o, and two on
the upper lakes, an arrangement of immense value to both Canada and the
United States.

The old-time commercial antagonism was also destined to disappear in a
few years after the close of the war. At first England clung to the
time-honoured West Indian policy, and, when in 1815 the two countries
adjusted their commercial relations, American vessels were still
excluded, although given the right to trade directly with the East
Indies. But already the new economic thought, which regarded
competition and reciprocal trade as the ideal, instead of legal
discriminations and universal protectionism, was gaining ground, as
England became more and more the manufacturing centre of the world.
Under Huskisson, in 1825, reciprocity was definitely substituted for
exclusion; and a few years later, under Peel and Russell, and within
the lifetime of men who had maintained the Orders in Council, the whole
{247} elaborate system of laws backed by the logic of Lord Sheffield
and James Stephen was cast away and fell into disrepute and oblivion.

In America, it should be added, the rush of settlers into the West and
the starting of manufactures served, within a few years from the end of
the War of 1812, to alter largely the former dependence of the United
States upon foreign commerce. By the time that England was ready to
abandon its restrictive policy, the United States was beginning to be a
manufacturing nation with its chief wealth in its great internal trade,
and the ancient interest in the West Indies was fast falling into
insignificance. The same men who raged against the Jay treaty and the
Orders in Council lived to forget that they had ever considered the
West India trade important. So, on both sides, the end of commercial
antagonism was soon to follow on the Treaty of Ghent.

Finally, and more slowly, the original political and social antagonism
ceased to be active, and ultimately died out. So far as the United
States was concerned, the change was scarcely visible until
three-quarters of a century after the Treaty of Ghent. The temper of
the American people, formed by Revolutionary traditions and nourished
on memories of battle and injuries, remained {248} steadily
antagonistic toward England; and the triumph of western social ideals
served to emphasize the distinction between the American democrat and
the British aristocrat, until dislike became a tradition and a
political and literary convention. But the em