Report of Society's Meetings. 389 
paper " Commercial Relations with Canada," regretted 
that so few commercial members were present. 
Mr. Nind, referring to what had been said by the 
President with regard to some of the ports of Canada 
being closed in the winter, said that there were a good 
many closed during six months of the year, but the port 
of Halifax was opened all the year round, and at that 
town there were two sugar refineries, and the town itself 
had excellent railway communication with several of the 
principal cities in the Dominion. A writer in one of the 
local papers who evidently wrote from a stand point 
of knowledge, had stated that the ports in Nova 
Scotia and New Brunswick were exactly the ports 
for us to send our produce for the Dominion, and 
these ports were open all the year round. As 
the position of affairs stood now, there were three 
ways of dealing with the present difficulty of the West 
India colonies. One was through the United States and 
the other two were through the home Government. As 
regards overtures between the Imperial Government and 
the United States for the granting by the United States 
of favourable terms to the West Indies, they had, he 
believed, a telegram that day indicating that negotiations 
for a reciprocity treaty were being entered into by the 
Secretary of State for Foreign affairs with the American 
Government. He did not know what it would come to, 
but he was not the least sanguine that the United States 
would agree to a reciprocity treaty with this colony, as 
he did not think America would gain much by such a 
treaty. The abolition of the bounties was another means 
by which they sought for some relief. If any in British 
Guiana were sanguine that the policy of the Imperial 
3C2 
