A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

Sir Frederick Haldimand, who had succeeded Carleton and had governed Canada with conspicuous ability during the later years of the American War of Independence, left on the 15th of November, 1784. After Carleton’s second term as Governor of Canada. an interval of nearly two years Carleton succeeded him.[189] Carleton had been Commander-in-Chief at New York from May, 1782, till November, 1783, refusing to evacuate the city until he had provided for the safe transport of the large number of Loyalists who wished to leave. In April, 1786, he was appointed for the second time Governor of Canada. He was created Lord Dorchester in the following August, and he arrived at Quebec on the 23rd of October in the same year, being then sixty-two years of age. He remained in Canada till August, 1791, when he took leave of absence until September, 1793, and he finally left in July, 1796. The whole term of his second government thus lasted for ten years. During his first government he had been Governor of the province of Quebec alone, but in April, 1786, he was appointed ‘Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief’ not only of the province of Quebec—the boundaries of that province being now modified by the terms of the Peace of 1783—but also of Nova Scotia,[190] and of the newly-created province of New Brunswick, receiving three separate commissions in respect of the three separate provinces. Thus he was, or was intended to be, in the fullest sense Governor-General of British North America.

House of Commons debate on Carleton’s pension.

Before he went out, a debate in the House of Commons, towards the end of June, 1786, gave evidence of the high repute in which he was held. William Pitt, Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented a Royal Message, asking the House, in consideration of Carleton’s public services, to enable His Majesty to confer a pension of £1,000 per annum upon Carleton’s wife, Lady Maria Carleton, and upon his two sons for their several lives. The pension, it was explained, had been promised by the King in 1776, but partly by accident and partly by Carleton’s own wish the grant had been postponed. It was recounted by one of the speakers that ‘when all our other colonies had revolted, he (Carleton) by his gallantry, activity, and industry saved the city of Quebec, and by that means the whole province of Canada’; and when one malcontent—the only one—Courtenay by name, denied that Carleton had rendered any services, asserting with wonderful hardihood, that ‘Sir Guy had by no means protected Quebec. It was the inhabitants in conjunction with Chief Justice Livius (whom General Carleton afterwards expelled from his situation) that protected it’, another member, Captain Luttrell, rejoined that ‘In the most brilliant war we ever sustained, he was foremost in the most hard earned victories, and in the most disgraceful contest in which we ever were engaged, he alone of all our generals was unconquered’. But the most delightful tribute to Carleton was paid by Burgoyne, when the resolution had been agreed to and was being reported. Referring to the help which Carleton had given him in his fateful expedition, he said ‘Had Sir Guy been personally employed in that important command, he could not have fitted it out with more assiduity, more liberality, more zeal, than disappointed, displeased, and resentful against the King’s servants, he employed to prepare it for a junior officer’. Burgoyne then went on to testify to the uprightness of Carleton’s administration, ‘the purity of hand and heart with which he had always administered the expenditure of the public purse.’ The pension was sanctioned unanimously, to date from the 1st of January, 1785.[191]

Population of Canada in 1784.

In 1784, before the full tale of Loyalist immigration was yet complete, Canada, including the three districts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, had a population of 113,000,[192] the towns of Quebec and Montreal containing in either case between 6,000 and 7,000 residents. This was really the population of what was afterwards the province of Lower Canada, exclusive of Ontario and the Maritime Provinces which were the main scenes of Loyalist settlement. The overwhelming majority of the population in the province of Quebec, as Canada, other than the Maritime Provinces, was styled prior to the Act of 1791, consisted of French Canadians, and the citizens of British birth were still comparatively few in number: but, as has been seen, the incoming of British citizens was actively in process under Haldimand’s administration; and during the same administration a beginning was The first canals in Canada. made of the canals which have played so great a part in the history of Eastern Canada. Between the years 1779 and 1783, mainly for military reasons, Royal Engineers under Haldimand’s directions constructed canals with locks round the rapids between Lake St. Francis and Lake St. Louis above Montreal, and in 1785 proposals were first made—though not at the time carried into effect—for a canal to rectify the break in navigation on the Richelieu river, caused by the rapids between St. John’s and Chambly, and so to give unimpeded water-communication between Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence. This latter project was of great importance to Vermont, which had not yet been admitted as a state to the American Union.

Thus Dorchester came back to the land of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes amid indications of a new era with wider developments and corresponding difficulties. He came back as the man who had saved Canada in war, had given to the French Canadians the Quebec Act, and had stood firm at New York for protection of the Loyalists.

The political situation in 1786.

It was not an easy time for any man, however popular, who was responsible for the security and the welfare of Canada. British garrisons still held the frontier posts which, by the Treaty of 1783, Great Britain was bound to hand over to the United States, viz., Detroit, Michillimackinac, Erie or Presque Isle, Niagara, Oswego, Oswegatchie, and, on Lake Champlain, Point au Fer and Dutchman’s Point. The Indians were at open war with the Americans down to the year 1794, claiming as their own the lands to the north of the Ohio; and they were embittered against the English, because no provision had been made in the treaty to safeguard their rights, their homes and their hunting grounds. The Americans in their turn were irritated by the withholding of the forts, and suspected the English of instigating Indian hostilities and encouraging Indian claims. Meanwhile the internal affairs of Canada were rapidly growing more complicated, and the constitutional question pressed for solution.

Lord Dorchester on the Quebec Act.

Writing on the 13th of June, 1787, to Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney, who was then Secretary of State,[193] Lord Dorchester pointed out that the Quebec Act had been introduced at a time when nothing could be thought of in Canada but self-defence. It came into force at the outbreak of the war, and the first Council held under its provisions was overshadowed by American invasion.[194] The Act, therefore, owing to circumstances, had never really been given a fair trial; yet it may be questioned whether the very great difficulty of adjusting conflicting interests in Canada, of bringing the old and the new into harmony, and of devising a system of government, which would ensure comparative contentment at the time and give facilities for future development, was really increased by the fact that wars and threats and rumours of wars clouded the first half century of the history of Canada as a British possession. The evil of distracting attention from internal problems, of interrupting and foreshortening political and social reforms was counterbalanced by the wholesome influence of common danger. As the removal of that influence had led to the severance of the old North American colonies from Great Britain, so the actual or possible hostility of the United States made the task of holding Canada together easier than it would otherwise have been, and, by preventing constitutional questions from absorbing the whole energies of the government and the public, tended to produce slow and gradual changes in lieu of reforms so complete as possibly to amount to revolution.