USA > Vermont > Vermont in quandary, 1763-1825 > Part 14
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The distress of Vermonters at their exclusion from the Cana- dian market was no greater than the distress of Canadian mer- chants at their exclusion from the American market and source of supply. "We have no communication with the neighbouring States," wrote Hugh Finlay, the Deputy Postmaster-General of the Province of Quebec, on March 6, 1784. He asserted that per- mission to trade with the Vermonters would empty the stores of Montreal and Quebec. The Governor's attitude towards this trade, he said, made Canadian merchants "grumble confoundedly." 52 He said that the situation of the Vermonters made them de- pendent upon Quebec for manufactures and that "the whole of the surplus produce of their lands around Lake Champlain . . . must pass down the River St. Lawrence in British ships, or re- main on hand and perish." 53 Albany merchants, he acknowledged, could supply Vermonters with necessities, but they would not think of transporting their heavy raw materials overland to the Hudson, while they had a free, short, safe and easy conveyance by water to St. Johns.54 From Quebec, Vermont's raw materials
51. Graham, G. S., British Policy and Canada, 1774-1791 (London, 1930), 116-132. 52. P. A. C .. C.O. 42, XVI, 82.
53. Ibid., XVI, 214.
54. P. A. C., S, XXI, 32.
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QUEBEC'S COMMERCIAL DEPENDENCY
could be carried in British ships to Great Britain where they would be exchanged for British manufactures, thus affording a market for British merchants without expense to their government.
Turning from commercial to political considerations, Finlay pre- dicted that Vermonters would either petition to rejoin the empire or seize the first opportunity to conquer Quebec.
I can easily suppose to myself, considering the race they have sprung from, and the maxim handed down from father to son, that if we refuse to trade with them, they will, as soon as ever they can (and the other states will assist them, and France will probably lend her aid ) force their way into the Province and take possession, under pretence that we, formerly the Strongest, invari- ably debar'd them from making the most of the situa- tion that Providence had placed them in, by blocking up the great River St. Lawrence, the only practicable out- let for the produce of their Country which rots on their hands for want of a market.55
Implicit in Finlay's letters is the program upon which the Canadian merchants embarked to remove the boundary as a barrier to trading with that part of the United States whose geography connected it with the St. Lawrence. Firstly, Canadian merchants hoped by establishing free trade in the interior to attract all the raw materials of the American settlements in the basin of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain to the banks of the St. Lawrence, where these raw materials could be exchanged for British manufactures. Secondly, these merchants desired permis- sion to export American raw materials from the province to Great Britain upon the same terms granted to Canadian raw materials. The survival of the Navigation Acts provided them with the means of securing a competitive advantage over American seaboard mer- t hants whose exports of raw materials from the same source would be subject in Great Britain to the duties levied on foreign raw materials. By establishing free trade in the interior and maintain- ins, mercantilistic prohibitions upon the sea, Canadian merchants hoped to erect a "Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence" 33. C.O. 42, VI, 214-215.
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QUEBEC'S COMMERCIAL DEPENDENCY
capable of centering in Quebec the trade of the inhabitants of the Great Lakes and the Champlain Valley.56
Because it was essential to the success of their program that free trade be opened in the interior, Canadian merchants were shocked by the arrival in the spring of 1786 of an Order in Council of March 24, which prohibited "the importation of all goods and commodities of the growth and manufacture of the United States into any of the ports of the Province of Quebec."57 This Order in Council was issued largely upon the advice of Haldimand, now in England, and his successor as Governor of the Province of Quebec, Guy Carleton. Neither advised exempting Quebec from the operation of the Navigation Acts nor did they foresee any necessity to import American articles for consumption in the province. From the standpoint of the Canadian merchants, the order was distasteful because they wished the Navigation Acts to be applied only to the trade by sea. Forthwith they set to work to remove this barrier to their commercial ambitions.
