Connected with this important subject of the free navigation of the St. Lawrence west of Quebec, which the Americans were desirous of procuring, a corresponding desire prevailed on the part of the Canadian farmers to avail themselves of the American home market, whenever it offered superior prices to those derived from exportation to Europe. The price of wheat and flour in the Eastern States, required for home consumption, was often much higher than the price in Canada for exportation, and when this happened, it would obviously have been greatly to the advantage of the Canadian agriculturist if he could have exported his produce to the United States. This he was prevented from doing by a protective duty of a quarter of a dollar per bushel upon wheat. Efforts had been made in the United States to abolish this duty; but the advocates of its abolition were constantly defeated by the Protection cries of the American farmers, or by a difficulty as to the “most favoured” nation-clause in treaties with Foreign Powers, the more so, as a relaxation in favour of Canada was, naturally, capable of extension to any or all nations with whom the United States had such treaties subsisting. Here is a clear instance how commercial treaties, even of a liberal character, become as much “entangling alliances” as the political conventions of “amity and friendship” have so frequently been. Indeed, the “favoured” nation-clause, however well intended and beneficial in the highest degree in certain cases, has often been a source of dispute to those States who either have accepted or enforced it, and, even more so, to those countries which have been compelled to adopt it. The interests of great nations vary so much at different periods that inflexible rules in politics or commerce must frequently operate very prejudicially, and cannot be maintained with entire consistency for the true interests of the commonwealth. [Sidenote: Negotiations proposed.] It was thought that if the free navigation of the St. Lawrence were offered to the American Government in return for the abolition of the protecting duty, one measure to be co-existent with the other, Congress would be inclined to abolish the protective duty; while the abolition, being a matter of reciprocal arrangement, all difficulty arising from the commercial relations of the United States with foreign countries might thus be avoided. [Sidenote: Canadians urge the abolition of Protection.]