HUNT'S

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE

AND

COMMERCIAL REVIEW.

JUNE, 1852.

Art. I—THE STATES OF BRITISH AMERICA AND THE UNITED STATES:

FREEDOM OF TRADE AND UNION OF INTERESTS.

*

THERE is a larger free, white population in the States of British North America, than there was in the United States when they declared themselves independent. The population of those provinces was then about 250,000. It is now about 2,500,000. In 1776 the United States did not probably contain more than 2,800,000 inhabitants, of whom nearly half a million were slaves. Our figures are necessarily a little conjectural, but probably within the truth. The first official census of the United States was not taken until 1790, when the population was 3,929,326, including 629,697 slaves.

The population of the Provinces of British America at the two periods of our comparison may be pretty accurately stated as follows:

Adding for increase since the dates of the table, and for the population of the Hudson's Bay Company's territories, and we have the population as stated, which, we have reason to believe, is in fact rather understated. Mr.

Report on the Trade and Commerce of the British North American Colonies with the United States and other countries, embracing full and complete tabular statements from 1829 to 1850. Presented to the United States Senate by Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury, (Prepared by J. D. Andrews, Esq.. U. S. Consul, New Brunswick,) Washington, 1851.

Montgomery Martin estimates the population of Western or Upper Canada, in 1849, at 750,000; of Nova Scotia in 1850 at 300,000; of Prince Edward Island at 55,000.* We have no regular and careful census returns for our authority. There should have been a census of Eastern Canada in 1848, according to law, but it seems to have been omitted. Our figures are taken from the very able and valuable "Report on the Trade, Commerce, and Resources of the British North American Colonies," prepared by J. D. Andrews, Esq., United States Consul at St. John, New Brunswick, and communicated to the Senate by the Secretary of the Treasury. This voluminous collection of statistics embraces statements from 1829 to 1850, relative to the Fisheries, the Mines, Minerals, and Light houses, and the Trade and Commerce of the Canadas, of Nova Scotia, of New Brunswick, of Newfoundland, of Prince Edward Island, the Trade and Commerce of the Lakes, and also miscellaneous returns of population, tonnage, shipping, and foreign trade. The statements are collected and arranged with unusual care and skill, and are as authentic and accurate as can be expected in the absence of a thorough system of statistics in the United States and in the Provinces. We shall be rejoiced when Congress shall see fit to establish a Bureau of Statistics, such as that proposed and ably advocated by Hon. Zadoc Pratt, some years ago, in the House of Representatives-a truly statesmanlike measure; some system, at any rate, with the necessary governmental appliances, for the regular and careful collection of facts relating to our trade, agriculture, and manufactures.

If our statesmen knew how much such a measure would lighten and enlighten their own labors and inquiries, as well as those of the Merchants' Magazine, they would hardly allow another session to pass without some such enactment.

The general reader who is not a professed Political Economist, will find most matter of interest in the report of Mr. Andrews, prefixed to the tables, which is something more than a mere index, or introduction to the statistics. After a historical sketch of English legislation on colonial trade, since the Revolution, Mr. Andrews gives a summary view of the present state of colonial trade, both with England and America, under the new Navigation and Corn Laws of Great Britain, and then, in conclusion, broaches an important measure of commercial policy, proposed by the Canadian Government to our own. This measure is nothing less than reciprocal free trade in breadstuffs and other natural products. The notion that this measure would burt the grain-growers of this country, is combatted with much force. There certainly seems little danger to our farmers from competition in our own market; in the foreign market no protection can protect them from Europe or Canada. However all this may be, that this measure would be a natural political result, that it is with and not against the current of political affairs in the Provinces, both as regards their domestic policy and their relations with the United States, must strike every one who reads the colonial history of the last eighty years. He must be struck at once with their rapid and substantial growth, their steady progress in liberal government, and at the same time with the constant tendency to fusion, not of laws, but interests, the growing assimilation in trade and in ideas, with their neighbors across the lakes, which has accompanied this material and political growth.

We have noticed the increase of their population. By the census of

The British Colonies, p. 109.

The results of the census of Canada, just taken, have not yet been made public. According to the Journal de Quebec, the population of both Canadas, by the census, will be 1,800,000.

