"The soil and climate of Canada are admirably adapted to the growth of hemp. The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., assert, in their preface to Vol. XXI., 'That they have ascertained, by actual experiments, that Canada can furnish hemp equal in quality for the uses of the navy to that from the Baltic.' Hemp is one of the most valuable and profitable productions of the earth. It enriches the cultivator, and furnishes shipping with the most useful and important part of its equipment. The several processes of hemp, also, benefit the state, by employing many hands that could not be so usefully and profitably engaged in other occupations. The advantage, therefore, which a country must derive from the culture and manufacture of hemp, throughout its several branches, can not be doubted, and is sufficiently proved by the importance which Russia has derived from her commerce in that article, by which she has, in a manner, rendered the greatest navy in the world dependent upon her will and caprice. The importation of hemp from Russia has annually amounted to no less than 30,000 tons for the general consumption of the country, and for the use of the royal navy. It must, therefore, in every point of view, be a great object to Great Britain to draw her supplies of hemp from her own colonies. The efforts of government to promote its general cultivation have hitherto proved very partially successful. The failure is attributed, in a great degree, to the attachment of the Canadians to old customs, and the opposition of the Romish clergy, hemp not being a tithable article. The wheat merchants and the seigniors, who depend for success in trade and for the constant employment of their mills, the chief source of their revenues, upon abundant crops of wheat, are strongly opposed to the introduction of the culture of hemp, which they conceive would partly, if not wholly, annihilate that of wheat."--Lambert, vol. i., p. 449. M. de Talon, the able Intendant of Quebec (in 1665), strongly recommended the cultivation of hemp, having ascertained that the nature of the soil and climate promised every possible success. No. XXXII.