314 TlMEHRI. 
Of the United States I would merely in this place ob- 
serve that if we had possession of that market under 
Most Favoured Nation treatment, with no differential 
duties against us, we should not look further afield, but 
at the present moment we are not within measurable 
distance of that desirable consummation, and there are 
some considerations which make me think this precarious 
American market may be closed to us. This is a matter 
I will allude to further on. 
The Dominion of Canada then is the only country 
which our excursion round the world has discovered, and 
I will now present some of the reasons which commend 
Canada to our notice as a nation whose custom is not to 
be lightly thought of at the present juncture, and I shall 
endeavour to show that her purchasing power is yearly 
increasing and likely to go on increasing by leaps and 
bounds. 
The Dominion of Canada comes next to the United 
States in capacity for absorbing immigrants, and it will 
take many a decade to plant a tithe of her waste lands 
with Settlements, not because immigration to them is 
sparse or spasmodic, but from their limitless extent. 
Lieutenant Colonel GRANT of Quebec in an interesting 
paper read before the Colonial Institute in February 
1882 describes the North-west territory as having a total 
wheat area of 380,000 square miles, and estimated it to 
be capable of sustaining a population of a hundred 
millions. Yet this vast region is only a fragment of the 
whole, and does not include Manitoba, nor the stock 
raising district of the South Saskatchewan, nor the 
district of Keewatin. 
Another writer on the same topic says, " It is in that 
