The railway resolution.

John Sandfield has succeeded in obtaining the sanction of a large majority of the Legislature to the resolutions, published in the last issue, providing for the expenditure of a portion of the surplus in aiding the construction of railways. There can be no objection to the public funds being used to assist in building Railways, which will open up our new territory to settlement, or in any other way which may tend to develop the resources and increase the prosperity of the country, but the principle of placing so large a sum of money at the absolute control of the Government of the day is a most dangerous one, and detrimental to the best interests of the country. We need but refer to the history of the Grand Trunk and Intercolonial Railways to prove this. According to the recent acknowledgement of one of the Ministers who acquiesced in it, eight million dollars of the people's money, which had been placed in the hands of the Government by the people's representatives, were "thrown into the sea," in the construction of the latter, simply to meet the necessities of a political part and prevent the Coalition from being broken up. We have little ground to hope for better things from the Patent Combination. The system of bribing members and constituencies by locating public institutions in localities whose representatives were his supports, which Sandfield has followed in the past, leaves little room to doubt that the [illegible—$4,500,000] which the Legislature placed at his disposal, will be used as a means of prolonging his lease of power, and that the distribution of it will be made with that primary object. The amendment proposed by Mr. Blake to distribute the surplus among the different counties is as follows:

That all the words after "That" be omitted and the following words substituted therefor, "this house feels bound to express its conviction that the country will have just grounds for dissatisfaction unless some plan is adopted whereby while making all just and necessary provision in aid of railways and other public improvements of Provincial interest in the thinly settled and unprovided districts, a large part of the available surplus should be apportioned according to population, and expended in such as way as each of the counties, cities and separate towns shall as to its own allotment designate, in aid of railways or other permanent improvements affecting the localities, or towards the exemption of municipal objections already contracted for such purposes; due precaution being taken for the proper application of the money, and provisions being made that the allotment to any municipality indebted to the Municipal Loan Fund should be applied on equitable terms towards the satisfaction of what may be found due by the municipality or an adjustment of the Municipal Loan Fund indebtedness."

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