A.D. 1776 
—1850. 
Protection 
was with- 
Spann frm 
Canadian 
lumber in 
accordance 
with Free 
Trade 
doctrine. 
356 
LAISSEZ FAIRE 
awakened to a new sense of responsibility to the Indians 
at an early date in the nineteenth century. The interrup- 
tion of trade during the Napoleonic War! had brought the 
Company to the verge of ruin; and the Indians, who had 
come to be dependent for their very existence on supplies 
of ammunition from Europe, were reduced to a state of 
terrible distress?. The most serious economic difficulties, in 
connection with the remaining British possessions on the 
American Continent, arose in consequence of the new 
economic policy which England was adopting. The com- 
plications which occurred in regard to the Importation of 
cereals from Canada were the occasion of the repeal of the 
Navigation Acts, and the adoption of Free Trade led, in 
1860, to the discontinuance of the preference which Canada 
had enjoyed, since 1803, for the supplying the mother- 
country with timber3, while the West Indies suffered in a 
1 The exportation of furs for sale at the markets of Leipsic and Frankfort 
became impossible for some years after 1806. Willson. The Great Company, 
362. 
2 In a petition sent in 1809 to the Chaneellor of the Exchequer the Company 
states that “the nations of hunters taught for one hundred and fifty years the 
nse of fire-arms could no more resort, with certainty, to the bow or the javelin for 
their daily subsistence. Accustomed to the hatchet of Great Britain, they could 
il adopt the rude sharpened stone to the purposes of building, and until years of 
misery and of famine had extirpated the present race they could not recur to the 
simple arts by which they supported themselves before the introduction of British 
manufactures. As the outfits of the Hudson's Bay Company consist principally 
of articles which long habit have tanght them now to consider of first necessity, if 
we withhold these outfits we leave them destitute of their only means of support.” 
Beckles Willson, Great Company, p. 863. 
3 The Northern Colonies had never had such favour bestowed upon them as 
the West Indian Colonies; but lumber, one of their principal products, had been 
protected by a discriminating duty. This pressed very heavily on timber imported 
from Memel and the North of Europe. During the war the duty on European 
limber per load of 50 cubic feet was raised from 6s. 8d. to 653., while the duty on 
tolonial timber was never more than 2s. and that was removed before the close of 
the war. In 1821, in accordance with the recommendations of a Parliamentary 
Committee, the rate on European timber was fixed at 55s. and on colonial at 10s. 
(Porter, Progress of Nations, 874), and this appears to have had the effect of 
greatly invigorating the colonial timber trade. It was, however, alleged that the 
effect of these duties was to render timbar dear in this country, to put a premium 
on the use of inferior qualities, and to encourage owners to use ships which had 
better have been broken up for fuel. There was consequently a steady attack 
apon the timber duties, as there had been on the sugar duties; but as they did not 
affect an article of ordinary domestic consumption, comparatively little public 
interest was aroused on the matter, and Canada continued to enjoy the advantage 
of this tariff till 1860 (Dowell, op. est. 11. 358).