 'consistency and wonderful nicety