Lord Lyons to Mr. Seward.
Communications from various parts of the province have been addressed to the government of Canada, complaining of the injurious operation of the orders issued some time ago by the federal government, prohibiting the exportation from the United States of live stock and anthracite coal.
By the order prohibiting the exportation of “live stock,” the slaughtering of animals from the United States in Canada is prevented, but no restraint whatever is placed upon the exportation of the flesh of these animals, either cured or in the carcass. Heretofore a considerable quantity of bacon from American hogs has been cured in Canada with special reference to its adaptation to the English market. This traffic, advantageous alike to the American grower and the Canadian buyer, is suppressed, without accomplishing in any degree the professed object of the restriction. If a short supply of animal food for the use of the armies of the United States were apprehended, so grave a danger could hardly be averted by simply prohibiting the exportation of live animals while permitting the unlimited exportation of the meat of the same animals if slaughtered within American territory. Although the restriction respecting anthracite coal presents no such anomaly as that just adverted to, it is productive of far greater inconvenience to the people of Canada than the other regulation. There are scattered through the western part of the province numerous iron foundries and other factories which have heretofore been wholly supplied with fuel from the United States, consisting mainly of anthracite coal. The sudden and unexpected stoppage of the usual supply of fuel must be productive of the most disastrous consequences to the innocent owners of these establishments, who, of course, relied on the continuance of the ordinary freedom of commercial intercourse so long as relations of amity subsisted between the governments of the two countries.
The prohibition is believed to have been solely designed to prevent American coal from passing into the hands of the enemies of the United States, or being used for purposes hostile to the United States, neither of which consequences would be likely to flow from the exportation of coal to Canada, at points so remote from the sea as to preclude the probability, if not the possibility, of any intercourse with the enemies of the United States.
The enforcement of these prohibitive regulations is entailing not only great inconvenience, but serious positive loss on a good many people in Canada, and it is believed that it might be made apparent to the United States government that no military object is gained by maintaining the application of them to that province