The railways brought with them a new speculative fever, a more
complex financial structure, a business politics which shaded
into open corruption, and a closer touch with the outside world.
The general substitution of steam for sail on the Atlantic during
this period aided further in lessening the isolation of what had
been backwoods provinces and in bringing them into closer
relation with the rest of the world.
It was in closer relations with the United States that this
emergence from isolation chiefly manifested itself. In the
generation that followed the War of 1812 intercourse with the
United States was discouraged and was remarkably insignificant.
Official policy and the memories of 1783 and 1812 alike built up
a wall along the southern border. The spirit of Downing Street
was shown in the instructions given to Lord Bathurst, immediately
after the close of the war, to leave the territory between
Montreal and Lake Champlain in a state of nature, making no
further grants of land and letting the few roads which had been
begun fall into decay thus a barrier of forest wilderness would
ward off republican contagion. This Chinese policy of putting up
a wall of separation proved impossible to carry through, but in
less extreme ways this attitude of aloofness marked the course of
the Government all through the days of oversea authority.
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