LAEGE TRADE -PKOFITS IN CANADA. 369 



of the regular liners from New York, often with little 

 cargo, affords frequent opportunities of sending grain 

 and flour to Liverpool at a cost exceeding very little the 

 ordinary Stevedor's charges ;*^ but this cannot materially 

 affect the average freight of the flour, as a whole, which 

 is annually shipped from that port to England. Or it 

 may be said that the Rochester and Oswego millers make 

 use of the fine Toronto wheat for the purpose of mixing 

 only, and can therefore afford to give a higher price for 

 it than the Canadian millers, who use unmixed Canadian 

 wheat for the manufacture of their flour. But we can 

 scarcely suppose that parcels bought for mixing would 

 seriously affect the wheat market of Canada as a whole ; 

 or, if so, that the Canadian millers cannot mix and use 

 up different wheats as profitably as those of Rochester. 



Allowing, however, their full weight to these and 

 similar considerations, I have been unable to satisfy 

 myself that if the exporters of lumber — whose traffic 

 has of late fallen off, and occasioned discontent — instead 

 of countenancing or exciting political turmoil, would 

 push the direct home trade in corn and flour, in place 

 of that in timber, an equal commerce on the whole, and 

 equally profitable to the colony, might be still main- 

 tained with the mother country. 



One of the obstacles which, so far as I have obtained 

 the means of judging, stands in the way of the energetic 

 opening up of a direct wheat and flour traffic with 

 Great Britain, is to be found in the large returns of 

 profit which the merchants look for, and to which, I 

 suppose, they must hitherto have been accustomed. 

 What I have stated in a previous page, as having been 

 told me by a Rochester miller, that the wheat-growers 

 and millers of the United States are unable to com- 



* For loading and unloading. 

 VOL. I. 2 A 



