Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/848

Rh 7GG CANADA The Act of Confederation came into operation on the 1st of July 1867, at which date the provinces of Ontario and Quebec were united to the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In 1870 the newly created province of Manitoba, in 1871 that of British Columbia, and in 1872 that of Prince Edward Island, were succes sively admitted into the confederation. A lieutenant- governor and council are to be appointed to administer the affairs of the north-west territories, not yet settled or organized into provinces ; and thus the whole of British North America has been organized into a united political confederacy under the name of the Dominion of Canada. Previous to the confederation of the provinces, Labrador E. of a line drawn due N. of Anse au Sablon, was inde pendent of Lower Canada, and it still remains politically attached to Newfoundland. The tract of country known as Canada till 1867 extended from Labrador westward to the high land beyond Lake Superior, and from the St Lawrence Valley and the great lakes northward to the watershed between them and the Hudson Bay, and embraced an area of 331,220 square miles, lying between the parallels of 41 71 and 50 N. lat., and the meridians of 57 50 and 117 W. long. This extensive region, which constituted the most important colony of England, is now included in a Dominion which stretches across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and embraces an area of about 3,500,000 square miles. The vast prairie lands of the great north-west, thus embraced within the Dominion, and out of which the province of Manitoba has been already formed, include the most fertile region of the whole continent. Already immigration is setting steadily in that direction ; nor can it be doubted that what has remained till recently a desert, traversed annually by migratory herds of buffalo, and only available as a hunting ground for wild Indians and the trappers of the Hudson s Bay Company, is destined to become the seat of populous provinces, and to constitute one of the chief granaries of the world. By the addition of the maritime British provinces, included originally within the Acadie of the old French regime, Canada has acquired an extensive line of sea-coast, indented with bays and harbours, offering the most admirable facilities for every branch of maritime enterprise : and to these will, no doubt, be added ere long the island of Newfoundland, with the command of fisheries unequalled in value either in the Old World or the New. The peninsula of Nova Scotia and the island of Newfoundland form the eastern barriers of British North America, closing the Gulf of St Lawrence, and commanding the Atlantic coast, with its ocean trade and its inexhaustible fisheries ; while Vancouver Island, and the shores of the neighbour ing mainland, stretch along the Pacific coast, with estuaries, inlets, and well-sheltered harbours, awaiting the develop ment of the growing trade of the Pacific. There the rivers abound in salmon ; the whale fisheries of the neigh bouring ocean already yield valuable returns ; and the cod, haddock, and other deep-sea fish invite the enterprise of the young province, and guarantee an inexhaustible source of future wealth. The people by whom the maritime advantages of the eastern provinces have thus far been enjoyed are peculiarly fitted by origin and training to turn them to the best account. In the early years of the 16th century, when France was striving to outrival Spain in the occupation of the New World beyond the Atlantic, hardy adventurers of Basque, Breton, and Norman blood sailed from Dieppe, St Malo, Rochelle, and other French seaports, and divided among them the traffic in fish and furs of the Newfound land banks and the Gulf and the River St Lawrence. The discovery of Canada, and, indeed, of the American continent, is justly assigned to John and Sebastian Cabot, who set out from Bristol under the auspices of Henry VII. of England in 1497, and landed on the coast of Labrador seventeen months before Columbus reached the American mainland. But England was slow to avail herself of the advantages of the discovery. In 1524 Vcrazzano, a Floren tine navigator, sailing under the French flag, coasted the new found continent from Florida to Cape Breton, and the whole vaguely defined region was appropriated in the name of Francis I. as &quot; La Nouvelle France.&quot; Ten years later Jacques Cartier sailed from St Maio, explored the coasts of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; and for a time the Norman and Breton adventurers enjoyed a monopoly of fish, peltries, and whatever else could reward those pioneers of civilization for their adventurous daring and enterprise. By such hardy adventurers the maritime provinces were originally settled, before Britain awoke to the importance of the fisheries and other valuable resources of the New World. But she in her turn contributed an energetic body of colonists, including many of Scottish origin ; and the war of independence led to a considerable influx of loyalist immigrants from the revolted colonies. War, both then and in 1812, had its usual effect in depressing native industry. But with the return of peace the British pro vinces entered on a prolonged course of prosperity, very partially affected by the political troubles of 1836-7, or even by the American civil war of 1862 and subsequent years. Half a century ago the population of the whole of British North America was less than 1,000,000 ; in 1872 that of the four provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Bruns wick, and Nova Scotia, amounted to 3,485,761 ; and the population of the Dominion now exceeds 4,000,000 of souls. So long as Canada was detached in government and all political relations from the maritime provinces, and embraced only Quebec and Ontario, with access to the ocean solely by the St Lawrence, which is closed for fully five months in the year, it constituted an inland province, sub ject to many restrictions, and was to a considerable extent dependent on reciprocal relations with the United States for its foreign trade. In a &quot; Memorandum on the Commercial Relations, Past and Present, of the British North American Provinces with the United States,&quot; submitted to the Government at Wash ington in A.pril 1874, by Sir Edward Thornton and the Hon. George Brown, as joint plenipotentiaries of Her Britannic Majesty, it is shown that, in the interval from 1845, when a more liberal policy gave encouragement to intimate commercial relations between Canada and the United States, till 1853, the aggregate export and import trade between the two countries rose from $8,074,291 to $20,691,360 ; and at the same time a large amount of the import and export traffic between Great Britain and the provinces was carried in bond over the canals and railways of the United States. The Reciprocity Treaty was nego tiated by the late Earl of Elgin, as governor- general of Canada, and signed on the 5th of June 1854; and it was abrogated in 1866. In the later years of its continuance the civil war in the United States gave a great advantage to Canada, so that in the last year of the treaty the exports to the States amounted to $54,714,383. Yet even then the balance of trade continued to be in favour of the United States ; and under the operation of the treaty, New York, Portland, Boston, and other American seaports, were so largely used for the trade of the British provinces, that the transportation traffic sent to and brought from foreign countries, in bond, over the railways and canals, and in the ocean ships and steamers, of the United States, became an important element of revenue to their chief lines of transport