Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-02-16
CANADIAN COMMERCIAL UNION

CANADIAN COMMERCIAL UNION.
AT the annual meeting Of the Canadian
Manufacturers Association a resolution
was adopted to the effect that the Associa-
ton was entirely opposed to a commercial
union between Canada and the United
States, because such union would inevitably
result in the sundering of the political ties
uniting Canada to the mother country,
would prejudice the political status of
Canada, and would injure Canadian man
ufacturers. Remarking upon this fact the
Montreal Witness says:
The two first clauses of this are pure buncombe
There is something decidedly comical, to say
the least of it, in the idea that the industrial
interest that brought about the establishment
OF the customs tariff that destroyed the COM
mercial bonds uniting Canada with Great Brit
am, ana that is mainly responsible for the fact
that the debt and Federal taxation of Canada
are now much greater than those of the United
States in ratio to population, should pose as the
champions OF British connection and of Can
ada's political status.
The Witness concludes that the indie
pendent manufacturers are not afraid of
free trade. However, that does not cut a
great figure in the proposition for COM
mercial union. As against the manifesto
of the Manufacturers Association, wehave
the expression of the Ontario Lumber
mems Association in favor of commercial
union, because, it says, " it would greatly
benefit the farmer, the fisherman and the
ll1mharnnau tho pafuroI ,,rod,,oore &c ,,oI,,
able and exchangeable value in Canada"
1t appears to us, as we have previously
said, that the two countries will naturally
profit by it; neither will gain any advan-
tage over the other in the long run. Can
ada is, as the Witness well says, CONNER
cially independent of the mother country,
bnt her loyalty to Great Britain is not for
that reason shaken. She discriminates
now against English importation. but is
none the less true to England politically.
So far as that is concerned then, England
has nothing to fear from commercial union,
aud we do not believe, despite the very
emphatic declaration of Mr.. Chamberlain,
that she would interpose any lasting OBJ
lection.
The question then is simply one of local
development; the two countries have so
much in common commercially that a
transverse customs barrier is hindrance
to the operation of natural laws relating
to this common interest. There is no
reason that has yet been advanced, that
impresses us forcibly, why commercial re-
ciprocity between the two shores of the
great lakes would be any more un-
natural commercially, than non-restraint
of trade between the States of the Union.
II is simply proposition to unite Canada
and the United States commercially while
leaving them politically Independent of
each other; to foster the development of a
region that knows only arbitrary political
lines of division; to give to American
traders the right to avail of natural adj
vantages north of the lakes, and Dominion
traders similar rights south of those
waters
In the development of Canadian re-
sources the United States is almost as
deeply interested as the Dominion, while
the advance of the United States is re-
fected in Canadian prosperity The Ca
madam area is forty times greater than that
of England and Scotland and Wales; its
territory greater by $4,000 square miles
than that of the United States it is six
teen times as large as the German Empire {;
it has a natural wealth in lumber minerals
and soil that rivals our own; it is by no
means narrow zone upon the border of a
frozen wilderness that many think it to be !;
on the contrary, as Lord Selkirk has
shown, the plains Of the Saskatchewan
river, producing every variety of earth
growth of the temperate zone, are capable
OF supporting population of 30,000,000.
The Ottawa river, but one of the affluents
of the st. Lawrence, is $50 miles in length,
and three or four times larger than either
the Thames, Severn or Rhone, and the
Ottawa is but one of half score of great
rivers sweeping through regions of natural
wealth and beauty scarcely surpassed upon
the continent, aud many of them Of
greatest fertility, while their climate is moi
so severe as the Lake Superior region, and
IN summer is more genial than that of the
great lakes. The wheat-growing area o
the Canadas very nearly equals, and some
claim that ii exceeds, that of the United
States, and its two hours of sunlight II
excess, in summer, of that of the Middle
States is an important factor in cerea
growth.
Canada is the richest country in the
world in iron, and its ores are especial,
low in phosphorus. SO, too, the Dominion
is enormously wealthy in copper ant
nickel and many other minerals; her tim
Der supply is exhaustlesS, and her fsherie
are the most important on the globe
Commercial union with such country b
the United States means simply the re
movai of artificial obstacles to the flow Q
trade between English-speaking people Q
the same continent and whose States ar
contiguous.
The conditions in the two countries ar