1850, the population of the United States was 23,257,723; it has therefore increased about eight-fold since the peace of 1783, or in seventy years.

The colonial increase has been about ten-fold. Increase in numbers, however, is but one phase, one branch of national growth. It is the effect-it is the cause, also, of growth of every kind-commercial, agricultural, industrial. It is the index of political health, also. And all this progress has been coincident with, and it is owing, we are persuaded, to like political causes, and to like natural advantages, as that of the United States.

We call the States of British America, Colonies. That word no longer describes the footing upon which they stand; the position of political and commercial independence to which the course of events during the last eighty years has been gradually bringing them. Free and sovereign States they cannot be called; but the modern idea of a colony implies subjection and dependence. Such was the colonial relation under the system which began when Columbus first set foot on San Salvador, and the distinguishing feature of which, according to Say's rather hasty classification of colonies, was that they were planted with the mere temporary purpose of enriching adventu rers, who had no design of permanent settlement, but intended to return home as soon as their fortunes were made.* The British Provinces are rather colonies, according to the ancient idea; such colonies as those with which prolific Greece lined the shores of the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean. "If treated kindly, a colony will honor the mother country; if treated unjustly, it will become estranged. For colonies are not sent out to become the slaves of those who remain behind, but to be their equals." Such was the proud language with which a Greek colony in the days of Pericles checked the arrogance of its metropolis, or mother city, and the words of the ambassadors of Corcyra to the Athenian people, embody the spirit of the ancient colonial system. But both systems, ancient and modern, have had their day. The modern colonial relation reached its maturity a hundred years ago. It began to decay in 1776. The revolutionary war was the first decided symptom of its decay. It has been gradually sinking ever since the independence of the United States. But that event was the result of political causes not confined in their operation to the English colonies. They were at work in South America, as well as North America. In less than fifty years after the peace of 1783, all the States of South America fell away, at a blow, from a state of colonial dependence. How long that blow had been preparing, the suddenness, the completeness of the change fully showed. Nothing had been wanting but the signal and the opportunity; and Napoleon's seizure of Spain was all that was needed to precipitate an event that must have come in the political order of nature. Within five years from the 1st of August, 1823, when Bolivar's iron hail beat down the Spanish ranks of La Serna, at Ayacucho, in Peru, there was not an European colony in all the continent of South America, except the little settlements of Guiana; and the British Provinces are all that remain on the continent of North America. How far they are an exception to the spirit of the rule, a glance at their progress in liberal principles of government, at the constant and ever increasing spirit of liberality and concession which has animated the legislation of England, both in matters purely political, and, in particular, on affairs of trade, from the revolution to this day,

* Say's Political Economy, Book 1., C. XIX.

+ Thucydides, B. I., § 34. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, I. p. 113.

at their growth in trade and industry, and the progress of internal improvements, which have accompanied this political emancipation, will amply show.

The 4th of July, 1776, marks an epoch for the States of British America as well as for the United States. The same thing, indeed, may be said of many other and more distant nations. France, Constitutional Germany, the States of South America, may all date from the 4th of July, for the revolution, certainly one of the most fruitful events in history, furnishes a point of historical departure for every one of them. But of the Canadas, this is especially true. Their political and material development began with our own. Although their external political relations remained the same, the northern colonies entered with us upon a new career at the revolution. A brief review of colonial history will show how. And here it may be interesting to go a little further back and more fully into details than Mr. Andrews has done.

