Canada and the States | Page 6

appeared to me a very haughty manner. I therefore felt bound
to defend my chief, and I took up the quarrel. In a note addressed from
the Library of the House of Commons, I asked for an interview, which
was somewhat stiffly granted. This was the note which led to our
interview:--
"CLUMBER, "1 Decr. 1856.
"MY DEAR YARBOROUGH,
"Instead of placing the enclosed extraordinary production in the hands
of my Solicitor, I think it best, in the first instance, to send it to you as
Chairman of the M. S. & L. Railway, because I cannot believe that
either its tone or its substance can have been authorized by the
Directors.
"I am sorry to say this is not the first piece of impertinence which I
have had to complain of in reference to the damage done to my woods
by the engines of the Company, and neither Mr. Foljambe nor I have
had any encouragement to treat the matter in the amicable spirit which
we were anxious to evince.
"The demands now made by the aggressors upon the party aggrieved is
simply preposterous, and, of course, will be treated as it deserves. We
shall next have the Company, or rather, as I hope and believe, the
Company's Solicitors, demanding us to cut all our corn within 100
yards of the line before it becomes ripe, and consequently inflammable.
"Your Solicitor knows perfectly well that the Company is by law liable
for damage done to woods; and, moreover, that such damage is
preventible by proper care on the part of its servants.
"I think the Directors ought to order their Solicitor to write to me and
others, to whom so impertinent a letter has been addressed, and beg to
withdraw it, with an apology for having sent it.
"I am sorry to trouble you with this matter, because I feel that you
ought not to be troubled with business in your present state of health;
but as you are still the Chairman, I could not with propriety write to
any other person.
"I am, my dear Yarborough, "Yours very sincerely, "NEWCASTLE.
"THE EARL OF YARBOROUGH, &c., &c."
Accordingly, I went to the mansion in Portman Square. I waited some
time; but at last in stalked the Duke, looking very awful indeed--so
stern and severe--that I could not help smiling, and saying--"The burnt

coppice, your Grace." Upon this he laughed, held out his hand, placed
me beside him, and we had a very long discussion, not about the fire,
but about the colliery he, then, was sinking--against the advice of many
of his friends in Sheffield--at Shireoaks; and when he had done with
that, we talked, once more, about Canada, the United States, and the
Colonies generally.
After this date, I had to see the Duke on business, more and more
frequently. The year after the Duke's return from Canada, in 1861, he
happened to read an article I had written in a London paper, hereafter
given, about opening up the Northern Continent of America by a
Railway across to the Pacific, and he spoke of it as embodying the
views which he had before expressed, as his own.
In 1854 Mr. Glyn and Mr. Thomas Baring had urged me to undertake a
mission to Canada on the business of the Grand Trunk Railway, which
mission I had been compelled to decline; and when, in 1860-1, the
affairs of that undertaking became dreadfully entangled, the Committee
of Shareholders, who reported upon its affairs, invited me to accept the
post of "Superintending Commissioner," with full powers. They desired
me to take charge of such legislative and other measures as might
retrieve the Company's disasters, so far as that might be possible.
Before complying with this proposal, I consulted the Duke, and it was
mainly under the influence of his warm concurrence that I accepted the
mission offered to me. I accepted it in the hope of being able, not
merely to serve the objects of the Shareholders of the Grand Trunk, but
that at the same time I might be somewhat useful in aiding those
measures of physical union contemplated when the Grand Trunk
Railway was projected, and which must precede any confederation of
interests, such as that happily crowned in 1867 by the creation of the
"Dominion of Canada."
I find that my general views were, some time before, epitomized in the
following letter. It is true that Mr. Baring, then President of the Grand
Trunk, did not, at first, accept my views; but he and Mr. Glyn (the late
Lord Wolverton) co-operated afterwards in all ways in the direction
those views indicated.
"NORTHENDEN, "13_th November_, 1860.
"Some years ago Mr. Glyn (I think with the assent of Mr. Baring)
proposed to me to go out to Canada to conduct a