Nearly 150,000 people of British origin resided in Lower Canada—­a British people animated for the most part by that spirit of energy natural to their race.  What prosperity Montreal and Quebec enjoyed as commercial communities was largely due to the enterprise of British merchants.  The timber trade was chiefly in their hands, and the bank of Montreal was founded by this class in 1817—­seven years before the bank of Upper Canada was established in Toronto.  As political strife increased in bitterness, the differences between the races became accentuated.  Papineau alienated all the British by his determination to found a “Nation Canadienne” in which the British would occupy a very inferior place.  “French and British,” said Lord Durham, “combined for no public objects or improvements, and could not harmonise even in associations of charity.”  The French Canadians looked with jealousy and dislike on the increase and prosperity of what they regarded as a foreign and hostile race.  It is quite intelligible, then, why trade languished, internal development ceased, landed property decreased in value, the revenue showed a diminution, roads and all classes of local improvements were neglected, agricultural industry was stagnant, wheat had to be imported for the consumption of the people, and immigration fell off from 52,000 in 1832 to less than 5000 in 1838.

In the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, there were no racial antagonisms to affect internal development; and the political conflict never reached such proportions as to threaten the peace and security of the people.  In New Brunswick the chief industry was the timber trade—­deals especially—­which received its first stimulus in 1809, when a heavy duty was placed on Baltic timber, while that from the colonies came free into the British Isles.  Shipbuilding was also profitably followed in New Brunswick, and was beginning to be prosecuted in Nova Scotia, where, a few years later, it made that province one of the greatest ship-owning and ship-sailing communities of the world until iron steamers gradually drove wooden vessels from the carrying trade.  The cod, mackerel, and herring fisheries—­chiefly the first—­were the staple industry of Nova Scotia, and kept up a large trade with the British West Indies, whence sugar, molasses and rum were imported.  Prince Edward Island was chiefly an agricultural community, whose development was greatly retarded by the wholesale grant of lands in 1767 to absentee proprietors.  Halifax and St. John had each a population of twenty thousand.  The houses were mostly of wood, the only buildings of importance being the government house, finished in 1805, and the provincial or parliament house, considered in its day one of the handsomest structures in North America.  In the beautiful valleys of Kings and Annapolis—­now famous for their fruit—­there was a prosperous farming population.  Yarmouth illustrated the