The first step taken to erect the Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence was the removal of the onerous restriction upon the in- land trade of the province. In the spring of 1787, a Committee of the Council decided that Vermont was not to be considered a part of the United States. The new Governor, Guy Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, had by this time changed his mind on the subject of the commercial future of his province. He declared that the Order in Council of March 24 referred to the trade carried on by sea rather than by land. His interpretation of the Order in Council was the basis for the issuance of a provincial ordinance of April 30, 1787, opening an inland trade in raw materials with Vermont.39
The importation into the province of Vermont raw materials was bound to offer competition with similar articles produced by the farmers and lumbermen of Quebec. Particularly aggrieved were loyalists. They viewed with disgust and alarm the efforts of the Americans, aided and abetted by Canadian merchants, to re-
56. See Creighton, D.C., The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 87-115.
57. Ibid., 104-105.
58, Ibid., 105.
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turn, commercially at least, to the British fold. As early as Decem- ber IS, 1786, loyalists living in New Oswegatchie had petitioned the Canadian government for relief from the competition of Ver- monters in the Canadian market. They requested "that a stop may be put to the importation of Timber or Lumber of any kind ... from Vermont or any of the American States, and some encourage- ment given to the Loyalists to supply such articles to Quebec."59
These loyalists may have looked to London to prohibit this open and flagrant violation of the letter and spirit of the Navigation Acts, which had been so hotly defended in Britain and so recently re-applied to Quebec. If they did, they were doomed to dis- appointment. After reviewing the subject of Canadian commerce in July, 1787, the Board of Trade empowered the Canadian government to regulate at will all inland trade. Using its new powers, the Legislative Council of Quebec decreed, April 14, ITSS, free import via Lake Champlain of timber, lumber, naval stores, cereals, dairy products, cattle, poultry and fish. Thus the first breach desired by Canadian merchants and Vermonters in the British commercial system was effected-free trade in raw materials.60
In view of the Order in Council of March 24, 1786, the attitude of the Board of Trade towards an inland trade with Vermont comes as a distinct surprise. Why was a colony of Great Britain permitted to pursue its commercial opportunities by employing the device of free trade in the North American interior? The answer lies in the fact that the Navigation Acts could only effect an increase in British seapower when applied to the commerce of seaboard or island possessions. The commerce of inland colonies, such as Quebec, was upon a different footing. A direct trade by land or inland navigation with the interior American settlements could not unfavorably affect the growth of British seapower. This was a fresh-water trade carried on by flat boat or canoe, rather than a salt-water trade carried on by sea-going vessels. Further-
50. Shortt, A., Doughty, A.G., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791 ( Ottawa, 1918), 945-946.
₺0. C.O. 42, XII, 27; Report of the Public Archives of Canada for 1914- 1915, 203-204.
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QUEBEC'S COMMERCIAL DEPENDENCY
more, Quebec as an inland colony had a long land frontier which could never be adequately defended against resourceful smug- glers, as Haldimand had long since discovered. Thus the "natural tendency" of merchants of Quebec and Vermont to trade with one another was not curbed by the British government.61 But the trade by sea between Quebec and Great Britain remained subject to the restrictive provisions of the Navigation Acts for in this trade the Acts operated, as intended, to increase British shipping and hence British sea power.
61. Graham. G. S., Sea Power and British North America, 1783-1820; a study in Bri- tish Colonial Policy ( Cambridge, 1941), 93.
CHAPTER TEN
The Swiss Policy of Vermont
Long before the issuance of the Canadian ordinance of April, 1787, which opened trade between Vermont and Quebec, the Allens had demonstrated that their business difficulties neces- sitated additional commercial concessions from Quebec and Great Britain. At first glance, however, their commercial prospects appear to have been excellent without additional concessions be- cause the three brothers who survived the Revolution, Ethan, Ira and Levi, were engaged in many business activities.
