The House of Representatives reported in favour of a system resembling that of the “Zollverein” as the only means of securing the benefits of reciprocal trade, and recommended as desirable a uniform system of lighthouses, copyrights, postage, patents, telegraphs, weights and measures, and coinage. This was a favourite scheme of the late Senator Douglas; and if the American Government had exhibited any desire to diminish the rigours of Morrill Tariffs and of State protective enactments, we might applaud the liberality of their views and the noble candour of their conclusions. They believed that “free commercial intercourse between the United States and the British North-American Provinces, developing the natural, geographical, and other advantages of each for the good of all, is conducive to the present interests of each, and is the proper basis of our intercourse for all time to come”--sentiments certainly noble, if somewhat vaguely expressed. We will see presently how Mr. Galt deals with the practical rendering of them by the Federal Government. The Reciprocity Treaty, negotiated between Lord Elgin and Mr. Marcey in June, 1854, was entered into to avoid further misunderstanding in regard to the extent of the right of fishing on the coasts of British North America, and to regulate the commerce and navigation between the respective territories and people in such a manner as to render the same reciprocally beneficial and satisfactory. The Convention secured to American fishermen the liberty of taking, curing, and drying fish on the British North-American coast generally; the Treaty extended to them the liberty to take fish of every kind (except shellfish) along the coast of Canada, New Brunswick, Prince Edward’s Island, &c., with permission to land, to dry nets, and cure fish, without any restrictions as to distance from shore--reserving only the right of private property and the salmon and shad-fishings in the rivers; and the same rights were conceded to British subjects on the eastern sea-coasts of the United States north of the 36th parallel of latitude. It provided that the following articles should be admitted duty-free reciprocally:--Grain, flour and breadstuffs, animals, fresh and salt meat, cotton seed and vegetables, fruit, fish, poultry, hides and skins, butter, cheese, tallow, lard, horns, manure, ores, coal, stone, slate, pitch, turpentine, timber and lumber, plants, firs, gypsum, grindstones, dye-stuffs, flax, rags, and unmanufactured tobacco. It gave to Americans the right to navigate the St. Lawrence and the Canadian canals, subject to the tolls, and it gave to British subjects the right to navigate Lake Michigan; but it reserved to the British Government the right of suspending, on due notice, the privileges of Canadian navigation, in which event the right of British subjects to navigate Lake Michigan should also cease and determine, and the United States should have the