The Tunnel
On the part of the province it is but right to say that at no time were the attempts of the General Government accepted as adequate; and that, time and again, protests were sent to Ottawa and claims made upon it for non-impletion of terms. In 1881 a Joint Address of the House here was sent to the Governor General on the subject; in 1883 a Minute of Council was passed declaring that nothing adequate had been done to improve our condition and calling for immediate relief; in 1884 another Joint Address was sent forward and with it a claim for $5,000,000 damages; in 1885 another Minute of Council on the same subject went forward, and later, a Joint Address of both Houses was transmitted to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, stating that, although assured continuous communication by the Terms of Union, the province was still dependent for months at a time upon the rude modes of our fathers, to the great hardship of the people; and praying that the matter be taken into her most gracious consideration. In 1886 a delegation from the Island Executive went to Downing Street, and Earl Granville, Colonial Secretary, remonstrated with Ottawa and suggested the necessity for another means of securing to the Island uninterrupted communication. In 1901 damages to the amount of a million of dollars were allowed to the province and thus its claim to that date satisfied. At this moment another Joint Address is before the Federal authorities.
But just imagine the hardship and loss to the people, the paralysis of trade, the deadening effect on agriculture and the fisheries, inflicted by a complete tie-up such as we have just come through, when for some 60 days we were shut out from the mainland, unable to get a pound of freight and only receiving letters at irregular intervals, by the little, frail, ice-boat sledges, over the floes, at the Capes! Indeed, not even the letters were available, not even the registered ones, as one mailed at Stanstead on Feb. 7th and received at Alberton, on March 21st proves. The sick and the dead were held up, at the ports of departure, and the poor learned more of misery than could be gleaned in a lifetime elsewhere. Four hundred carloads of freight blocked the Intercolonial railway for miles and miles, and the hay purchased in Quebec, to relieve the cattle distress, could not be had by any effort man is capable of making. The business interests involved suffered immensely goods could not be delivered; drafts were dishonored; orders were cancelled; many firms were forced into liquidation.
It is not wonderful, then, that the people, menaced in their very lives, took the drastic course of calling a popular convention together, which protested in the strongest manner against the course, up to the present, pursued by the Dominion; pointed out how the Terms of Confedera-
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