28 JUNE 1873, Page 3

The second reading of the Canada Loan Guarantee Bill was

carried on Monday night in the House of Commons by a majority of 102 (117 to 15), Sir Charles Dilke having moved its rejection. The BM was opposed on the double ground that it was a flagrant bribe to Canada to withdraw claims on behalf of the Fenian raids which it ought to have pressed on the United States, and that Ike application of the new part of the Guaranteed Loan would

be to a railway that would prove a• bad commercial speculation, and that ought never to have been made. The Government showed, successfully, we think, that if it was convenient for our foreign policy to take over the claims, whatever they might be worth as regards the Fenian raids, and press them against the United States ourselves, if we choose, Canada has no reason to complain; and next, that when Canada almost with one voice regards the Pacific Railroad scheme as of the greatest possible value to the Dominion, any estimate of ours on the subject is hardly likely to be worth much. As regards the Fenian raids, too, though the Canadians thought highly of these claims, it is certain that our Government and lawyers thought very poorly of them. Lord Derby (then Lord Stanley) thanked General Grant for his promptitude in putting down the last of the raids ; and it hardly becomes a great nation like Great Britain to blow hot and cold almost with one breath, deprecating one day the claims against the neutral for inadequate energy in maintaining his neutrality, and eagerly pressing them the next in a case where they were far less clearly defined.