Sixty Years in Canada (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII. The Glasgow Rec1proc1ty Assoc1at1on. The "canny Scotchmen" of Glasgow must needs have their fingers in this Canadian pie. They established a Glasgow Reciprocity Association, the object of which was declared to be "to obtain free trade with foreign States on the basis of a true and equitable recriprocity, and to adopt all reasonable and legitimate means to promote the interests of British and Colonial industry." These Scotchmen maintained that "it was the duty of the British Legislature to have established free trade with the Colonies to the utmost extent warranted by the state of the revenue before proceeding to give to our foreign rivals the unrestricted, untaxed, unreciprocated privilege of competing in the British markets with heavily taxed British industry." The Glasgow Association evidently feared that the British American League would go over to the Annexationists, for it exhorts them to be true to their allegiance, and reminds them of their great inheritance in North America, adding, "and that to the North American Colonists, aided by England, belong, by way of the St Lawrence and lakes, the trade of the far west, a trade only yet in its infancy, and capable of such extention as defies calculation." These "Glasgow bodies" continue: --" The Colonists ought to consider well the advantages they possess; to sympathise and co-operate with their countrymen at home in obtaining reforms and just concessions from the Imperial Legislature rather than countenance any party, who, to serve private ends, may suggest separation from the protection and wealth and power of Britain, in order to begin a competition with the rival States of the Union." These warnings so far as Montreal was concerned, passed unheeded, for the question of peaceable annexati...