famous Annexation Manifesto of 1849-signed by one future Prime Minister of the Dominion and by many others who lived to hold high office under the Crown. In this document the comparison of the condition of the people on one side of the boundary-line presents one of the most doleful pictures in the modern political history of any country and, in brief, describes the Canadas as exhibiting every symptom of a nation fast sinking to decay."

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But this feeling soon passed away. Too much had been done by Great Britain for the youthful Colonies, in too many forms, for them to long resent a British change of fiscal policy-though what seemed like an absence of consideration at this time was no doubt reflected afterwards in the practice of a Canadian protection which nearly always disregarded the interests of the British manufacturer when those of any Canadian industry were supposed to be involved. More effective even than Britain's policy of occasional helpfulness and continuous guardianship in preventing serious action during this period was the prolonged record of hostility on the part of the United States toward these struggling Colonies in British North America. In our day of British and United States friendliness, of international sympathy, of, in some directions, continental comradeship, it is easy to forget history when any special purpose appears to be served in doing so. But for the purposes of this study of Canadian opinion history cannot be forgotten. Its incidents and inherited feelings are too deeply rooted in the soil of Canadian minds to permit of this. The United States desire for the continental acquisition of territory, as voiced in its 1812 attempt upon British America, its record in Florida, Texas, Mexico and California, its Fenian Raid policy and its attitude after the Civil War, made a profound and still existing impression upon Canadian sentiment. Equally obvious was the contempt so long expressed, and apparently felt, for these Colonial appendages of an effete European Monarchy." With the passing of British preferential tariffs came the second period of our history and, naturally, an effort in the Provinces to obtain reciprocity with the United States, and what proved, in effect, to be a break in a record of relations which had been, so far as Canadian feeling was concerned, somewhat strained. Trade conditions were very one-sided. During the eight years,

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1846-53, the Republic exported to the Provinces $77,092,514 worth of products and imported therefrom only $36,753,592. In 1852 a great change took place in general conditions. The depression of 1847-9 had been short-lived and for some time Canadian farmers had been prospering visibly. The Crimean War kept up the price of grain to a very high figure, and despite the fact that Provincial exports nearly all went to Great Britain viâ American railroads and ports, this prosperity was maintained. And just at this time, when the war was about to close and a reaction in prices might have been expected, Lord Elgin succeeded in negotiating his famous Reciprocity Treaty with the United States. In doing so he opened to Canadian farmers a market which was destined in a few years to be immensely valuable, though in a transient way, from the effect of the Civil War which had depleted United States agricultural population and decreased agricultural production. The Treaty was signed on June 5, 1854, and determined, after notice, by the United States in 1866. It provided for certain mutual fishery rights, for privileges in river, lake, and canal navigation, and for the free interchange of certain articles being the growth and produce of the British Colonies, or of the United States-the more important of these being grain, flour, breadstuffs, animals, fresh, smoked and salted meats, fish, lumber of all kinds, poultry, cotton, wool, hides, ores or metal, pitch, tar, flax, hemp, unmanufactured tobacco, and rice.

No manufactures of any kind were included in the Treaty and whatever the Provinces made free to the States was also free to Britain. There can be no question regarding the surface value of this arrangement to the Canadas and the Lower Provinces. Agricultural prices remained high and in the last four years of the Treaty rose still higher. The farmers prospered greatly and there are still many golden memories of the Treaty of 1854-66. They form, however, only a hazy picture of the past; the reciprocity itself arose out of conditions which have long since disappeared and can probably never recur; moreover, special causes helped the prosperity and multiplied the effects of the Treaty itself. Freights to England were then very heavy; transportation was slow and costly; American middlemen largely controlled the traffic and, consequently, the British market

was not what it is now to Canadians the central point of agricultural observation and attention. In the United States, when the tariff walls were partially thrown down, two reasons, one following the other, further enhanced the value of the measure to people in British America.