One of the first measures of Congress, at the beginning of the war, when the fearful odds impressed upon them the necessity of strengthening their position in every quarter, was to issue an address "To the oppressed inhab itants of Canada," calling upon them to make common cause with their brethren of the United Colonies. The address, which was issued on the 29th of May, 1775, produced some effect. But the British government had already foreseen this danger, and the disastrous consequences of losing so important a basis of military operations as the northern provinces afforded. Simultaneously, therefore, with the system of coercive measures-beginning with the Boston Port Bill-adopted towards the United Colonies, began a policy of concession and indulgence towards the Canadas, the first measure being the famous Quebec Bill. That bill, if it drew the Canadas closer to England, and saved them to the crown, only served to widen the breach with the United Colonies, and, to add to political animosity, the bitterness of religious feeling. The bill was directly framed to catch the French and the Catholic sympathies and interests of Canada. The population at that time was of almost unmixed French descent. In fact, of the present population of the Canadas, about 600,000 are of French origin, and nearly unmixed French blood. Wolf's triumph on the Hights of Abraham relieved them of the despotism of the Intendant of Louis XIV., Bigot, but little or nothing had been done to provide them with a regular form of government, until policy prompted such measures as the Quebec Bill. This policy will account for what otherwise seems inexplicable, that the Canadians, a people of French blood, of Catholic faith, were precisely those colonists whose fidelity to their heretical rulers was least shaken. The Quebec Bill made political concessions amply sufficient to satisfy men instructed in no higher principles of political liberty than their fathers brought with them from the France of Louis XIV. But what was of most consequence, the act, at the same time that it restored the Coutume de Paris, the French system of proceedure, and the French language in civil matters, made ample concessions to the religious opinions of the French, abolished the oaths of abjuration and supremacy, and substituted a modified oath of allegiance.

This is a Catholic chapter in the history of the United States, which may be read without bitterness or regret. But the bitterness of feeling, which this measure at the time caused in the Protestant hearts of America, found its lightest expression in caricature, which represented Quebec sitting in triumph on its hights, on one side, and on the other Boston in flames, while, in the foreground, a Roman Catholic priest is kneeling with uplifted crucifix

in one hand and gibbet in the other, apparently presenting to an honest American yeoman, armed only with a club, an alternative which John Bull is enforcing with a blunderbuss. The bill was entitled a bill "For making more effectual provision for the government of the Province of Quebec, in North America." It established a Legislative Council, with every power but that of levying taxes, the members of which were to be appointed by the crown. Canadian Catholics were entitled to sit in the Council. The Catholic clergy, with the exception of the regular orders, were secured in the exercise of their religious duties, and in the enjoyment of their tithes. Colonel Barré thought he detected in the scheme a plan "to raise a popish army to serve in the colonies," and from his place in the House of Commons warned the ministry that in such case "all hope of peace in America will be destroyed. The Americans will look on the Canadians as their taskmasters, and, in the end, their executioners." Intrinsically just as these concessions, religious and political, doubtless were, it was the motive of policy lurking beneath which led Congress to denounce the Quebec Bill in the Declaration of Independence, as an attempt to abolish "the free system of English laws in a neighboring province," and which led the people of the colonies to brand the ministry as papists and enemies to the Constitution.

Whatever the motive, the concession was made; and it was the fruit of American resistance. The first step in colonial freedom was gained through the American Revolution, which in fact began to bear its fruits for Canada sooner than for ourselves. Independence came: political separation from England brought with it, of course, political separation from the colonies on the north of our great Mediterranean lakes. They became to us foreign States; and all laws, including those of trade and navigation, in force between foreign nations, controlled our relations with the colonies. The same prohibitory navigation system, the same restrictive tariff, weighed down our Commerce with them as with England.

And yet, at this moment of almo-t utter separation, we were, in one sense, nearer having entire reciprocity of trade than we ever were since.

"Immediately after the conclusion of the preliminary articles of peace in November, 1782," says Mr. Andrews," Mr. Pitt, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced into the House of Commons (March, 1783) a bill for the regulation of trade and intercourse between the people of Great Britain and of the United States, which, had it been adopted, would have laid a broad foundation for a perpetual peace and harmony between the two countries.

"This bill, after declaring in the preamble that the thirteen United States of North America had lately been solemnly acknowledged by the king to be free, sovereign, and independent States, proceeded first to repeal all the statutes of regulation or prohibition of intercourse which had been theretofore enacted. It then recited that the ships and vessels of the people of the United States had, while they were British subjects, been admitted into the ports of Great Britain with all the privileges and advantages of British built ships; that, by the then existing regulations of Great Britain, foreigners, as aliens, were liable to various commercial restrictions, duties, and customs, at the ports of Great Britain, which had not been applicable to the inhabitants of the United States.

"The following remarkable language is contained in the bill:

"And whereas it is highly expedient that the intercourse between Great Britain and the United States should be established on the most enlarged principles of reciprocal benefit to both countries, but, from the distance between Great Britain and America, it must be a considerable time before any convention or treaty

• Lossing's Pictorial Revolution, where the caricature may be found engraved,