At the time this article was written David Farr was Professor Emeritus of history at Carleton University in Ottawa. He was a former President of the Canadian Historical Association and was working on editing the House of Commons Debates for 1872 and 1873.

The debates of Canada's Parliament (Hansard) form an impressive component in the holdings of any reference library. Occupying over 250 linear feet of shelf-space, the substantial volumes, authoritative in their black bindings stamped with gold, represent an indispensable source for the study of Canada, its regions and peoples. The long series of Commons debates runs without a break from the report of the Second Session of the Third Parliament, 1875, a span of almost 120 years. The gap at the beginning of this record is occupied at the present time by three volumes, covering the years 1867 through 1870. Although bound like the other volumes in the series, these are modern productions, unofficial reports. At least four more are required to reach the point where the official Hansard begins. To close the gap in the Parliamentary record has been the purpose of the project to reconstruct the early debates of the House of Commons and Senate.

Parliamentary Reporting 1867-1875

Why did the House of Commons not authorize an official report of its proceedings before 1875? It was not for lack of trying on the part of certain members. The subject came up every year but one during the terms of the First and Second Parliaments. Most members saw no merit in the proposal for an official Hansard and in free votes regularly turned it down. It is instructive to look at their reasons.

Most important, in the minds of many members, was the conviction that the task was already being accomplished. As Malcolm Cameron, Liberal member for Huron South put it in 1870: "everything worth reporting was reported in the Toronto and Montreal papers."1

There was some truth in this statement. The Toronto Globe devoted, on a daily basis when the House was in session, 14 columns of dense print to its proceedings. Its circulation of 45,000 in 1872 was the largest in Canada. Other Toronto papers, the Mail and the Leader, carried briefer accounts. The Montreal Gazette regularly reported important debates. In Ottawa a young paper, the Times, which hoped to secure the contract to publish an official report, vied with the Globe in its coverage of the Commons and reported Senate debates faithfully. (The Parliamentary reports from the Globe and the Times, and sometimes the Mail, were systematically pasted into scrapbooks by the staff of the Library of Parliament. They form the "Scrapbook Debates", our principal source for the debates of the early years.) In the newspapers of the Maritime provinces space for the deliberations of Parliament was only occasionally provided and in the French-language press of Quebec rarely given.

Although the majority of members were satisfied with this newspaper coverage, at least for the first years of the new Parliament, there were also critics. The newspaper reports were not verbatim accounts but usually comprised about a third of what was said in the chambers. Reporters were responsible for compressing the material they took down; who could be sure they did this fairly? Even Prime Minister Macdonald who was, on the whole, happy with the newspaper reports, occasionally worried about distortions they might contain. Quebec members complained that the English-speaking reporters would not (or could not) report their speeches given in French. If they were reported, the versions prepared by the Ontario reporters were imperfect or severely abridged. The larger Ontario newspapers, such as the Globe, tended to provide a fuller account of the French contributions to the debates. Maritime members believed that the point of view of their provinces was inadequately presented in the accounts of reporters from Ontario. Curiously, few members complained of political bias in the reporting of debates. One who did was David Mills, the legal scholar and earnest colleague of Alexander Mackenzie. In 1874 Mills, welcoming the decision to establish an official Hansard, said there had been too much "party reporting" in the newspapers. The shorthand reporters were mere "boys" who did not possess the knowledge or judgment of members. Members should not be placed at their mercy in taking down what was said in the House.2

As experience with newspaper reporting broadened, members became aware of problems arising from late night sittings. James Young, Liberal member from Waterloo South, in proposing the official reporting of debates in 1874, pointed out that reporters found difficulty in covering speeches late at night since they had to rush their copy to Toronto or Montreal for the 4 a.m. publication of their newspapers. This deadline meant that they often gave short shrift to speeches at the end of a sitting. Accuracy suffered, resulting in reports which Young described as "burlesques" of what had gone on in the House.3 Parliamentary reporting by private means, it appeared, possessed its limitations.

