e
Council was instructed to retain an equal amount of land as crown
reserves, distributed judiciously in blocks between the grants made to
settlers. Were any radical tendencies to survive these attentions, the
veto power of the British Government could be counted on in the last
resort.

For a time the installment of self-government thus granted satisfied the
people. The pioneer years left little leisure for political discussion,
nor were there at first any general issues about which men might
differ. The Government was carrying on acceptably the essential tasks
of surveying, land granting, and road building; and each member of the
Assembly played his own hand and was chiefly concerned in obtaining
for his constituents the roads and bridges, they needed so badly. The
English-speaking settlers of Upper Canada were too widely scattered,
and the French-speaking citizens of Lower Canada were too ignorant of
representative institutions, to act in groups or parties.

Much turned in these early years upon the personality of the Governor.
In several instances, the choice of rulers for the new provinces proved
fortunate. This was particularly so in the case of John Graves Simcoe,
Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1792 to 1799. He was a good
soldier and a just and vigorous administrator, particularly wise in
setting his regulars to work building roads such as Yonge Street and
Dundas Street, which to this day are great provincial arteries of
travel. Yet there were many sources of weakness in the scheme of
government--divided authority, absenteeism, personal unfitness. When
Dorchester was reappointed in 1786, he had been made Governor in
Chief of all British North America. From the beginning, however, the
Lieutenant Governors of the various provinces asserted independent
authority, and in a few years the Governor General became in fact merely
the Governor of the most populous province, Lower Canada, in which he
resided.

In Upper Canada, as in New Brunswick, the population was at first much
at one. In time, however, discordant elements appeared. Religious, or
at least denominational, differences began to cause friction. The great
majority of the early settlers in Upper Canada belonged to the Church of
England, whose adherents in the older colonies had nearly all taken
the Loyalist side. Of the Ulster Presbyterians and New England
Congregationalists who formed the backbone of the Revolution, few came
to Canada. The growth