The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Some in the contra-Canada camp used the growth of the North American colonies against them, contending that as they grew they would compete with the home country in manufactures. All the more reason for keeping Canada, replied Franklin, denying the conclusion even as he accepted the concern it reflected. What prevented the development of manufactures in the colonies was not legal prohibition but the cheapness of land. Again echoing his earlier pamphlet, he asserted, “All the penal and prohibitory laws that were ever thought on will not be sufficient to prevent manufactures in a country whose inhabitants surpass the number that can subsist by the husbandry of it.” To return Canada to the French would bottle up the British population between the seaboard and the mountains, thereby producing, if not in this generation, then in the next or the next after that, precisely the situation British manufacturers wanted to prevent. To open up Canada to British settlement would have the opposite effect. “While there is land enough in America for our people, there can never be manufactures to any amount or value.”