Another obstacle to official reporting, in the minds of many members, was the actual or supposed costs. The first proposal for an official Hansard, made by a committee under Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie a few months after the new Parliament opened, estimated that to report the Commons in one language would cost $7801 a session, with another $4218 required to translate the text into the other language. Twelve thousand dollars, said Mackenzie, should suffice for a year's debates. This figure was repeated frequently in later discussions of the subject. Some members believed it to be a prodigious sum for a project of unproven value; others mocked it as an estimate which would turn out to be wildly short of the mark. The fact that the estimate for publishing the Confederation Debates of the Province of Canada (the only debates officially published by the legislature of that jurisdiction) had been $8000 while the actual cost had been $14,600, was often cited by the defenders of economy. Backbenchers and ministers (Sir Francis Hincks was one) questioned Mackenzie's estimate of $12,000. Other members pointed to the enormous financial burdens the new Dominion was assuming for railways, canals and settlement.

A more intangible argument occurred over the effect of official reports of debates on the lengths of speeches in the House. There were those who asserted that the publication of debates would encourage even more verbosity in the House. It might even lengthen the Parliamentary session. J.H. Pope, Minister of Agriculture in 1870, was of the opinion that the citizens of Canada would display little interest in long Commons debates. He felt reports should be left to the newspapers, who would risk their capital and not the public's, on the task. Alexander Mackenzie took the opposite point of view. Publishing verbatim accounts of debates would tend to shorten and improve speeches in the House. Senator Robert Hazen of New Brunswick displayed a refreshing note of modesty about having his speeches recorded. "He did not pretend to be a statesman, but was an humble member of the Senate, and he had no desire to have his utterances handed down to posterity."4

At a time when the sessional indemnity for members was $600 a year, to spend twenty times that sum on publishing debates seemed wildly extravagant.

Members who favoured the official publication of debates were to be found in both the political parties. There were two broad arguments upon which they rested their cases. Alexander Mackenzie, as a tried Reformer, saw the non-partisan official reporting of Commons debates as a step towards a more democratic political system. Together with the secret ballot, a single polling day for general elections and the abolition of dual representation, the publication of debates would point the way towards a more accountable Parliament purged of dubious political practices. Mackenzie prepared the first report on the matter in the 1867-68 session and worked on the subject again in 1869. When his plans were rejected, he gave up an active interest, although he continued to speak in favour of an official version of debates. His sponsorship of the project was taken over by Charles Tupper, who had as ammunition his native Nova Scotia's experience in publishing an official Hansard since 1855. The results had been beneficial, Tupper claimed, and provided a lesson for Canada. It was vital that a "fair report" of the proceedings of Parliament be placed before the Canadian people and made available to prospective investors and settlers abroad. In 1870 he moved for the appointment of a committee to study the reporting and publishing of Commons debates. It was a great pity that the House had turned down Mackenzie's proposal of 1868, he stated. "In the interests of history it was to be regretted that the two most important years of this Parliament had passed without its being in the power of the future historian to put his hand on an authentic narrative of the deliberations of the House." Do not look at the scheme, he urged members, with the "narrow spirit of economy."5 Tupper's appeal was in vain. The House decided that it was inexpedient to take any action on the subject in the present session. The same response was given to a similar proposal in 1871.

As the years passed opinion on the official reporting of debates began to change. Mackenzie made an attractive point when he said that with an official record, members would be able to correct the proofs of their speeches before permanent publication. Private enterprise could not offer that service. It is significant that in divisions on the Hansard proposal in 1870 and 1871 leading members from both sides of the chamber—Mackenzie, Blake, Cartier, Howe, Langevin, Tupper—came out in favour of an official report.

In 1872 the Commons took a step towards a permanent record of its debates. On the day before the formal end of the First Parliament, 13 June, Prime Minister Macdonald rose to announce that he had received a "round robin" signed by 130 of the 190 members of the House praying that two volumes of the so-called "Cotton Debates" be purchased, two copies to be given to each member. He recommended that the purchase be made. Alexander Mackenzie disagreed, alleging that the Cotton reports were partisan. They were also very much abbreviated, "a skeleton, not a fair report."6 A thin House, after a desultory discussion, approved Macdonald's motion, 41-5. Six hundred copies of the "Cotton Debates" for 1870 and 1871 were therefore purchased and distributed.

