wed for generations without rest or turning.
But it was not destined to be given a long trial. From the very
beginning the men on the spot, the soldier Governors of Canada, urged
an entirely contrary policy on the Home Government, and the pressure of
events soon brought His Majesty's Ministers to concur.

As the first civil Governor of Canada, the British authorities chose
General Murray, one of Wolfe's ablest lieutenants, who since 1760 had
served as military Governor of the Quebec district. He was to be
aided in his task by a council composed of the Lieutenant Governors of
Montreal and Three Rivers, the Chief Justice, the head of the
customs, and eight citizens to be named by the Governor from "the most
considerable of the persons of property" in the province.

The new Governor was a blunt, soldierly man, upright and just according
to his lights, but deeply influenced by his military and aristocratic
leanings. Statesmen thousands of miles away might plan to encourage
English settlers and English political ways and to put down all that was
French. To the man on the spot English settlers meant "the four hundred
and fifty contemptible sutlers and traders" who had come in the wake of
the army from New England and New York, with no proper respect for their
betters, and vulgarly and annoyingly insistent upon what they claimed to
be their rights. The French might be alien in speech and creed, but at
least the seigneurs and the higher clergy were gentlemen, with a due
respect for authority, the King's and their own, and the habitants were
docile, the best of soldier stuff. "Little, very little," Murray wrote
in 1764 to the Lords of Trade, "will content the New Subjects, but
nothing will satisfy the Licentious Fanaticks Trading here, but the
expulsion of the Canadians, who are perhaps the bravest and best
race upon the Globe, a Race, who cou'd they be indulged with a few
priviledges wch the Laws of England deny to Roman Catholicks at
home, wou'd soon get the better of every National Antipathy to their
Conquerors and become the most faithful and most useful set of Men in
this American Empire."*

* This quotation and those following in this chapter are
from official documents most conveniently assembled in Shorn
and Doughty, "Documents relating to the Constitutional
History of Canada, 1759-1791", and Doughty and McArthur,
"Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada,
1791-1818".