By the Low Tariff Bill of 1846 and the further sweeping and general reduction of 20 per cent. in 1857, the American market had become glutted with British manufactures, industries had fallen right and left, hard times had supervened and, after the crisis of 1857 in which hundreds of banks suspended, it was found that agricultural values had naturally diminished with the general welfare. And, although this condition affected the Canadas more or less, still, it gave an opportunity for Provincial produce to take the place of American in the British market and so helped our farmers. Then in 1861, after the Morrill Protective Tariff had come into force, the Civil War began and once more the industrial interests of the Republic were deranged and the value of the Canadian farmer's product enormously enhanced. The advantage of the interchange of this Treaty period was not all on one side, however, as certain American writers and politicians have stated. It is true that from 1854 to 1866, inclusive, British America exported the comparatively large total of $267,612,131 worth of products to the United States but during that period the Republic also sent to the British Provinces (Newfoundland included) the following products:

During these years, also, the Atlantic fisheries proved exceedingly valuable to Americans. In 1850 there were 2414 United States vessels and in 1862, 3815 employed in the British fisheries and receiving a return in the latter year of over $14,000,000. Our foreign trade was largely diverted from the St. Lawrence to American ports; we hardly obtained a dollar's worth of fish from the United States coasts in return for the great quantity taken from the British fisheries; and the Americans enjoyed the free

use of the Welland and St. Lawrence Canals as an outlet for the commerce of the North-Western States. Well might E. H. Derby, Commissioner of the United States Treasury, say in commenting regretfully upon the repeal of the Treaty: "It quintupled our trade with the Provinces, gave an impulse to public improvement and utilised our new canals, railways and other avenues of commerce." But some sop to Cerberus " was required; some means of striking at Great Britain and Canada after the close of the war, had to be found; and the abrogation of this Treaty was evidently the nearest instrument at hand, besides being likely, in the opinion of a large school of American politicians, to force the Provinces into the Union. "Treat with the Provinces or annex the Provincials," one of them said, with a decidedly expressed preference for the latter.

Aside, however, from the real causes of this abrogation, it must be admitted that there was some ground for the ostensible reasons put forward by the United States opponents of the Treaty. For many years the duties imposed by the Provinces upon manufactured articles had averaged about 10 per cent. But, after 1854, those imposed by Upper and Lower Canada began to rise, and although increased nominally for revenue purposes and applied to Great Britain as well as the United States, these increases naturally gave room for American criticism and, in time, formed a very comfortable basis for the Treaty abrogation. The following Table will give an idea of the position of Canadian duties upon leading articles of manufacture in the respective years.

Of course these duties were not uniform in the Maritime Provinces. There they usually averaged 10 per cent. upon American products, not included in the Reciprocity Treaty, and

generally the same rate prevailed against goods from the Canadas as Ontario and Quebec were then called. But, when the Reciprocity Treaty was abrogated in 1866, the excuse furnished by the growth of this protective tariff had no real existence, as the effect of the Civil War upon American industries was so injurious that hardly any protection was required against them. Indeed, between 1868 and 1872, a reduced Canadian average tariff of 15 per cent. was found quite sufficient to guard the industrial interests of the new Dominion against any competition. After the revival of United States industries in the latter year the position was, of course, different. The Civil War having, therefore, rendered the American manufacturers practically unable to do more than supply their local markets Canadian duties of a small percentage more or less, could hardly be termed a grievance. The Treaty was, however, abrogated, and with that event began a new era in Canadian history, the third and clearly defined period of Canadian national life with an eventual development of fiscal policy and general prosperity far beyond anything dreamed of either by the makers or breakers of the Reciprocity Treaty in 1854-66. Confederation was created, and from it has followed the evolution of a powerful British community in North America with an area, resources, prospects and prosperity second to none upon this continent or elsewhere.

All through the debates in the Canadian Legislature prior to and leading up to Confederation in 1867 ran the fear of further United States action of a nature tending to force the Provinces into annexation. The Premier, Sir E. P. Taché, frankly declared that as things were, British America was sliding down an inclined plane towards that end; D'Arcy McGee eloquently pleaded for union in order to promote development as a British rather than an American country; George Brown asked for Confederation so as to enable us to meet the coming abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty; Sir George Cartier emphatically declared that 66 we must obtain British American Confederation or be absorbed in an American Continent"; Sir John Macdonald pointed to "the hazardous situation in which all the great interests of Canada stand with respect to the United States." The abrogation of the Treaty did not force the Canadas into the American Union; it did force them into a union of their own. It also paved the