The "Cotton Debates" were the work of James Cotton, editor of the Ottawa Times. They were a version based on the reports in the Times. This newspaper was a newcomer to the Ottawa journalistic scene, having launched itself in the capital late in 1865 in order to report the first sitting of the legislature of the Province of Canada in its new building in the following year. It was an offshoot of the Quebec Morning Chronicle and was frankly ministerialist. James Cotton had declared publicly that its position would be similar to that of its London counterpart, i.e. to be "always for the government in power."7

Cotton had tendered for the publication of the debates in 1870, when he had beaten out Hunter, Rose and Co. of Toronto by his price. His tender had been recommended to the House by Tupper. But it was not to be when the House rejected Tupper's proposal. Undeterred, James Cotton went ahead and published a volume of Commons debates for the 1870 session at his own expense. He repeated the process for the next two sessions. Now he was rewarded by the House decision of 1872. It was the closest he ever came to becoming the official reporter for the House of Commons. He did not receive the contract to report or print the debates when it was awarded by the Mackenzie administration in 1874. Three years later the Ottawa Times ceased publication.8

The Senate was more receptive to the proposal that the publication of its debates be supported with public funds. In its first session it took note of the Commons' rejection of Alexander Mackenzie's plan for an official report. Senators were happy with the newspaper reports, although uneasy their debates were not being covered as fully as those of the lower house. The Times was diligent in assigning a reporter to the upper chamber, the Globe much less so. A remedy appeared to be to encourage the Times through a subsidy. For $60 a week the Times was persuaded to give three columns to each day of Senate proceedings. The "arrangement", as it was delicately called, was put in practice for 1869 and continued through 1870. Then the subject was reviewed. Senator D.L. Macpherson of Toronto announced that the general feeling in the chamber seemed to be in favour of "a full official report … so that the country would be disabused of the impression that the Senate did nothing."9 It was pointed out that there was on the staff of the Senate an experienced shorthand reporter who had recorded the debates of the Nova Scotia legislature since 1861. This was John George Bourinot of Sydney, the son of the senator of the same name. He had joined the Senate staff as a clerk in 1869. Now it was suggested that he report Senate debates. On 4 May 1870 Bourinot was given a new title, "Short-Hand Writer to the Senate and Committees of the Senate", and ordered to record its debates.

The first session Bourinot reported was that of 1871, the volume he produced being printed by the Times Printing and Publishing Co. of Ottawa. Thus the Senate Debates for 1871 represent the first official publication of debates for the Parliament of Canada. Bourinot reported the Senate debates until 1873, using the language of the speakers, which was mostly English. He went on to become Sir John Bourinot, the eminent constitutional authority. The shorthand reporters who worked on the Senate debates served on a contractual basis until as late as 1916, when a reporting branch was formed as part of the Senate staff. Beginning in 1896 a French version of Senate debates was brought out.

The Commons had still to settle the question of whether it should take responsibility for publishing its debates. Towards the end of the 1873 session, a session made tumultuous by the Pacific Scandal charges, the matter came up again. As in 1872 a "round robin" was presented to the government requesting that copies of the "Cotton Debates" for 1872 and 1873 be purchased for members. Macdonald gave his approval but on condition there should be no objection to the purchase. Mackenzie demurred, pointed out that the last day before the House adjourned until an August sitting was not the time to decide on such an important question. The same practice had occurred the year before. He favoured an official report but did not believe that the present solution was the one to adopt. His lieutenant, Félix Geoffrion, agreed. The "Cotton Debates"were one-sided and did not give French-speaking members a fair report. He hoped the government would sponsor a plan next year for an official bilingual report. Macdonald acknowledged Mackenzie's objection and the matter was dropped. The prime minister stated, however, that the government would bring down "a measure next session providing for the official reports."10

When the session of 1874 began, Macdonald and his colleagues were no longer in power. However the new Liberal administration headed by Alexander Mackenzie moved promptly to honour Macdonald's pledge. It struck a select committee of nine members under James Young of Waterloo South to enquire into "the most effectual and cheapest mode of obtaining the publication of a Canadian Hansard."11 Charles Tupper seconded the motion for the appointment of the committee. It reported on 8 May. A system of reporting debates should be established, not necessarily to provide a verbatim record but "a fair and accurate account", as close to the original as possible. Each speech should be reported in its own language. There should be a Chief Reporter of debates, a permanent employee of the House, and under him four reporters, one French-speaking. Reporters would be paid $5.00 for each session of a committee meeting they reported, or 30 cents per folio of 100 words for debates. Two thousand copies of Hansard should be printed in sheet form, one for each newspaper in Canada and six for each member. Five hundred copies would later be bound. The probable cost of the operation would be $7984 for a session, of which $5000 would be needed for reporting.12 (A year later the estimate had climbed to $9000.) The report occasioned a spirited debate as the opponents of official reporting, led by two Liberal members, Frank Killam of Yarmouth and Robert Wilkes of Toronto Centre, moved an amendment to leave reporting to private enterprise. Their attempt was defeated without a division. Mackenzie, Macdonald, Blake, Mills, Cauchon—all entered the discussion to endorse the plan of an official report.