Ethan was at his farm in Sunderland. It was a goodly farm, con- taining three hundred acres of excellent intervale lands of which forty acres had been improved. He was as determined as ever that Vermont should not join the Congress. "Property & the Independ- ence of this state are our main objects. ... Heaven guarded Ver- mont why then should we pay the Continental debt or any part of it."1
Much more active was his younger brother, Ira, who was at Colchester busily engaged in settling and selling his lands and in preparing for the sale of large quantities of lumber in the Quebec market. His favorable location for trade with the Canadian pro- vince made him an object of envy to rival promoters elsewhere. James Whitelaw of Ryegate in the Connecticut Valley complained as early as the fall of 1783, "people at present rather incline to settle on Lake Champlain and the rivers falling into the same which makes the price of land here low."? The means by which Ira realized upon his lands were not so attractive as their situa- tion. As Yorkers had done before the Revolution, he was leasing, whenever possible, rather than selling his lands as the Yorker, Lewis R. Morris, did after the Revolution. Across the Lake, Will Cilliland boasted that he now sold his lands, whereas he had for-
1. Stevens Miscellaneous, Allen to S. R. Bradley, Nov. 6, 1787; 1776 Americana: A Catalogue of Autograph Letters and Documents Relating to the Declaration of Inde- Hundence and the Revolutionary War. ( Philadelphia, 1926), 13.
2. V.H.S., James Whitelaw Papers Whitelaw to Scots Settlers, Oct. 16, 1783.
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THE SWISS POLICY OF VERMONT
merly leased them. "Before the glorious revolution took place," he said, "the subscriber would not sell, but let his lands. But now the happy period is arrived, when in this land of freedom all are on an equality, he disposeth not of his land by way of lease but by sale only ... . "3
Ira supplemented his landed activities by lumbering. All settlers recognized that the magnificent stands of timber in the valley provided the first cash crop of the land. John Delafield, a New York land-owner, advertised for sale 1348 town lots in Plattsburg, claiming that the timber was "worth more on many spots than the Price of the Land, its value arising from the easy mode of con- veyance to the West-India and European markets."4
Not content with his activities as landlord and timber merchant, Ira resumed his efforts to make Colchester the center of the trade of the Onion River Valley. He proposed to cut a road from Col- chester across the Green Mountains to the Coos Country. This road would enable farmers to bring ashes and other articles from the Connecticut Valley to Colchester from where they could be shipped to Quebec. Philip Skene, whose lands at Skenesboro had been confiscated, recognized the commercial importance of the water highway afforded by the lake. When he claimed compensa- tion, he wistfully declared that his lands "from admitting vessels of 200 tons burthen would have been very shortly a place of great trade." 5
The third brother who survived the Revolution was Levi. He had vacillated between loyalism and rebellion, finally being pre- cipitated into loyalism by his brother, Ethan. During the Revolu- tion, he was absent from Vermont. He related that he went to the British Province of East Florida where he immediately launched a vast land-speculation. It did not materialize because, as he ex- plained, the province was restored to Spain after the Revolution. Spurned successively by Vermont and East Florida, Levi turned northward, soon appearing in the Province of Quebec. Whereas Ira and Ethan chose to remain in Vermont, Levi settled in Sep-
3. New York Packet, May 13, 1784.
4. Ibid., Ang. 2, 1784.
5. Transcripts of Loyalist Claims, XLV, 202.
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THE SWISS POLICY OF VERMONT
tember, 1786, in the small town of St. Johns on the Richelieu. From here he exercised watch and ward over his lands in St. Albans which had escaped confiscation during the war. He hoped to develop at St. Johns a thriving beaver hat manufactory and to join his brother Ira in the forwarding and sale of Vermont timber. Simultaneously, he cast covetous eyes on the Quebec lands east of the Richelieu which had not yet been granted.6
Each brother, therefore, had every reason to look to the future with confidence. Yet the expectation of economic prosperity from the admittance of Vermonters' products to the Quebec market was not being realized so rapidly or so smoothly as anticipated, largely because the Allens had been forced to launch their busi- ness activities in the midst of the prolonged business depression which followed the Revolution. The wartime prosperity of Que- bec had been almost wholly the result of the market provided by the presence of the British armies. Their withdrawal after the war was bound to cause a decline in business prosperity. By 1784, the trade of the province was in the doldrums. "The present state of the Commerce ... was never at a lower ebb," complained one merchant in the fall of 1784. Canadian merchants who had taken advantage of "the very ready & unlimited credit" of the war boom now found it difficult to pay their debts which "has not only been the ruin of many individuals here but has nearly ruined the Lon- don Merchants, and has given a shock to the trade of the province [from] which it cannot immediately recover . . . . דיי
The pressure applied by London merchants upon Quebec mer- chants to pay their debts was in turn applied by Quebec mer- chants upon the Allens who were their debtors. Quebec was a colony of Great Britain; nevertheless, it was developing its own colony, Vermont. The chief colonists were the Allens. "We are rich poor Cursed rascals BY GOD," declared Ethan in August, 1786, "Alter our measures or we shall be a hiss a proverb and a byeword and a derision upon earth." s
