ether it would be safe to act on this hypothesis.
My conviction on the contrary is, that motives of self-interest of a
very gross and palpable description are suggesting treasonable courses
to the Canadian mind at present, and that it is a political sentiment,
a feeling of gratitude for what has been done and suffered this year
in the cause of Canadian self-government, which is neutralising these
suggestions.

Again, on December 29,1849, he writes as follows:--

[Sidenote: Free navigation.]

I believe that the operation of the free navigation system will be
what you anticipate, to a great extent at least, and that it will tend
materially to equalise prices on the two sides of the line. At the
same time I do think, that there are circumstances in this country
which falsify, in some degree, the deductions at which one arrives
from reasoning founded on the abstract principles of political
economy. One of these circumstances is the power which the farmers in
the Western States, having no rents to pay, have of holding back their
grain when prices do not suit them. You must have observed what hoards
they poured forth when they were tempted by the famine prices of 1847;
and I cannot but think that this power of hoarding, coupled with an
indifferent harvest, must account for the great disparity of price,
which has obtained during the course of the present year in the New
York market for bonded grain, and grain for the home consumption. I
fully expect, however, to see the price of Canadian grain, bonded at
New York, rise, now that it can be exported to Liverpool in the New
York liners, which will carry it for ballast. Nevertheless, I think
that Sir Robert Peel's _dictum_ with respect to the Repeal of the
Corn Laws, on the day on which he retired last from office, when he
observed that thenceforward, even when the poor suffered from the high
price of bread, they would not ascribe that suffering to the fact of
their bread being taxed, applies with at least equal force to the
reciprocity question as affecting the Canadian farmers. For sure am I
that, so long as there is a duty on their produce when it enters the
States, and none on the introduction of United States produce into
England, they will ascribe to this cause alone the differences of
price that may occasionally rule to their disadvantage.