Thus official reports of Commons debates began in 1875. A.M. Burgess was the Chief Reporter, or editor, at a salary of $5000 a session, expected to last ten weeks. His tasks were to supervise the reporting team, revise proofs and prepare a careful index for each volume of proceedings. Printing of the debates went to tender, the job being won by C.W. Mitchell at the Ottawa Free Press office on Elgin Street. There were only two hurdles to be overcome before the new practice became firmly established. Where should the reporters sit? Macdonald favoured constructing a Reporters' Gallery over the door of the chamber but Mackenzie feared that a new structure would disfigure "the internal appearance of the House."13 In the end it was agreed that reporters might be admitted to the floor of the House as a temporary measure. There they have remained. The other problem concerned the way the official languages would be used in reporting. The original plan was to have an English edition in which French speeches would be recorded in the original language, then translated into English. Accompanying this "polyglot", as some members called this mixed volume, would be an entirely French edition. The plan did not meet with approval, Macdonald and Mills, among others, objecting. Eventually George W. Ross of Middlesex West, the chairman of the Hansard committee, agreed to having two editions of the debates, one in English and one in French. The struggle was over and Canada had an official Hansard. The majority of the House appeared satisfied that the principle of official reporting had been accepted, and at a modest cost!

Reconstituting the Debates

To fill the missing years at the beginning of the Parliamentary record it is necessary to draw upon the newspaper reports of the day. Newspaper coverage of the early debates, as the Library of Parliament discovered in a survey, is scattered and intermittent. The largest void is found in the province of Quebec whose newspapers, except for special occasions or when local members spoke possibly subsidizing reports of their speeches, largely ignored the Parliament in Ottawa. They preferred to concentrate on the discussions in the Quebec assembly. This emphasis is understandable in a society still very self-contained. It also derived from the mainly English character of the early Ottawa debates. To make a mark in the Commons one had to speak in English, a facility which many Quebec members did not possess. The degree of frustration they experienced in listening to, or attempting to read, lengthy speeches in a language they only vaguely understood, can only be imagined. One senses their difficulties in the pathetically-grateful remarks made by Quebec members when Cartier or Langevin provided a quick summary of a topic for them in their own tongue.

The "symbiotic relationship", in Norman Ward's phrase,14 between newspapers and political parties also constitutes a limitation of newspaper sources. Each needed the other to survive and flourish. George Brown, editor and politician, recognized as clearly as any observer the consequences of the link between journalism and politics in the making of the public record. Speaking in 1854 he remarked that of course the leading speakers in a legislature were most fully reported. "The others have a smaller space given to them, and of them those of the men in the opposite side in politics to the editor of the paper in which the speeches are reported are given in the most contracted form."15

 

Reconstituting the Early Debates of the Parliament of Canda
Senate
First Parliament	Editor	Language
1st session (1867-68) vol 1	P.B. Waite	English text (1968); French text (1968)
2nd session (1869) vol II	P.B. Waite	Bilingual text (1975)
3rd session (1870) vol III	P.B. Waite	Bilingual text (1977)
4th session (1871) vol IV	A. Pamela Hardisty	Reprint, with French translation of J.G. Bourinot edition of 1871 (1980)
Official reporting was only in English until 1896 when a French language text was authorized. A French translation is now underway forthe years 1872-1995.
House of Commons
First Parliament	Editor	Language
1st session 1867-1868 vol 1	P.B. Waite	English (1967); French text (1968)
2nd session 1869 vol II	P.B. Waite	Bilingual (1975)
3rd session 1870 vol III	P.B. Waite	Bilingual (1979)
4th session 1871 vol IV	Norman Ward	Bilingual text in press
5th session 1872 vol V	David Farr	Bilingual text in preparation
Second Parliament
	David Farr	Bilingual text in preparation
	David Farr	Bilingual text in preparation
Third Parliament
First session (1874)	to be undertaken
Second session (1875)	to be undertaken	Official reporting begins English and French texts in 1875

