Excerpt from Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate and Report on the Affairs of the Woodstock and Lake Erie Railway and Harbour Company, 1857

As an instance of the glaringly unscrupulous manner in which the objects of certain of the parties interested in duping); the municipalities were effected, Your Committee beg to direct the attention of Your Honorable House to the following, the particulars of which will be found in the evidence of Mr. Hodge, the associate engineer of the Company. Among the municipalities granting loans to the Corn pany was the township of Windham. After the passage of the by-law and iterati fication by. The rate-payers, it became the duty of' the Reeve of the townshtp to hand over to the Railway Company, under certain conditions, the necessary papers to enable them to obtain Government debentures, under the by-law. To do thisthe' Reeve referred to had what he called scruples, according to the statement of the witness. Means were soon found to remove them. A sub-contractor was sent to'rhim'with an envelope containing $500, which was quietly handed to him. The scruples were removed, and, as witness states, twenty minutes after, the necessary pa'perswere in the hands of the Secretary of the Company; subsequently the mes senger carried the Reeve another envelope containing an additional $500, one hun dred of which he deducted for his own services in negotiating the transaction. And the balance be handed to the Reeve as payment in full for the removal of his scruples. Your Committee have no comment to make on facts so discreditable to all parties concerned.

Ou the obtainment of the moneys by the means thus described from the muni cipalities, in direct Violation of their undertaking through the said Landon and Gray, and of bonds given by them to the same effect to the municipalities, the di rectors, without expending a single farthing of their own means in the construction of the road, proceeded to dispose of the moneys loaned them. In the like violation of the said assurances the said directors changed the tenor of the said alleged con tract by converting it from a credit to a cash one, without the knowledge or consent of the municipalities, and for his influence and exertions in obtaining the contract for Zimmerman and Company, Henry De Blaquiere, one of the directors, is dis tinctly proved to have received a bribe of no less a sum than under this contract, in which the said De Blaquiere admits he was a secret partner to the ex 'tent of o'ne-fifth the profits. The work on the road was at length begun, right of way to a considerable extent secured, and stations and depot grounds fixed upon. The municipalities, invigorated by this appearance of' a serious intention to proceed with the operations of the works, and having their attention thus attracted from the frauds which have been practised on them, congratulated themselves on an approach to the realization of their long cherished expectations. These expectations, how ever, were not of long; continuance.

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