The post-war depression in Quebec had brought so disastrous
6. N.Y.S.L., Ira Allen Papers, 1774-1793, n.d .; Wilbur Photostats, no. 3370.
7. C.O. 42, XVI, 72.
8. Wilbur Photostats, No. 490S.
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THE SWISS POLICY OF VERMONT
a decline in timber prices as to make it impossible for the Allens to pay for the goods they had purchased in Quebec. "Timber & all lumber is Quite a drug," wrote Levi to Ira on August 18, 1786, "none got more than 5 d. per foot Except myself."9 Such prices forced the Allens to go further into debt. The following July, Levi was sunk in pessimism. "Would sooner take my pistols and com- mence a highwayman," he wrote to Ira, July 7, 1787, "than ask for any more goods until payments are actually made." He warned his brother that the family's credit and that of Vermont depended upon the productivity of his mills and the lumber he could for- ward to Quebec. "It is a most ridiculous farce," he declared, "to pretend to trade without making payment."10
Even Levi found it difficult to pay his debts. "The money I borrowed of Scott & Griggs," he wrote Ira, November 11, 17SS, "to pay land tax has damned my honour among other things, not to mention interest." He was convinced that the Scotch merchants of Montreal were the bitter enemies of the Allens. "D-n-D-n them all keep yourself Clear of Canady till I return or you hear of my fate . . . "11
In moments of objectivity, Levi recognized that the Scotch mer- chants were justified in refusing to extend further credit either to Ira or to himself. "Goods going out of this Province to Vermont are sel[dom] or ever paid for, which was mentioned in the Coffee-House and I must Confess with Too much truth." He added, "it is entirely a Joake to pretend the least thing In this province anytime here after through the Endless Ages of Eter- nity .... lastly I must know facts, or by God, I will quit this province, I will never live nor wish to live to be imposed on by any damned Scotch Rascals etc."12
Ira also recognized that the charges levelled against them in Quebec were justified. He who had refused to be awed either by Haldimand or by George Washington was forced to bend the knee to the timber firm of Fraser & Young. The boards he sent to
9. Ira Allen Papers, 1777-1793.
10. V.H.S., Newspaper Clipping.
11. N.Y.S.L., Levi Allen Papers.
12. N.Y.S.L., Levi Allen Papers, 1787-1789.
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THE SWISS POLICY OF VERMONT
the firm in the spring of 1789 did not bring a high enough price to pay the debt he owed it. He wrote the firm that he hoped to get on his feet by discharging his old debts with the proceeds from the sale of his lands and to buy only as much as the income from his timber should warrant, with the exception of a small ad- vance from the firm to be paid the following spring in boards delivered to Wolfe's Cove.13
While Ira was in the toils of Fraser & Young, Levi was having difficulty with the Quebec Customs because of his efforts to ex- port beaver hats and skins from the province to Vermont. Judging from his correspondence, Levi hoped to make St. Johns the center of hat-making for North America and Europe, if not the entire world. Unfortunately, however, his hats were seized at the Ver- mont border. Some doubts arose as to the legality of their seizure. Hugh Finlay wrote, however, that it was not consistent with Bri- tish mercantilism to encourage such a trade because Canadians ought to send all such articles to the mother country.14
Customs regulations contributed to the embarrassments of the Allens, even when their trade was a wholly legal one. At this time, a sloop was anchored at Point au Fer within gunshot of Fort Howe. All rafts and boats going in either direction were required to come alongside the sloop and present clearance papers from St. Johns if bound to Vermont, or to present a manifest if bound to Quebec.15 Justus Sherwood warned Levi that he must obey the customs regulations. "I believe," wrote Sherwood to Levi, "you may soon accumulate a competent fortune in trade at St. Johns, but I caution you as a friend to observe strictly the Regulations and Rules of this province respecting trade, otherways you will give your enemies the handle they will not fail to improve against
Once past the Customs, trouble lay ahead in the rapids of the Richelieu. Fraser & Young, no less than the Allens, were much concerned by the small amounts of timber which actually got over
