which shall tend to entertainment or instruction. Our
Intentions to please the _Whole_, without offence to
any _Individual_, will be better evinced by our practice,
than by writing volumes on the subject. This one thing
we beg may be believed, that PARTY PREJUDICE, or
PRIVATE SCANDAL, will never find a place in this PAPER.
GOVERNOR CARLETON
1766-1774
The twelve years of Carleton's first administration
naturally fall into three distinct periods of equal
length. During the first he was busily employed settling
as many difficulties as he could, examining the general
state of the country, and gradually growing into the
change that was developing in the minds of the home
government, the change, that is, from the Americanizing
sixties to the French-Canadian seventies. During the
second period he was in England, helping to shape the
famous Quebec Act. During the third he was defending
Canada from American attack and aiding the British
counterstroke by every means in his power.
On the 22nd of September 1766 Carleton arrived at Quebec
and began his thirty years' experience as a Canadian
administrator by taking over the government from Colonel
Irving, who had held it since Murray's departure in the
spring. Irving had succeeded Murray simply because he
happened to be the senior officer present at the time.
Carleton himself was technically Murray's lieutenant till
1768. But neither of these facts really affected the
course of Canadian history.
The Council, the magistrates, and the traders each
presented. the new governor with an address containing
the usual professions of loyal devotion. Carleton remarked
in his dispatch that these separate addresses, and the
marked absence of any united address, showed how much
the population was divided. He also noted that a good
many of the English-speaking minority had objected to
the addresses on account of their own opposition to the
Stamp Act, and that there had been some broken heads in
consequence. Troubles enough soon engaged his anxious
attention--troubles over the Indian trade, the rights
and wrongs of the Canadian Jesuits, the wounded dignity
of some members of the Council, and the still smouldering
and ever mysterious Walker affair.
The strife between Canada and the Thirteen Colonies over
the Indian trade of the West remained the same in principle
as under the old regime. The Conquest had merely changed
the old rivalry between two foreign powers
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