If excessive political bias in the reporting of early Canadian debates is not apparent, a newspaper's sympathy towards party spokesmen is unavoidable. The Globe was founded in 1844 by George Brown to be the journal of the Reformers in Canada West. Brown led the Reformers until they became the Liberals in the first decade after Confederation. He then passed on his political mantle to Alexander Mackenzie and Edward Blake, the leaders of the next generation of Reformers/Liberals. Mackenzie and Blake dominated the Liberals in opposition and in government in the 1870s. It is not surprising that the Globe should be more attentive to their interventions in Commons debates than to those of their Conservative opponents. Here the Ottawa Times, frankly ministerialist, provides a counterweight. During the years of the first Macdonald administration it made sure that Conservative figures in Parliament were well-reported in its columns. The two newspapers also demonstrated differences in their coverage of members from outside Ontario. The Globe was less interested in the views of unknown Quebec and Maritime members; the Times, seeking government favour, paid more attention to the opinions of government supporters from beyond Ontario. Thus there is a rough balance in the emphases of the two newspapers, a balance that offers a basis for an approximation of the truth.

Beyond the limitation of partisanship, contemporary newspaper accounts reveal human frailty. Shorthand reporters became fatigued, especially after sitting in a stuffy poorly-lit chamber since 3 o'clock in the afternoon. They were dealing with names and geographical terms from the Maritimes and the West for the first time; they were clearly indifferent or uninterested in some of the topics such as issues connected with the Maritime provinces that occupied the House. They were sometimes inattentive, so that their transcriptions are obscure, even inaccurate. Yet their reports are all that we have to reconstitute the pith and substance of what passed in the House of Commons and Senate for almost the first decade after Confederation.

The reconstruction of the early debates of the Dominion Parliament is founded on the "Scrapbook Debates", i.e. the reports printed in the Toronto Globe, the Ottawa Times and, occasionally, the Toronto Mail. The importance of this source was recognized as early as 1886, eleven years after official reporting began. In that year the Joint Librarians of Parliament, A.D. De Celles and Martin Griffin, recommended that a proper index be prepared for the proceedings of both Houses. They also urged that the debates from 1867 to 1874 for the Commons be reprinted after they had been edited by "an impartial and capable man".16 It was to be eighty years before the suggestion of the Joint Librarians was acted upon.

Credit for the initiation of the reconstitution project that is now moving forward must go to three men: the late Professor Norman Ward, a leading student of Parliament; Roland Michener, Speaker of the House in 1961 and Erik J. Spicer, Parliamentary Librarian since 1960. In 1961 Professor Ward proposed to Speaker Michener that a balanced version of the early debates be prepared from existing newspaper sources for the use of researchers. Mr. Michener heartily favoured the proposal and Mr. Spicer recognized in it a Centennial project of enduring value. He convinced the two Speakers of the day, Hon. Sydney J. Smith of the Senate and Hon. Lucien Lamoureux of the Commons, to endorse it.

Thus the project required "an impartial and capable man" with which to commence. The man to whom the sponsors turned was Peter B. Waite, professor of history at Dalhousie University and a foremost authority on the Confederation period. Professor Waite undertook the reconstitution of the debates of the First Session of the First Parliament (1867-68), a volume that appeared in Centennial year. He went on to edit two succeeding volumes of Commons debates and three volumes of debates of the Senate, 1867-70. His accounts, using the English of the original versions, were reproduced in French by the Translation Operations Branch of the Department of the Secretary of State. The bilingual text was then transcribed by the Directorate of Parliamentary Publications of the House of Commons into the format of contemporary Hansard. The volumes were furnished with a list of the members of the early Houses and their constituencies, a list of members of the cabinet and an index. The editor contributed an introduction describing how the account of the debates had been reconstructed, as well as a note on the character of the House and the subjects before it during each session.

The debate reconstitution project, in its formative phase, was supervised by A. Pamela Hardisty, formerly Assistant Parliamentary Librarian, and initially implemented by the Reference and Information Branch of the Library of Parliament under the direction of Simonne Chiasson. Later supervision was provided by Margot Montgomery, director of the Information and Technical Services Branch of the Library. As the project continued, oversight for it has passed to François LeMay, director, and Mike Graham, chief of the public service division in the Information and Technical Services Branch of the Library.

