[souriNor] ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE PROVINCES 37 
Kingston district. The Grenville Canal on the Ottawa was the natural 
sequence of this canal as it gave safe navigation between Bytown and 
Montreal. 
The province of Upper Canada had in 1838 reached a crisis in its 
affairs. In the course of the seven years preceding the rebellion, prob- 
ably eighty thousand, or one-half of the immigrants who had come to 
the province had crossed the frontier into the United States, where 
greater inducements were held out to capital and population. Lord 
Durham referred emphatically “to the striking contrast which is pre- 
sented between the American and the British sides of the frontier lne 
in respect to every sign of productive industry, increasing wealth, and 
progressive civilization.” Mrs. Jameson as she floated in a canoe in 
the middle of the Detroit river, saw on the one side “all the bustle of 
prosperity and commerce,” and on the other “all the symptoms of 
apathy, indolence, mistrust, hopelessness.” At the time such compari- 
sons were made, Upper Canada was on the very verge of bankruptcy. 
The interest on the public debt was sixty-five thousand pounds cur- 
rency and the annual deficit in the revenue was forty-two thousand 
_ pounds, without any prospect of an increasing revenue to meet the pub- 
lic necessities. The time had certainly come for a radical change in 
political conditions, which had nearly ruined a province of remarkable 
natural resources. 
Turning to Lower Canada, we find that the financial position of 
the province was very different from that of Upper Canada. The gross 
revenue, which in 1792 was only six million six hundred and thirty 
thousand pounds currency below the expenditure for civil government— 
had risen in 1835 to two hundred and five thousand nine hundred and 
one pounds—after deducting all cost of collection and Upper Canada’s 
share of duties—for all the public purposes of the province. There 
was actually a surplus and the financial difficulties of the province were 
caused by the disputes between the executive and the assembly which 
would not vote the necessary supplies. The timber trade had grown to 
large proportions and constituted the principal export to Great Britain 
from Quebec, which presented a scene of much activity in the summer. 
Montreal, however, was already showing its great advantages as a head- 
quarters of commerce on account of its natural relations to the west and 
the United States. Quebec and Montreal had about the same number 
of inhabitants, thirty-five thousand each, and yet Lord Durham was 
forced to acknowledge that Montreal, founded two hundred years be- 
fore, and “naturally the commercial capital of the Canadas would not 
bear the least comparison with even Buffalo, a creation of yesterday.” 
