158 REPORT OF THE No. 3 



addition of 2d. in case tlie shipment was made in a foreign vessel. In 1795 

 the financial strain, caused by the war, occasioned a substantial increase, 

 and a series of additions took place during the following years, the details 

 of which it is needless to specify, until in 1810, which marks the commence- 

 ment of the protective era, the timber duty was placed at £21.4.8 per load 

 in a British ship, and 2s. 8d. extra in a foreign vessel. The culmination was 

 reached in 1813, when an addition of 25 per cent, all round on customs 

 duties was imposed, making the timber duty £3.4.11, with an additional 

 3s. 2d. when carried under a foreign flag. A very slight re-adjustment took 

 place in 1819, when the war duties, originally designed to be merely tem- 

 porary, were consolidated with the permanent imposts. The system was 

 again revised in 1821, and a considerable reduction was made; the duty on 

 foreign timber being fixed at £2 15s. per load, with the addition of 2s. 9d. 

 for the protection of the British carrying trade. Then for the first time a 

 substantial duty, amounting to 10s, per load was imposed on colonial tim- 

 ber, which up to that time had been virtually free, and which still was 

 accorded the protection of 45 shillings per load, as against the European 

 product. 



The effects of this policy were soon manifested in the falling off of 

 importations from the Baltic and other European ports, which in the begin- 

 ning of the century furnished nearly the whole of the timber shipped to 

 Britain, and the corresponding increase of colonial production and exporta- 

 tion. 



A Colonial Timber Bootti. 



An elaborate statistical table, showing the amount of timber con- 

 sumed in the United Kingdom in each year between 1788 and 1833, with 

 the quantities imported from the North American colonies and Europe 

 respectively, was furnished to a Select Committee of the British House of 

 Commons, appointed in 1835 to consider the question of timber duties. An 

 analysis of these figures shows conclusively the effect of the policy of the 

 Imperial Government in encouraging the development of the Colonial tim- 

 ber industry, which had increased by leaps and bounds. During earlier 

 stages of the period covered by this table, comparatively little change is 

 noticeable in the relative volumes of the European and British North Ameri- 

 can traffic — ^the increase in duty not being sufficient to overcome the strong 

 prejudice then widely entertained against Canadian as compared with Bal- 

 tic timber, and to counterbalance the lower freight from European ports. 

 The first noteworthy increase in the volume of the colonial importation was 

 in 1803, when the number of loads brought in from British North America 

 increased from 5,143 the figure at which it had stood the year previous to 

 12,133. The European importations for the same year amounted to 280,550 

 loads. The proportion of colonial timber steadily increased for some years, 

 until in 1807 it reached 26,651 loads, as against 213,636 loads of the foreign 

 product. The next year it had more than doubled, and in 1809 exceeded for 

 the first time the European consignments, the figures being 90,829 and 

 54,2B0 loads r<*spectively. 



In 1811 the United Kingdom received timber shipments to the amount 

 of 154,282 loads from British North America, and 124,765 loads from 

 European ports. The war of 1812 caused a depression in the colonial trade, 

 during which the foreign article took the lead until 1816, when the colonies 

 supplied nearly twice the quantity furnished by Europe. The volume of 

 British American importation rose from 153,707 loads in that year to 

 248,669 in 1818. The figures of the trade at this period, and some years 



