here are held of His Majesty's Castle of St Lewis [the governor's official residence in Quebec]. The Oath which the Vassals [seigneurs] take is very Solemn and Binding. They are obliged to appear in Arms for the King's defence, in case his Province is attacked.' Carleton pointed out that a hundred men of the Canadian seigneurial families were being kept on full pay in France, ready to return and raise the Canadians at the first opportunity. 'On the other hand, there are only about seventy of these officers in Canada who have been in the French service. Not one of them has been given a commission in the King's [George's] Service, nor is there One who, from any motive whatever, is induced to support His Government.' The few French Canadians raised for Pontiac's war had of course been properly paid during the continuance of their active service. But they had been disbanded like mere militia afterwards, without either gratuities or half-pay for the officers. This naturally made the class from which officers were drawn think that no career was open to them under the Union Jack and turned their thoughts towards France, where their fellows were enjoying full pay without a break.

What made this the more serious was the weakness of the regular garrisons, all of which, put together, numbered only 1,627 men. Carleton calculated that about five hundred of 'the King's Old Subjects' were capable of bearing arms; though most of them were better at talking than fighting. He had nothing but contempt for 'the flimsy wall round Montreal,' and relied little more on the very defective works at Quebec. Thus with all his wonderful equanimity, 'grave Carleton' left Canada with no light heart when he took six months' leave of absence in 1770; and he would have been more anxious still if he could have foreseen that his absence was to be prolonged to no less than four years.

He had, however, two great satisfactions. He was represented at Quebec by a most steadfast lieutenant, the quiet, alert, discreet, and determined Cramahe; and he was leaving Canada after having given proof of a disinterestedness which was worthy of the elder Pitt himself. When Pitt became Paymaster-General of England he at once declined to use the two chief perquisites of his office, the interest on the government balance and the half per cent commission on foreign subsidies, though both were regarded as a kind of indirect salary. When Carleton became governor of Canada he at once issued a proclamation abolishing all the fees and perquisites attached to his position and explained his action to the home authorities in the following words: 'There is a certain appearance of dirt, a sort of meanness, in exacting fees on every occasion. I think it necessary for the King's service that his representative should be thought unsullied.' Murray, who had accepted the fees, at first took umbrage. But Carleton soon put matters straight with him. The fact was that fees, and even certain perquisites, were no dishonour to receive, as they nearly always formed a recognized part, and often the whole, of a perfectly legal salary. But fees and perquisites could be abused; and they did lead to misunderstandings, even when they were not abused; while fixed salaries were free from both objections. So Carleton, surrounded by shamelessly rapacious magistrates and the whole vile camp-following gang, as well as by French Canadians who had suffered from the robberies of Bigot and his like, decided to sacrifice everything but his indispensable fixed salary in order that even the most malicious critics could not bring any accusation, however false, against the man who represented Britain and her king.

An interesting personal interlude, which was not without considerable effect on Canadian history, took place in the middle of Carleton's four years' stay in England. He was forty-eight and still a bachelor. Tradition whispers that these long years of single life were the result of a disappointing love affair with Jane Carleton, a pretty cousin, when both he and she were young. However that may be, he now proposed to Lady Anne Howard, whose father, the Earl of Effingham, was one of his greatest friends. But he was doomed to a second, though doubtless very minor, disappointment. Lady Anne, who probably looked on 'grave Carleton' as a sort of amiable, middle-aged uncle, had fallen in love with his nephew, whom she presently married, and with whom she afterwards went out to Canada, where her husband served under the rejected uncle himself. What added spice to this peculiar situation was the fact that Carleton actually married the younger sister of the too-youthful Lady Anne. When Lady Anne rejoined her sister and their bosom friend, Miss Seymour, after the disconcerting interview with Carleton, she explained her tears by saying they were due to her having been 'obliged to refuse the best man on earth.' 'The more fool you!' answered the younger sister, Lady Maria, then just eighteen, 'I only wish he had given me the chance!' There, for the time, the matter ended. Carleton went back to his official duties in furtherance of the Quebec Act. His nephew and the elder sister made mutual love. Lady Maria held her tongue. But Miss Seymour had not forgotten; and one day she mustered up courage to tell Carleton the story of 'the more fool you!' This decided him to act at once. He proposed; was accepted; and lived happily married for the rest of his long life. Lady Maria was small, fair-haired, and blue-eyed, which heightened her girlish appearance when, like Madame de Champlain, she came out to Canada with a husband more than old enough to be her father. But she had been brought up at Versailles. She knew all the aristocratic graces of the old regime. And her slight, upright figure—erect as any soldier's to her dying day—almost matched her husband's stalwart form in dignity of carriage.

The Quebec Act of 1774—the Magna Charta of the French-Canadian race—finally passed the House of Lords on the 18th of June. The general idea of the Act was to reverse the unsuccessful policy of ultimate assimilation with the other American colonies by making Canada a distinctly French-Canadian province. The Maritime Provinces, with a population of some thirty thousand, were to be as English as they chose. But a greatly enlarged Quebec, with a population of ninety thousand, and stretching far into the unsettled West, was to remain equally French-Canadian; though the rights of what it was then thought would be a perpetual English-speaking minority were to be safeguarded in every reasonable way. The whole country between the American colonies and the domains of the Hudson's Bay Company was included in this new Quebec, which comprised the southern half of what is now the Newfoundland Labrador, practically the whole of the modern provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and all the western lands between the Ohio and the Great Lakes as far as the Mississippi, that is, the modern American states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Act gave Canada the English criminal code. It recognized most of the French civil law, including the seigneurial tenure of land. Roman Catholics were given 'the free Exercise' of their religion, 'subject to the King's Supremacy' as defined 'by an Act made in the First Year of Queen Elizabeth,' which Act, with a magnificently prophetic outlook on the future British Empire, was to apply to 'all the Dominions and Countries which then did, or thereafter should, belong to the Imperial Crown.' The Roman Catholic clergy were authorized to collect 'their accustomed Dues and Rights' from members of their own communion. The new oath of allegiance to the Crown was silent about differences of religion, so that Roman Catholics might take it without question. The clergy and seigneurs were thus restored to an acknowledged leadership in church and state. Those who wanted a parliament were distinctly told that 'It is at present inexpedient to call an Assembly,' and that a Council of from seventeen to twenty-three members, all