Soon after the union the legislating obtained full control of the civil list and the post-office. The last tariff framed by the imperial parliament for British North America was mentioned in the speech at the opening of the Canadian legislature in 1842. In 1846 the British colonies in America were authorised by an imperial statute to reduce or repeal by their own legislation duties imposed by imperial acts upon foreign goods imported from foreign countries into the colonies in question. Canada soon availed herself of this privilege, which was granted to her as the logical sequence of the free-trade policy of Great Britain, and, from that time to the present, she has been enabled to legislate very freely with regard to her own commercial interests. In 1849 the imperial parliament repealed the navigation laws, and allowed the river St. Lawrence to be used by vessels of all nations. With the repeal of laws, the continuance of which had seriously crippled Canadian trade after the adoption of free trade by England, the provinces gradually entered on a new career of industrial enterprise. No part of the constitution of 1840 gave greater offence to the French Canadian population than the clause restricting the use of the French language in the legislature. It was considered as a part of the policy, foreshadowed in Lord Durham's report, to denationalise, if possible, the French Canadian province. The repeal of the clause, in 1848, was one evidence of the harmonious operation of the union, and of a better feeling between the two sections of the population. Still later, provision was made for the gradual establishment of an elective legislative council, so long and earnestly demanded by the old legislature of Lower Canada.