Part 7 (2/2)

The contract then pa.s.sed on to deal with the service of mail steamers.

Under this head eight steamers for various services were to be provided by the contractor, and by him manned and equipped. In consideration therefor the Government undertook to pay subsidies upon an agreed scale. The docks were next disposed of. Under this head the Government agreed to sell to the contractor the St. John's Dry Dock for 325,000 dollars. The next available a.s.set was the telegraph service. Here the agreement provided that the contractor should a.s.sume responsibility for all telegraph lines until 1904, in return for an annual subsidy of 10,000 dollars, and after 1904, until the period of fifty years was completed, should maintain them free of any charge to the colony by way of subsidy or otherwise.

By a later section of the draft contract it was provided that the contractor should not a.s.sign or sublet the contract, or any part or portion thereof, to any person or corporation whomsoever without the consent of the Government. The language of this prohibition is curiously general, and is indeed sufficient in its terms to prohibit a.s.signments _mortis causa_, as well as those _inter vivos_. Such a result can hardly have been contemplated.

By the last section it was recorded that ”the Government undertake to enact all such legislation as may be necessary to give full effect to the contract and the several clauses and provisions thereof, according to the spirit and intent thereof, and also such as may be necessary to facilitate and enforce the collection and payment of fares and rates, the preservation of order and discipline in the trains and stations, and generally to give to the contractor all such powers, rights, and privileges as are usually conferred upon or granted to railways and railway companies for the purposes of their business.”

Such, in barest outline, was the proposal of which Mr Chamberlain was informed by Governor Murray. It certainly involved a sacrifice incalculably grave of the colony's prospects, but those who brought it forward no doubt reflected on the truism that he who has expectations, but neither a.s.sets nor credit, must reinforce the latter by drawing in some degree upon the former. In fact, it seems to have been doubtful whether, at the time, the colony could by any device meet its obligations as they became due. The force of these observations must be frankly conceded; but it may still be doubted whether a less desperate remedy was not within the grasp of resourceful statesmans.h.i.+p. In his first telegram, sent on March 2nd, 1898, Mr Chamberlain called attention to the more apparent objections:

”The future of the colony will be placed entirely in the hands of the contractor by the railway contract, which appears highly improvident.

As there seems to be no penalty provided for failure to operate the railways, the contract is essentially the sale of a million and a quarter acres for a million dollars.”

From the legal point of view the contract was a very singular one. The Government of Newfoundland, in fact, a.s.sumed to bind its successors by a partial abdication of sovereign power. Yet the same capacity which enabled the then Government to bind itself would equally and evidently inhere in its successors to revoke the obligation. Those who are struck by the conscientious obligation which the then Government could no doubt bequeath, may ask themselves how long a democratically governed country would tolerate corruption or inept.i.tude in the public service on the ground that the monopolist worker of them had inherited a franchise from an ancestor who had known how to exploit the public necessities. The virtual expropriation of the Irish landlords, which was in progress in the United Kingdom, may have been right or it may have been wrong; it is at least a far more startling interference with vested interest than would be the resumption by a State of control over heedlessly aliened public services.

Whatever be the force of these observations, the disadvantages of the Newfoundland Government's specific proposals were patent enough. Nor were they unperceived in the colony, and in particular by the enemies of the Ministry. The islanders stopped fis.h.i.+ng and took to pet.i.tions.

These were numerous and lengthy, and it is only proposed to consider here the pet.i.tion which was sent by dissentient members of the House of a.s.sembly, containing a formidable indictment of the proposed agreement. The objections brought forward may be briefly summarized:

1. The electors were never consulted.

2. The Bill was an absolute conveyance in fee simple of all the railways, the docks, telegraph lines, mineral, timber, and agricultural lands of the colony, and virtually disposed of all the a.s.sets, representing a funded debt of 17,000,000 dollars, for 280,000.

3. While the Bill conveyed large and valuable mineral, agricultural, and timber areas, amounting, with former concessions, to four million acres, it made no provision for the development of these lands.

4. The conveyance embraced the whole Government telegraph system of the colony.

5. It included a monopoly for the next thirty years of the coastal carrying trade.

6. It included the sale of the dry dock, and the granting, without consideration, of valuable waterside property belonging to the Munic.i.p.al Council of St. John's.

On March 23rd Mr Chamberlain answered the representation of Governor Murray, and the profuse pet.i.tions which the latter had forwarded. Both from the general const.i.tutional significance of the reply, and its particular importance in the history of Newfoundland, it is convenient to reproduce the letter in full:

Mr Chamberlain to Governor Sir H.H. Murray.

Downing Street,

March 23rd, 1898.

SIR,--In my telegram of the 2nd instant I informed you that if your Ministers, after fully considering the objections urged to the proposed contract with Mr R.G. Reid for the sale and operation of the Government railways and other purposes, still pressed for your signature to that instrument, you would not be const.i.tutionally justified in refusing to follow their advice, as the responsibility for the measure rested entirely with them.

2. Whatever views I may hold as to the propriety of the contract, it is essentially a question of local finance, and as Her Majesty's Government have no responsibility for the finance of self-governing colonies, it would be improper for them to interfere in such a case unless Imperial interests were directly involved. On these const.i.tutional grounds I was unable to advise you to withhold your a.s.sent to the Bill confirming the contract.

3. I have now received your despatches as noted in the margin, giving full information as to the terms of the contract, and the grounds upon which your Government have supported it, as well as the reasons for which it was opposed by the Leader and some members of the Opposition.

4. I do not propose to enter upon a discussion of the details of the contract, or of the various arguments for and against it, but I cannot refrain from expressing my views as to the serious consequences which may result from this extraordinary measure.

5. Under this contract, and the earlier one of 1893, for the construction of the railway, practically all the Crown lands of any value become, with full rights to all minerals, the freehold property of a single individual: the whole of the railways are transferred to him, the telegraphs, the postal service, and the local sea communications, as well as the property in the dock at St. John's. Such an abdication by a Government of some of its most important functions is without parallel.

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