Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/155

 while the abolition, being a matter of reciprocal arrangement, all difficulty arising from the commercial relations of the United States with foreign countries might thus be avoided.

The more advanced section of the Free-trade party of Canada pressed this proposal on the executive government, together with the abolition of all protection conferred by the Navigation Laws, which it was asserted was, after all, purely nominal, and only to secure other advantages. They pronounced the so-called Protection to be in its effects upon Canada practically mischievous, contending that, if the trade was nearer from Canadian waters to the canals and ports of the United States, British shipowners would have to compete with foreigners in the ports of that country; that, if they could do this successfully there, they could do so in the Canadian ports; but if not, under existing circumstances, the trade of Canada could not afford to maintain a mere legal monopoly: moreover, if the supposed Protection only led to the desertion of the cities and sea-ports of Canada, without subserving the interests of British shipowners, it was hoped that useless restrictions, irreconcilable with the withdrawal of protective duties in the United States in favour of Canadian produce, would be at once removed.

The Canadians could not indeed fail to perceive, when the question was raised in the mother-country, that a great portion of the exportable produce of Western Canada, probably by far the greater part, was at that very moment on its way to ports in the United States; that little was expected at Montreal; that the canals constructed on the St. Lawrence were