nce should be
necessary, but that such occasions might occur, and demand sudden and
powerful action from Britain, he ever held. Even in matters of a
character purely domestic, he believed, with Lord John Russell, that
intervention might be necessary, and he desired to prevent danger, not
by minimizing the powers of the imperial authority, but by exercising
them with great discretion.[46] It was perhaps with this conservation
of central power in view that {272} he was willing to transfer to the
British treasury the responsibility of paying the salary of the
governor-general, provided the colonists would take over some part of
the expenses and difficulties of Canadian defence. But the extent to
which he was prepared to exalt the supremacy is best illustrated in the
control of imperial commerce. A great change had just been made in the
economic system of Britain. Free trade was then to its adherents not
an arguable position, but a kind of gospel; and men like Grey, who had
something of the propagandist about them, were inclined to compel
others to come in. Now, unfortunately for Canada, free trade appeared
there first rather as foe than as friend. As has already been seen,
the measures of 1846 overturned the arrangement made by Stanley in
1843, whereby a preference given to Canadian flour had stimulated a
great activity in the milling and allied industries; and the removal of
the restrictions imposed by the Navigation Acts did not take place till
1849. At the same time the United States, the natural market for
Canadian products, showed little inclination to listen to talk of
reciprocity; and the Canadians, seemingly deprived of pre-existing
advantages by Peel's action, talked of retaliation as a means of {273}
bettering their position, at least in relation to the United States.
Grey, however, was an absolute believer in the magic powers of free
trade. "When we rejected all considerations of what is called
reciprocity," he wrote to Elgin, "and boldly got rid of our protective
duties without inquiring whether other nations would meet us or not,
the effect was immediately seen in the increase of our exports, and the
prosperity of our manufactures."[47] Canada, then, in his opinion
could retaliate most effectively, not by setting up a tariff against
the United States, but by opening her ports more freely then before.
He had a vision, comparable although in contrast, to that of believers
in an imperial tariff, of an em