The Free Navigation Of The St. Lawrence And Of Lake Michigan Had Removed Jealousies And Fostered The Idea Of Common

Interests in the great waterways to the ocean, while the results of trade had been so happy that a total

Annual interchange of commodities of a value of nearly 10,000,000l. a year in amount between the British Provinces and the United States now existed. They were now threatened with the termination of this treaty at the end of twelve months, and no hope appeared to be held out, so far, of an amicable revision and extension of its benefits. The consequences to commerce were evident, and at first would be most serious. Trade at last, no doubt, would take other channels, and the British Provinces, trading between each other and with the Mother Country, and reducing their duties to a low rate, might at the end be largely benefited at the price of a present loss; but that was merely the money view, and such a gain would be dearly purchased at the cost of humanity and civilization if it broke up the commercial and social union heretofore existing. He held that peace and progress and the future good relations between Great Britain and the United States, on which peace and progress were largely based, would suffer by such an isolation, and he would look with distrust upon a prosperity which was not still shared between the people on each side of the border. He had travelled much on both sides of the British lines, and it was cheering to see there how thoroughly one the two peoples had become, socially and commercially. They traded together, went into partnership together, visited together. A Canadian or New Brunswicker would often have a farm on each side of the, practically imaginary, boundary line; and a citizen of the United States often lived on his own and traded or manufactured on the other side of the border. In fact, the border jealousies which had caused such bitterness and danger even in our own country had in this generation all but disappeared in this case, under the operation of high-minded and far-sighted legislation. Considering, therefore, the magnitude of the commercial interests, the grave questions of navigation, ocean rights, and free communication, he must express the most anxious, surprise to learn that Her Majesty's Government had allowed the matter to drift into its present position. He was told that no effort whatever had been made to preserve the treaty as it was, or as it might be amended, by negociations at Washington. His honorable friend, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had said, in answer to a question he had put in that House last May, that no negociations were pending as to the Reciprocity Treaty, and that Government had no official information upon the subject of the Bonding Acts. He was bound to take that answer as a correct statement; and he then asked, Was it possible that her Majesty's Government could remain inactive when a trade of 10,000,000l a year and the issues of future peace or disturbance were in the balance?

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