1160 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART V
of the Act arrived he would probably feel bound to assent
to it, but he considered it his duty no less to the Colony than
to the Mother Country to express his regret ‘ that the ex-
perience of England, which has fully proved the injurious
effect of the protective system and the advantage of low
duties upon manufactures both as regards trade and revenue,
should be lost sight of, and that such an Act as the present
should have passed. I much fear the effect of the law will
be that the greater part of the new duty will be paid to
the Canadian producer by the Colonial consumer, whose
interests, as it seems to me, have not been sufficiently con-
sidered on this occasion.’ In a later dispatch of November 5,
1859, the Secretary of State forwarded a letter from the
Privy Council for Trade in which it was said :—
They think, however, that in leaving the Act to its opera-
tion, Her Majesty’s Government should express their regret
that the fiscal requirements of Canada should have compelled
it to resort to a measure so objectionable in principle, and
their apprehension of the injurious effect which it is calculated
to produce upon the industrial progress of the province.
On November 11, 1859, the Governor sent back a reply
from the Canadian Government prepared by Mr. (afterwards
Sir) A. Galt, in which the following vindication was given
of the principles which should regulate the relations in these
matters of the Home and the Colonial Governments :—
The Minister of Finance has the honour respectfully to
submit certain remarks and statements upon the Dispatch of
His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, dated August 13, and upon
the Memorial of the Chamber of Commerce of Sheffield. dated
August 1, transmitted therewith.
Parl. Pap., H. C. 400, 1864, pp. 11, 12. It may be noted that earlier
attempts had been made to forbid the granting of bounties; the Lieute-
nant-Governor of New Brunswick was instructed in 1849 to veto any
such measures, as the result of the grant of a bounty for the cultivation of
hemp; Earl Grey, Colonial Policy, i. 279. A circular dispatch of June 24,
1843, forbade differential duties (see Hannay, New Brunswick, ii. 122) ;
and differential duties were included asa ground of reservation in the royal
instructions to all Governors, and the injunction of reservation is repeated
in Lord Ripon’s dispatch of 1895, which is still binding on all Dominions :
see Parl, Pap., C. 7824, p. 9; below, vn. 1181. n. 4.
