With the control of our public lands in our own hands, we can attract the tide of emigration, retain our own people in the country, and advance in prosperity as rapidly as the other provinces.

The same sort of thing may be looked for in reference to the New Brunswick timber export duty and the Nova Scotia mineral export duty. Here is one form of the cry that may be raised; ” You give these exceptional privileges to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; give them, or some equivalent, to us also.”

Another question on which the hon. member has also called us to account, relates to the export duties on timber and coals. In clause 29, which relates to the powers of the Federal Parliament, the third section reads as follows : This imposition or regulation of duties of customs on imports or exports, except on exports of timber, logs, masts, spars, deals, and sawn lumber from New Brunswick, and of coal and other minerals from Nova Scotia. The fact that this power has been conferred on the Government does not imply that it will be exercised. The power was granted simply because it might be necessary in certain cases mentioned. Now this is the reason for the second part of the clause which I have just read to the House, and which I cannot better explain than by citing some expressions of a speech by the Hon. the Minister of Finance on the subject. Nevertheless, as there are several honorable members in the House who do not understand English, I think it will perhaps be better to explain them in French. Here then was the thought of the Convention : as in New Brunswick the Government had found that it was a great disadvantage to collect the duties on timber according to the system formerly adopted, and they had substituted an export duty which superseded all other dues on that product, it was no more than right that this source of revenue should remain in New Brunswick, to which province it was an object of absolute necessity to defray its local expenses. In Canada we retain, under the new Constitution, our own method of collecting similar duties. As to New Brunswick, the duty on the article in question is their principal revenue, as coal is almost the sole revenue of Nova Scotia ; and if they had been deprived of them, they would have peremptorily refused to join the Confederation. (Hear, hear.) Their demand was perfectly just, and could not therefore be refused. Moreover, we have no right to complain, for they leave us all our mines and our lands, and we shall now, as heretofore, collect the proceeds for our own use and profit. The honorable member for Hochelaga says that it will be impossible to administer the affairs of the local legislatures without having recourse to direct taxation ; but a man of his experience ought not to have made that assertion. Instead of attempting to trade on popular prejudice, he ought to have admitted at once that the right granted by the new Constitution of levying direct taxes, is the same that already exists in the present Constitution ; it is the same right that all our municipalities possess.

This liberal bribe to bring New Brunswick into the union, one would think, was quite enough to satisfy the little province

But, in consideration of this extra allowance, Newfoundland is to cede to the Federal Government her Crown lands and minerals—and assuredly, if the reports of geologists are well founded, this arrangement will be as advantageous to us as it will be to the inhabitants of Newfoundland.

Each province is to have control of its own crown lands, crown timber and crown minerals,—and will be free to take such steps for developing them as each deems best.— (Hear, hear.) We have complained that local works of various kinds—roads, bridges and landing piers, court houses, gaols and other structures—have been erected in an inequitable and improvident manner. Well, sir, this scheme remedies that, all local works are to be constructed by the localities and defrayed from local funds. And so on through the whole extensive details of internal local administration will this reform extend. The people of Upper Canada will have the entire control of their local matters, and will no longer have to betake themselves to Quebec for leave to open a road, to select a county town, or appoint a coroner.