[souriNor] ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE PROVINCES A1 
opposition to British enterprise. It is quite intelligible then why trade 
languished, internal development was retarded, landed property de- 
creased in value, the revenue showed a diminution, roads and all classes 
of local improvements were neglected, and agricultural industry was 
stagnant, wheat had to be imported for the consumption of the people, 
and immigration fell off from fifty-two thousand in 1832 to less than 
five thousand in 1838. 
In the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and 
Prince Edward Island, there were no racial antagonisms to affect inter- 
nal development, and the political conflict never reached such propor- 
tions as to threaten the peace and security of the people. In New 
Brunswick the chief industry was the timber trade—deals especially— 
which received its first stimulus in 1809, when a heavy duty was placed 
on Baltic timber, while that from the colonies came free into the British 
Isles. An unfortunate catastrophe which even momentarily paralyzed 
industry, and elicited the active sympathy of all British people on both 
sides of the Atlantic, was the forest fire of 1825, which destroyed a 
number of villages, many hundreds of lives, great quantities of cattle 
and wild animals, and many thousands acres of valuable spruce and pine. 
Shipbuilding was also profitably followed in New Brunswick, and was 
beginning to be prosecuted in Nova Scotia, where, a few years later, it 
made that province one of the greatest ship-owning and ship-sailing 
communities of the world until iron steamers gradually drove wooden 
vessels from the carrying trade. The cod, mackerel, and herring 
fisheries—chiefly the first—were the staple industry of Nova Scotia, 
and kept up a large trade with the West Indies whence sugar, molasses 
and rum were exported. Prince Edward Island was chiefly an agricul- 
tural community, whose development was greatly retarded by the whole- 
sale grant of lands in 1767, to absentee proprietors and the disputes and. 
d:fficulties constantly arising out of this short-sighted policy. Halifax 
and St. John had each a population of twenty thousand. The houses 
were mostly of wood, and the only buildings of importance were the 
Government House, completed in 1805, and the Provincial or Parliament 
House considered in its day one of the handsomest structures in North 
America, and even now worthy of notice for its perfect proportions 
which at least cannot be hidden by the smoke of soft coal, and the fogs 
of the sea, that in the course of eighty years have darkened the beauti- 
ful stone of which it was originally constructed. Halifax society was 
given its tone by the military and navy, who have always from 1749 
made it the North American headquarters, and cards and hard drinking 
were the ruin of many brilliant men in the days of which I am writing, 
