ABSTRACT
The manufacturers of England would themselves be losers, for it would be impossible to maintain the preferences in the colonies, and they would be exposed to strong foreign competition in their securest market.z Lord Ashburton went further and asked, 'Was England to keep the colonies at all this trouble and expense, for the benefit of all the world?' 3 The protest of Stanley and eighty-eight other peers against the third reading of the Bill also urged that it was at variance with the promises held out to Canada, which had induced that colony to layout large sums upon the improvement of its internal navigation; and that it would divert the traffic of the interior from the St. Lawrence to New York 'thus throwing out of employment a large amount of British shipping, severing the commercial interests of Canada from those of the parent country, and connecting those interests most intimately with the United States of America'.4
