TRADE of the HUDSON BAY COMPANY IN FUrs, &c. 535

The fur trade is, of late years, on the decline, and I think the Hudson Bay Company will have shortly to turn their attention to fishing, or to some other object.*

The sable can scarcely be called second to the ermine. In its habits, it resembles the ermine. It preys on small squirrels and birds, sleeps in hollow trees by day and prowls for food during the night. It is so like the martin in every particular except its size, and the dark shade of its colour, that naturalists have not decided whether it is the richest and finest of the martin tribe, or a variety of that species. It varies in dimensions from eighteen to twenty inches.

The fiery fox is the bright red of Asia; is more brilliantly coloured and of finer fur than any other of the genus. It is the standard of value on the north-eastern coast of Asia.

The sea otter which was first introduced into commerce in 1725, from the Aleutian and Kurile Islands is an exceedingly fine, soft, close fur, jet black in winter with a silken gloss. The fur of the young animal is of a beautiful brown colour. It is met with in great abundance in Behring's Island, Kamschatka, the Aleutian and Fox Islands, and is also taken on the opposite coasts of North America. It is sometimes taken with nets, but more frequently with clubs and spears. Their food is principally lobster and other shell fish.

The whole area of the Hudson Bay, North-West, and Pacific Ocean Territory is 3,700,000 square miles, of which about 1,000,000 square miles is in lakes, rivers, &c.

Shipping employed by the British North American Colonies with England, West Indies, &c. in 1834.*

9174 469 1263 82275 4416 307 40620 2020 55 11476 525 239 12850 779 529 27948 1793

51 2026 237039 11989 511 153392 6603 9 876 67853 3684 102, 297291269|

20562 1074
59
95
9739, 947

80 9485 541 142 17299 1084 892 95842 5555 151 18515 1122 73 7796 503 377, 34531 1911

CHAPTER IX.

COMMERCE AND SHIPPING OF THE BRITISH NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES

TIMBER AND Grain trade, UNITED STATES commerce, &c.

The ample details of the trade of each colony given under their respective chapters, almost precludes the necessity of a separate section on the subject; the importance of this trade to England and to her colonies in a maritime point of view, will be seen by the table on the opposite page, though the period quoted was an unfavourable one owing to the prevalence of the cholera.

One of the most important branches of our trade with the North American colonies is that in timber, and which has been so much decried by the theorists or interested parties of the day, who have so nearly ruined England by their absurd attempt to force a free trade with France or the Baltic, in other words, to make a man with 500lbs. weight on his back run as fast as another without a feather to carry. This trade has in our northern colonies a fixed capital employed in it to the amount of 2,150,000l. sterling in the erection of saw mills, canals, wharfs, warehouses, &c.; it enables the colonies to receive the vast immigration which has been pouring into them from the mother country;-it provides means for paying for the large and annually increasing quantity of British manufactures consumed in our colonies-it gives employment to nearly 300,000 tons of English shipping; it prevents us being at the mercy of foreign countries for an extensive supply of an article indispensible to a maritime nation, and which previous to the creation of the Canada timber trade gave to our rivals "exorbitant profits, the power of enforcing arbitrary rates and excessive profits,"-*it enables us in turn to govern the prices of

Language of the enactment of 1809, when Government stimulated the colonists to embark in the timber trade by pledging its faith for protecting duties against undue foreign competition.

538 COMPARISON BETWEEN BALTIC AND CANADIAN TIMBER.

foreign timber as shown in the annexed table, for if colonial competition were removed, the Baltic merchants would not be slow in availing themselves of the monopoly which the destruction of the Canadas' timber trade would give them, for to place the duties on the wood of each country on an equality would be tantamount to the immediate destruction of our Colonial trade the shipping engaged in which cannot make more than two voyages in the year, while the Baltic merchant may send his vessel four times to England in the same period -and is not obliged to keep his ships lying idle during the winter as is the case with the Canadian merchant,-to say nothing of the inferior cost in building and diminished charges in navigating a Baltic as compared with a British ship, though both now enter our ports on the same terms.

GRAIN EXPORTED FROM NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 539

I do not, indeed, think that any Government however infected with the free trade mania, or so unnational as to seek the destruction of our colonial, and with them the home, interests for the sake of benefitting any speculative builder, will yet be tolerated by the nation; and it is to be hoped that the Imperial Parliament will not permit the continuance in office of a set of men, who either for their own interests as connected with Baltic mercantile houses-or for the sake of gratifying a meddling propensity which has of late existed for pulling down and shaking every interest in the country and settling nothing;-I repeat my hope that no Government thus acting will long retain office in a great maritime and colonial empire, whose affairs if left to the management of the visionary school of philosophical economists would speedily come to ruin.*

The false and mischievous statements put forth respecting Canada timber I have adverted to in the first Chapter, and I proceed to notice another important branch of trade now springing up in our north colonies, I allude to that of wheat and flour, the progress of which is shown by the following quantities of corn, grain, meal and flour imported into the United Kingdom from the British North American colonies from 1815 to 1833 :

Years.

:

Qrs. Years. Qrs. Years. Qrs. Years. Qrs. Years. Qrs.

The Cholera has checked Commerce during the last two years. This trade is capable of great extension, and will doubtless increase. I have shown under Newfoundland the importance of our fisheries, and the general details in each Chapter will suffice to convey a clear idea of their extent in each colony, as also that of other articles. I must now bring this Chap

By Free Trade Mania, I wish it to be understood that system of de