citizen of the United States often lived on his own and traded or manufactured on the other side of the border. In fact, the border jealousies which had caused such bitterness and danger even in our own country had in this generation all but disappeared in this case, under the operation of high-minded and far-sighted legislation. Considering, therefore, the magnitude of the commercial interests, the grave questions of navigation, ocean rights, and free communication, he must express the most anxious, surprise to learn that Her Majesty's Government had allowed the matter to drift into its present position. He was told that no effort whatever had been made to preserve the treaty as it was, or as it might be amended, by negociations at Washington. His honorable friend, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had said, in answer to a question he had put in that House last May, that no negociations were pending as to the Reciprocity Treaty, and that Government had no official information upon the subject of the Bonding Acts. He was bound to take that answer as a correct statement; and he then asked, Was it possible that her Majesty's Government could remain inactive when a trade of 10,000,000_l_ a year and the issues of future peace or disturbance were in the balance? Were the proposed notice to terminate the treaty any matter of suddenness or by way of surprise, he might comprehend it; but for above three years the subject had been agitated and discussed in Congress, in Canada, and in all the Chambers of Commerce in the North-west. It had been notorious to everybody that one party desired isolation from the British Provinces and another desired the operations of the treaty to be extended. It was, therefore, a question to be discussed in advance of the present entanglement; and, as Canada had no treaty-making power, the responsibility rested with the Government at home. This was a question so serious from every point of view that the House would have to take it up as soon as the noble lord at the head of the Government laid upon the table the notice which he had told them would be given on the 15th March next. Then would be the time to discuss it fully and in all its bearings. His object now was to prepare for that discussion by obtaining all the facts. The papers laid before the House last week did not go back far enough. It appeared that in the autumn of 1861 the New York Chamber of Commerce memorialized Congress for a revision of the treaty, and a committee reported upon it in February, 1862. That report he had here. It did not advocate notice; no, it advocated adherence to the principles of free exchange, and it proposed that commissioners should negociate an extension of the treaty. In March, 1864, Mr. Ward reported resolutions appointing commissioners for that purpose, and ultimately the discussion was postponed to December, 1864. During all this time surely communications of some kind passed to or from this country; and it was self-apparent