ay in 1767 the British authorities had granted the
whole island by lottery to army and navy officers and country gentlemen,
on condition of the payment of small quitrents. The quitrents were
rarely paid, and the tenants of the absentee landlords kept up an
agitation for reform which was unceasing but which was not to be
successful for a hundred years. In all three Maritime Provinces
political and party controversy was little known for a generation after
the Revolution.

It was more difficult to decide what form of government should be set up
in Canada, now that tens of thousands of English-speaking settlers dwelt
beside the old Canadians. Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, had returned
as Governor in 1786, after eight years' absence. He was still averse
to granting an Assembly so long as the French subjects were in the
majority: they did not want it, he insisted, and could not use it.
But the Loyalist settlers, not to be put off, joined with the English
merchants of Montreal and Quebec in demanding an Assembly and relief
from the old French laws. Carleton himself was compelled to admit the
force of the conclusion of William Grenville, Secretary of State for the
Home Department, then in control of the remnants of the colonial empire,
and son of that George Grenville who, as Prime Minister, had introduced
the American Stamp Act of 1765: "I am persuaded that it is a point
of true Policy to make these Concessions at a time when they may be
received as a matter of favour, and when it is in Our own power to
regulate and direct the manner of applying them, rather than to wait
till they shall be extorted from us by a necessity which shall neither
leave us any discretion in the form nor any merit in the substance of
what We give." Accordingly, in 1791, the British Parliament passed the
Constitutional Act dividing Canada into two provinces separated by
the Ottawa River, Lower or French-speaking Canada and Upper or
English-speaking Canada, and granting each an elective Assembly.

Thus far the tide of democracy had risen, but thus far only. Few in
high places had learned the full lesson of the American Revolution. The
majority believed that the old colonies had been lost because they had
not been kept under a sufficiently tight rein; that democracy had been
allowed too great headway; that the remaining colonies, therefore,
should be brought under stricter administrative control; and that care
should be taken to build up forces to coun