Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 
\ SECTION II 

SERIES III JUNE 1916 VoL. X 

The Economic Effect of War upon Canada 
Presidential Address by Dr. ADAM SHORTT, C.M.G. 
(Read May Meeting, 1916.) 
The accepted economic principles and practical deductions, until 
quite recent times, were, very naturally, founded upon European 
experience and policy. At the same time, those who observed con- 
ditions in other portions of the world, particularly those parts with 
which the European nations were brought in contact, either through 
colonial enterprise or foreign trade, were often seriously puzzled on 
finding that the most widely accepted principles under European 
conditions were apt to work in quite erratic and even unreasonable 
ways in other parts of the world. Thus, even the astutest advocates 
of the navigation laws and other restrictions upon freedom of trade and 
shipping, were constrained to admit that, in America at least, the 
chief basis of European profits from colonial and foreign trade were 
dependent upon a systematic violation of all these drastic measures. 
Sir Joshua Child, one of the prominent members of the East 
India Company, having an intimate practical knowledge of the early 
colonial and foreign trade of Britain, while strongly advocating the 
usual orthodox faith in the wisdom of the navigation laws and the 
monopoly of colonial trade, yet was forced to admit, as the result of his 
practical experience, that the prosperity of the British American colon- 
onies and the enormous wealth which they brought to the mother 
country, were mainly due to the systematic violation of these laws 
and that policy. Hence, as he says, while outwardly and in theory 
supporting the existing law and policy, yet quietly and in practice, 
the Government should put the telescope to its blind eye when con- 
sidering the actual manner in which the riches brought from the 
American colonies have been acquired, and should not exhibit any 
zeal in enforcing beyond the Atlantic the accepted navigation and 
colonial laws. . 
In France, however, the government of the colonial possessions 
was administered much more thoroughly and maintained a rigid 
Sec. II, Sig. 5 
