American-Canadian Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, Despatch from Lord Lyons to Russell, 28 February 1862, Parliamentary Papers (1862), [2993], lxii.839, pp. 841–2, 844, 862.

‘Whereas, under the Treaty made by the United States with Great Britain, on behalf of the North American Colonies, for the purpose of extending reciprocal commerce, nearly all the articles which Canada has to sell are admitted into the United States free of duty, while heavy duties are now imposed upon many of those articles which the United States have to sell, with the intention of excluding the United States from the Canadian markets, as avowed by the Minister of Finance and other gentlemen holding high official positions in Canada; and similar legislation, with the same official avowal, has been adopted by the imposition of discriminating tolls and duties in favour of an isolating and exclusive policy against our merchants and forwarders, meant and intending to destroy the natural effects of the Treaty, and contrary to its spirit; and whereas we believe that free commercial intercourse between the United States and the British North American Provinces and Possessions, developing the natural, geographical, and other advantages of each, for the good of all, is conducive to the present interest of each, and is the only proper basis of our intercourse for all time to come; and whereas the President of the United States, in the first session of the thirty-sixth Congress, caused to be submitted to the House of Representatives an official Report, setting forth the gross inequality and injustice existing in our present intercourse with Canada, subversive of the true intent of the Treaty, owing to the subsequent legislation of Canada; and whereas the first effects of a system of retaliation or reprisal would injure that portion of Canada known as the Upper Province, whose people have never failed in their efforts to secure a permanent and just policy for their own country and ourselves, in accordance with the desire officially expressed by Lord Napier when British Minister at Washington, for the ‘confirmation and expansion of free commercial relations between the United States and British Provinces:’ Therefore –