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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 354 of 492
Words from 97654 to 97941
of 136421