13. Isa Allen Papers, 1774-1793, Ira to Fraser & Young, June 5, 1789.
14. Leci Allen Papers, 1787-1789, n.d., badly burned.
13. C.O. 42, XII, 40-41.
16. Levi Allen Papers, 1787-1789, n.d.
-
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THE SWISS POLICY OF VERMONT
the rapids. After the timber had safely negotiated them, it faced a tedious voyage of some weeks before Quebec was reached. The result was a great spread between the value of timber in the Champlain Valley and its value when delivered at Quebec. Before the Revolution, James Glennie had testified that Champlain Valley settlers received only one tenth or one twelfth of the price their timber sold for in Quebec.17
Although the business embarrassments of the Allens were largely the result of the collapse of the Quebec timber market, they laid the blame for their troubles wholly upon the grasping character of Quebec merchants and the difficulty of negotiating the rapids of the Richelieu. The Allens commenced forthwith to remove each of these difficulties.
To free themselves of the Quebec middlemen, the Allens en- deavoured to secure contracts directly with the British to supply their Navy with masts. While in Quebec in July, 1787, Levi offered to furnish the British government with "as large masts, etc. as ever have been cut in America [which] are now to be had on Lake Champlain and can be transported to Quebec .... " He quoted prices twenty percent lower than those set before the Revolution by Edward Perry, contractor for the Royal Navy at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.18 His offer was submitted to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. They reported that arrangements already had been made to secure masts elsewhere. The Navy Board, however, showed interest in Levi's proposal. On October 16, 1787, the Board declared that "in the following August it would treat for navy supplies from St. John River, Lake Champlain, or any other part of British territories there." 19
Still another way by which the Allens could break the hold of the Scotch Rascals was to induce the British to build a ship canal around the rapids of the Richelieu. Canadian merchants also were interested in this proposal, but they wanted a barge rather than a ship canal. A barge canal would lower costs of transportation to and from Vermont yet prevent ocean-going vessels from sail-
17. S, XXVII, 128. 18. Q, XXVIII, 107.
19. P.A.C., Governor-General's Papers (G Series), I, 172-173.
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ing up the Richelieu to Lake Champlain. The Canadian mer- chants opposed a ship canal because they clung tenaciously to their position as prosperous middlemen in the trade between the interior settlements on both sides of the boundary and Great Bri- tain. They maintained that the Navigation Acts should be en- forced to prevent Americans navigating the fresh and salt waters of the province as they would if they were to sail down Lake Champlain via the Richelieu and the St. Lawrence to the open sea. The British government gave full support to the Canadian merchants.
For opposite reasons, the Allens desired a ship rather than a barge canal. They hoped that a ship canal would enable them to establish direct connections between inland Vermont and over- seas markets and sources of supply. The reaction of Canadian merchants to such direct connections can readily be imagined. The St. Lawrence would thereby be reduced to the status of a mere seaway or corridor connecting Vermont and the outside world. Although the Allens would have to reckon with the hos- tility of Canadian merchants, the opposition of the British govern- ment might be overcome if the Allens would promise to use only British ships.
As early as 1785, Ira had broached the subject of a ship canal to Haldimand. He obliged by appointing Captain Twiss, who had supervised the building of a small canal south of Montreal, to sur- vey the Richelieu and prepare an estimate of the cost of building a ship canal round the rapids between St. Johns and Chambly. After Twiss had made his survey, he estimated the cost of a canal sufficiently large to pass ships of 200 tons at 27,000 & sterling. Many years later, Ira declared that such a canal "would promote agriculture, population, arts, manufactures, handicrafts, and all the business of a civilized state, regulated by wise laws, sound policy, a deep sense of religious duty and morality."20
The civilizing influences of the ship canal were secondary, however, to the effect of such a canal upon the Navigation Acts. Did Vermonters plan to use their own or British ships if the canal
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