CHAP. 1] THE DOMINION OF CANADA 761 
provision has been noted below. As regards language, it 
was provided that either the English or the French language 
might be used by any person in the debates of the Houses 
of the Parliament of Canada and of the Houses of the 
Legislature of Quebec; both languages have to be used in 
the journals and the respective records of these Houses, and 
either might be used by any person or in any pleading or 
process in or issuing from any Court of Canada established 
under the Act, and in or from all or any of the Courts of 
Quebec. The Acts of the Parliament of Canada and of the 
Legislature of Quebec were to be printed and published in 
both languages : it is a remarkable fact that there has as yet 
been no final ruling in either the Dominion or the province, 
save as regards the Quebec civil code and the Revised 
Statutes of 1909, which language is to prevail : seemingly the 
rule is rather to see which reading in case of divergency is the 
more suitable to the sense of the statute, or in the case of 
a consolidation more nearly repeats the original enactment 
which it may be presumed the Act was intended to consoli- 
date. Fortunately serious discrepancies are not probable. 
S. 145 of the Act laid upon the Government and the 
Parliament of Canada an obligation to proceed within six 
months to start the intercolonial railway between the St. 
Lawrence and Halifax. It had been felt that this step was 
essential if the British dominions in North America were ever 
to be consolidated, and the Maritime Provinces made the 
construction of this line a sine qua non of their consent to 
federation! Similarly, the terms of the agreement for the 
addition of British Columbia to the Dominion in 1871 
required that there should be built a line of railway from the 
east to the west. There was great delay in the building of 
the line, and as a result the Provincial Government deputed 
two members of the Cabinet to go home to lay representa- 
tions before the Secretary of State. Lord Carnarvon offered 
in a dispatch of June 18, 1874, to arbitrate; both the 
Dominion and the province accepted his proposal, and he 
made suggestions in a dispatch of August 16 for the settle- 
See Sandford Fleming, 1'he Intercoloniul Railway (1876).