Peter Waite's major contribution to the reconstitution of the early debates has been in working out a set of editorial guidelines that later compilers have followed. He laid down the rule at the beginning of the project that editorial interventions into the text should be kept to a minimum. The text should be "cleaned up" as far as possible but left to speak for itself. Most contributions to the debates are recorded by the shorthand writers as third person narratives; few direct quotations are recorded. The text had been left in this form. Another guideline established by the first editor is that the sources of the accounts are not separately identified. An introduction to each volume makes clear that the material is drawn from the Times or the Globe, the basis of the "Scrapbook Debates".

In settling on a text, the longer report from the two newspapers is generally preferred, on the assumption that it is probably a more accurate reflection of what was actually said. Often it will contain the allusions and illustrations that make it more lively than its abbreviated counterpart. Where sources are comparable in length, Professor Waite suggested selecting "the most literate and salty version"17 and his successors have adopted the same approach. Sometimes newspaper reports are combined if aspects of a speech are brought out more fully in one account than in another.

The reports of the Times tend to be fuller in the early years of Parliament than in 1872 or 1873. Perhaps James Cotton and his staff were losing interest in their task as the prospects of a Hansard contract receded? The Globe reports become fuller as the crisis in Parliament occasioned by the Pacific scandal and Macdonald's resignation comes to a climax; they were often livelier than the accounts in the Times.

The task of the editors, beyond the selection of the text, has been to correct errors in spelling, grammar, syntax, names and constituencies of members, geographical names, and names of companies whose bills for incorporation were being introduced. Where members have the same surname (there were six "Ross's" in the Commons in 1873, for instance) they have also been given a Christian name. Where constituency designations are similar, they have been more precisely identified. Where archaic words such as "shew" are used, they have been retained, as have the classical and literary allusions that the Victorians loved and sprinkled so liberally throughout their discourse. These terms provide the flavour of an age that has disappeared for ever. These have been the editors' tasks: not to interfere in what was said a century and more ago but to be conscientious in tidying and making explicable unrehearsed, passionate and often unruly discussion.

The early debates of Parliament offer a unique window through which to view the founding and fashioning of the Canadian state. The apparatus of a transcontinental government is being constructed before our eyes. We witness competing policies for national development being thrashed out. The issues with which Macdonald and his colleagues had to deal are the issues of our day in different dress: the strains within a federal system, the power of the executive over against the legislative, the impact of United States trade measures upon the Canadian economy, pollution and the protection of the environment, immigration, the place of the aboriginal people, even Senate reform! Our ancestors wrestled with these questions. We would be unwise to ignore the insights (and the blindnesses) which they brought to their discussion. The reconstitution of the early debates of Parliament is recovering a valuable historical source. The Commons trenchantly expressed the significance of this source in authorizing the publication of an official record of debates in 1874. "(Hansard) is the only means at (the public's) command of knowing correctly what their representatives say and do in Parliament, as well as its immense future value as a record of our Constitutional, Commercial and Political history."18 For all those who desire the health of parliamentary democracy in Canada it is good to know that a valuable project, so long put aside, is well on its way towards completion.

Notes

1. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, April 25, 1870, p.1178.

2. Canada, House of Commons, Scrapbook Debates, May 18, 1874, p. 105, reported in Toronto Mail.

3. Ibid., p. 104.

4. Canada, Senate, Debates, March 27, 1868, p. 152.

5. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, March 3, 1870, p. 219.

6. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, June 13, 1872, p. 1138 (Cotton Debates).

7. Quoted in R.U. Mahaffy, "Ottawa Journalism, 1860-1870", Ontario History, XLII, 4 (October, 1950), p. 210.

8. Canadian Library Association, News Notes, Microfilm Project, 4, (December 1965), pp. 21-22.

9. Canada, Senate, Debates, April 29, 1870, p. 162.

10. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, as reported in the Ottawa Times, May 23, 1873.

11. Canada, House of Commons, Journals, April 27, 1874, p. 120.

12. Ibid., May 8, 1874, p. 200.

13. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, February 5, 1875, p. 4.

14. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1871, introduction, p. vii. Professor Ward's edition of the Commons debates for 1871 is forthcoming.

15. Quoted in David B. Knight, A Capital for Canada: Conflict and Compromise in the Nineteenth Century, University of Chicago, Department of Geography, Research Paper 182 (1977), p. 317.

16. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1867-68, preface by Erik J. Spicer, unpaged.

17. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1867-68, introduction, p. viii.

18. Canada, House of Commons, Journals, May 8, 1874, p. 201.