TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 741 



5. Characteristics of Canadian Economic History, 

 By Professor A. Siiortt. 



6. Economic History of Canada. By J. Castell Hopkins. 



The author traced the various experimental policies in force through the days 

 of the fur trade and French rule ; the period of preferential British tariffs and the 

 colonial restrictions of the Navigation Laws ; the effect of the abrogation of the 

 Corn Laws upon Canada ; the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 and the effects of its 

 abrogation in 1866 ; the period from 1867 to 1872 of a nominal revenue tariff 

 policy which, through extraneous causes, was one of practical protection ; the 

 revenue tariff years of 1873-79 in which American manufactures swept Canadian 

 competitors out of their own field ; the years of positive protection which followed 

 from then to the present time. 



The influences of free-trade and protection, or alternate dependency upon the 

 American market, and upon the British fiscal system, up to the development of 

 Canadian fiscal independence, and the ability to regulate the Dominion tariff in 

 accordance with the wishes of its own people, and in harmony with its obligations 

 to the Empire, were traced at length. Some time was also given to a consideration 

 of the efforts made after confederation in 1867 to obtain reciprocity with the 

 United States. 



The conclusion drawn was that Canada's true policy was one of closer com- 

 mercial relations with the Empire and the steady development of public opinion 

 in favour of a preferential taritt' system within its bounds. As to the past, the 

 author believed that Canada had practically run the whole gamut of fiscal 

 experiment and experience, and had tried every form of fiscal arrangement known 

 to theory or practical government. 



SATURDAY, AUGUST 21. 

 The Section did not meet. 



MONDAY, AUGUST 23. 

 The following Papers were read : — 

 1. National Policy and International Trade. By Edwin Cannan, M.A. 



The most widely followed and most generally approved policy in the civilised 

 world is still undoubtedly, as it has been for two or three centuries, the encourage- 

 ment of exportation and the discouragement of importation. This policy is no 

 longer founded on the idea that it is necessary in order to secure a large stock of 

 the precious metals ; that notion is completely obsolete. Nor is it founded on the 

 wish for diversification of industries ; this is shown by the popularity of the 

 Zollverein idea, which evidently sets no value whatever on local diversification of 

 industries even in an Empire consisting of enormous and scattered territories. 

 Nor, finally, is it founded on the idea of maintaining national security, or the host 

 of other reasons of a particularist, local, and consequently contradictory character 

 alleged by its more ingenious advocates in various countries. Its true source is to 

 be looked for in the fact that exports are supposed to give employment, and 

 imports to take it away, so that encouragement of exports and discouragement of 

 imports tends to increase employment. The usual free-trade answers that exports 

 only balance imports are unsatisfactory, and left a loophole for the entrance of the 



