Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/151



As regarded the operation of the Navigation Laws with reference to Canada, it was far more complicated than even that between the mother-country, her colonies in the West Indies, and the United States. While some of the shipowners of England had, as we have seen, gone so far as even to demand protection against the shipping of English colonists, the Canadians were busily occupied with efforts in an entirely opposite direction. They were not inclined, by a system of protection, to force their trade in any particular channel: for, so far as regarded the carrying-trade of the North-Western American States, the Canadians obviously could only secure its passage through their territory by holding out superior advantages in the way of cheapness of transit. For this purpose they had already done everything that great enterprise and expenditure could accomplish. They succeeded as far as possible; and, at length, possessed a line of communication at once more rapid and more cheap from the interior to the sea than any existing in the United States. The whole question then was confined to the comparative advantages of shipment from Quebec or Montreal, or from New York. If those ports could be nearly equalised in respect to freights to England, Canada would succeed in her object; if the disparity continued as it did then, all her efforts would have been unavailing.

It was, generally, represented that the high rate of freight between Montreal and the United Kingdom was owing to the limited number of ships employed in the import trade of Canada. In the spring and latter end of the summer, ships, composing what was called the spring and fall fleet, arrived; and, so long