DOMINION OF CANADA. 



213 



nals; $8,730 on public buildings ; and $6,109,- 

 077 on railroads, of which latter amount $2,- 

 048,014 were expended on the Intercolonial, 

 and $4,044,522 on the Pacific Railway. 



Numerous changes were made in the tariff, 

 nearly all of them in the direction of extend- 

 ing and increasing the protection of home in- 

 dustry. The malt duty of two cents per pound 

 was reduced in the interest of the brewers to 

 fifteen cents per bushel. In the original tariff 

 a high duty was imposed upon woolens, while 

 wool was left on the free list. To disarm the 

 opposition to the national policy which was 

 gaming ground among the farming population, 

 a protective duty was placed upon certain 

 grades of wool, without, however, materially 

 benefiting the farmers, since the Canadian 

 sheep-growers have bred their stock to mutton, 

 and must export the greater part of their wool- 

 clip, which is only used in the manufacture of 

 blankets in Canada, while the woolen manu- 

 facturers have to import most of their mate- 

 rial. The duty is three cents per pound, and cov- 

 ers "Leicester, Lincolnshire, Cotswold, Down, 

 combing wools, or wools known as luster wools, 

 and other like combing wools, such as. are 

 grown in Canada." A drawback of one and a 

 half cent a pound on blasting explosives was 

 allowed to miners. The duty on brown and 

 common papers was raised from one to one and 

 a half cents a pound. Paris green, before on 

 the free list, was subjected to 10 per cent. 

 duty ad valorem. Duties of 25 per cent, were 

 placed upon emery-wheels and on gold and 

 silver leaf. A discriminating duty was placed 

 upon bituminous coal in the interest of the 

 Nova Scotia miners, the ten cents additional 

 duty raising the rate on soft coal to sixty cents 

 per ton. An additional duty of five per cent, 

 was imposed upon pianos and organs, and on 

 billiard-tables, making the duty 15 per cent. 

 A duty on cans was levied in retaliation for 

 the famous lobster-can duty imposed by Con- 

 gress; it is the same as the American duty, 

 one and a half cents on quart-cans containing 

 fish under the Washington Treaty, and a pro- 

 portionately increased duty on larger cans. The 

 duty on demijohns containing vinegar, wine, 

 or acids was reduced from 20 to 10 per cent. 

 China and porcelain are taxed 25 instead of 

 20 per cent. The duty on raw sugar was fixed 

 upon the import price, including the export 

 taxes of the exporting countries. The duty on 

 trunks was raised to 30 per cent. The duty 

 on books was raised from six cents per pound 

 to 15 per cent, ad valorem, including British 

 copyright books. Steel remains on the free 

 list for another year. The duty on cigars and 

 cigarettes was changed from 50* to 60 per cent. 



In reply to inquiries of the Governor-General, 

 made in a letter dated May 3, 1879, Sir Michael 

 Hicks-Beach thus defines the policy of the Im- 

 perial Government with respect to the protec- 

 tive tariff: 



In connection with the new customs tariff now 

 under the consideration of the Dominion Parliament 



it has been asked whether the royal instructions is- 

 sued to you omitted for the first time the clause re- 

 quiring that Lills imposing differential duties should 

 be reserved for her Majesty's approval. It will be 

 apparent from a perusal of the papers that the clause 

 in the former royal instructions requiring that certain 

 classes of bills and among them bills imposing dif- 

 ferential duties should be reserved for her Majesty's 

 approval was, at the instance of the late Government 

 of the Dominion, omitted from the revised royal in- 

 structions because her Majesty's Government thought 

 it undesirable that those instructions should contain 

 anything which could be interpreted as limiting or de- 

 fining the legislative powers conferred in 1807 on the 

 Dominion Parliament. It was, therefore, not with 

 reference to the fiscal policy of your present Ministers, 

 which _ indeed was not at the time in contemplation, 

 that this particular alteration was made, nor does it hi 

 any way diminish the powers of reservation and dis- 

 allowance which are fully and clearly set forth in the 

 " British North America Act of 1867." 



The dominion and jurisdiction over all the 

 British possessions, with the exception of New- 

 foundland with its dependencies, which colony 

 has not yet entered the Confederation, have 

 been formally transferred to the Dominion by 

 the Imperial Government. 



A boundary question between the Ontario 

 and Dominion governments, which had been 

 adjusted by a commission under the previous 

 Ministry, composed of Sir Edward Thornton, 

 Sir Francis Hicks, and Chief-Justice Harrison, 

 subject to the ratification of the two Legisla- 

 tures, was again unsettled by a bill brought 

 into the Dominion Parliament providing for 

 the administration of justice in the disputed 

 territory. The arbitrators had fixed the west- 

 ern boundary of Ontario at a line running due 

 north from Hunter's Island, and had drawn the 

 northern boundary-line connecting the point 

 on Hudson Bay, struck by a line running 

 north from Lake Temiscaming as the north- 

 eastern limit, with a northwestern point on the 

 Lake of the Woods. The delineation of the 

 northern boundary involves an historical inves- 

 tigation of the treaties and laws defining the 

 frontier between the Hudson Bay Company's 

 possessions on the one hand, and on the other 

 the old French colony, and the provinces of 

 Upper and Lower Canada which were formed 

 therefrom. It establishes,therefore,not only the 

 northern limit of Ontario, but that of Quebec 

 as well. The Hudson Bay Company claimed, 

 in their controversies with the British Govern- 

 ment on this question, that their territory was 

 bounded by the " height of land," or the water- 

 shed between the Great Lakes and Hudson 

 Bay. In the controversies between the British 

 and French Governments in the beginning of 

 the last century, the French colony claimed the 

 fifty-fifth parallel of latitude as its northern 

 boundary, and the company insisted on the 

 fifty-third, which is coincident with the Albany 

 River. The northern boundary of Ontario, de- 

 fined above, was determined in accordance 

 with the act of the British Parliament dividing 

 the colony into two provinces in 1791, which 

 fixed the eastern boundary of the Upper Prov- 

 ince and its northeastern point on the line 



