Volume 10 - Section V - ElectricCanadian.com

408
NATIONAL HIGHWAYS OVERLAND
framers of prospectuses were attracting capital. Robert
Stephenson, who visited Canada in 1853, said that he believed
that the Grand Trunk offered the certainty of a great traffic.
The Grand Trunk, in anticipating eleven and a half per cent
of a return, was not alone in its expectations of high dividends
on Canadian railway enterprises. In 1847 the Great Western
had been of opinion that it would earn fifteen per cent. Its
optimism increased with years. In 1853 Mr Laing, the chair
man of the railway, hinted at a dividend of twenty per cent.
So great was the confidence in the Grand Trunk, and so
auspicious were the conditions under which the scheme was
launched, that when the first half of the stock was placed on
the market it was oversubscribed, and quotations were made
at two per cent premium.
Such was the enthusiasm for railway construction that
Sir Allan MacNab, who came into office as prime minister in
the MacNab-Morin ministry in 1854, said his platform was
railways. The money which railway building added to circu
lation engendered a speculative development. Between 1853
and 1857 the amount of 15,000,000 currency was expended
in the country. There was active land speculation along the
lines of the Grand Trunk and the Great Western in the
western peninsula. Towns and villages were projected. At
auction sales building lots were sold at prices which fostered
the hope of speculative profit. Speculation in town sites
was the same then as now.
The promoters saw in railway charters a ready way to
sudden wealth. Charters, not railways, were desired by them.
Contests between the Grand Trunk and the Great Western
lined the legislators up as partisans of one or other road ; and
the suspicion of partiality and corruption in the granting of
railway charters was one of the reasons behind the movement
in 1855 f r a general railway law analogous to that of New
York State. The modern devices of lobbying and all the
illicit acts thereto pertaining existed in full force at this early
time. It was asserted that some members of the government
stood in a suspiciously close relationship to the railways.
Hincks was assailed ; it was stated that 50,000 of Grand
Trunk stock stood in his name on the books of the company