ly bad. The
western wilds ought to have been administered by a
lieutenant-governor under the supervision of a
governor-general. Even leasing them for a short term of
years to the Hudson's Bay Company would have been better
than annexing them to a preposterous province of Quebec.
The American colonists would have doubtless objected to
either alternative. But both could have been defended on
sound principles of administration; while the sudden
invasion of a new and inflated Quebec into the colonial
hinterlands was little less than a declaration of war.
The whole problem bristled with enormous difficulties,
and the circumstances under which it had to be faced made
an ideal solution impossible. But an earlier Quebec Act,
without its outrageous boundary clause, would have been
well worth the risk of passing; for the delay led many
French Canadians to suppose, however falsely, that the
Empire's need might always be their opportunity; and this
idea, however repugnant to their best minds and better
feelings, has persisted among their extreme particularists
until the present day.

CHAPTER IV

INVASION
1775

Carleton's first eight years as governor of Canada were
almost entirely occupied with civil administration. The
next four were equally occupied with war; so much so,
indeed, that the Quebec Act could not be put in force on
the 1st of May 1775, as provided for in the Act itself,
but only bit by bit much later on. There was one short
session of the new Legislative Council, which opened on
the 17th of August. But all men's minds were even then
turned towards the Montreal frontier, whence the American
invasion threatened to overspread the whole country and
make this opening session the last that might ever be
held. Most of the members were soon called away from the
council-chamber to the field. No further session could
be held either that year or the next; and Carleton was
obliged to nominate the judges himself. The fifteen years
of peace were over, and Canada had once more become an
object of contention between two fiercely hostile forces.

The War of the American Revolution was a long and
exceedingly complicated struggle; and its many varied
fortunes naturally had a profound effect on those of
Canada. But Canada was directly engaged in no more than
the first three campaigns, when the Americans invaded
her in 1775 and '76, and when the British used her as
the base from which to invade the new American Republi