COMMERCE OF AMERICA.

[ORDER OF TREATMENT:-North America; Central America; South America; West

Indies.]

NORTH AMERICA.

COMMERCE OF THE DOMINION OF CANADA.

According to official returns, the foreign commerce of the Dominion of Canada was as follows during the fiscal year 1881: Imports, $105,330,840, the largest import trade of any single year since 1875; exports, $98,220,823, the largest export trade of any single year in the commercial history of the Dominion.

The total trade of the Dominion since 1868, the date of the formation of the confederation, is given as follows: Imports, $1,364,912,901; exports, $1,099,317,300-an excess of imports in fourteen years of $265,595,601.

The trade of the Dominion for the year 1881, as above given, requires some modification in order to arrive at a true estimate thereof, viz: The value of the imports entered for consumption during the year is given as amounting to $91,611,604, and the exports of Canadian produce and manufactures as amounting to $83,450,000. This, therefore, may be set down as the extent of the commerce proper of Canada, the difference between which and the full returns given above representing simply the transit or transshipment of foreign goods, the greater portion of which are goods the produce and manufacture of the United States, and which, as will be seen by the table of imports into Great Britain, are entered in British returns as Canadian goods.

The total trade proper of the Dominion of Canada from the date of confederation to the end of the fiscal year 1881 has been as follows, coin and bullion included: