nce, the improvement of the
navigation of the St. Lawrence, and the construction of railways.
Measures were passed which had the effect of opening up and settling
large districts by the offer of grants of public land at a nominal
price and very easy terms of payment. In this way the government
succeeded in keeping in the country a large number of French Canadians
who otherwise would have gone to the United States, where the varied
industries of a very enterprising people have always attracted a large
number of Canadians of all classes and races.

The canals were at last completed in accordance with the wise policy
inaugurated after the union by Lord Sydenham, whose commercial
instincts at once recognized the necessity of giving western trade
easy access to the ocean by the improvement of the great waterways of
Canada. It had always been the ambition of the people of Upper Canada
before the union to obtain a continuous and secure system of
navigation from the lakes to Montreal. The Welland Canal between Lakes
Erie and Ontario was commenced as early as 1824 through the enterprise
of Mr. William Hamilton Merritt--afterwards a member of the
LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry--and the first vessel passed its locks in
1829; but it was very badly managed, and the legislature, after having
aided it from time to time, was eventually obliged to take control of
it as a provincial work. The Cornwall Canal was also undertaken at an
early day, but work had to be stopped when it became certain that the
legislature of Lower Canada, then controlled by Papineau, would not
respond to the aspirations of the west and improve that portion of the
St. Lawrence within its provincial jurisdiction.

Governor Haldimand had, from 1779-1782, constructed a very simple
temporary system of canals to overcome the rapids called the Cascades,
Cedars and Coteau, and some slight improvements were made in these
primitive works from year to year until the completion of the
Beauharnois Canal in 1845. The Lachine Canal was completed, after a
fashion, in 1828, but nothing was done to give a continuous river
navigation between Montreal and the west until 1845, when the
Beauharnois Canal was first opened. The Rideau Canal originated in the
experiences of the war of 1812-14, which showed the necessity of a
secure inland communication between Montreal and the country on Lake
Ontario; but though first constructed for defensive purposes, it had
for years decided commercial