370 PROFITS ON LAND IN CANADA. 



pete with Canada in the foreign markets, I mentioned 

 to an extensive miller whom I met with in Upper 

 Canada, on occasion of his complaining that the Eoches- 

 ter millers came over and bought the fine white wheat 

 of Toronto at prices which he could not afford to pay. 

 On this he remarked, after some hesitation, that " the 

 Canadian would have to learn to be content with a 

 profit of 5 per cent, when he had hitherto been accus- 

 tomed to 50!" Large profits and long credits are 

 always the characteristics of an infantile and circum- 

 scribed commerce in a new country like this. Facility 

 and rapidity of communication, by shortening credits, 

 and enabhng the same capital to go farther, make large 

 reductions in the rate of profit consistent with equal 

 gains, on the whole, to the enterprising and intelligent 

 merchant. 



I have had other occasions to feel surprise at the 

 large profits expected in Canada from the investment 

 of capital. It having been mentioned to me that a 

 friend of mine in Lower Canada had expended £15,000 

 in the purchase of a seignory, and that the return was 

 £1500 a-year, or 10 per cent on the outlay, I — natu- 

 rally enough, as we should think in this country — 

 expressed my surprise at so large a return from invest- 

 ments in land. An influential member of the Canadian 

 Legislature, who was present, on the other hand, con- 

 sidered it small, was surprised that similar investments 

 in England did not yield so much, and stated that, were 

 he to invest £15,000 in land in his own district of 

 Upper Canada, he should expect from it a return of 

 .£^3000 a-year, or 20 per cent. In what way, whether 

 by farming it himself, or by letting it or selling it to 

 others, he was to reaHse this return, I did not learn; 

 but the possibility of doing so, except in some special 

 case, I very much doubt. 



But that some persons, at least, are satisfied of the 



