more industry, no more energy, no more scientific cravings, and no
earnest pursuit of wealth. All was contentment. Even by the
authorities, no desire to awaken the Franco-Canadian from his slumber,
was entertained. On the contrary, the restless United Empire loyalists
were to be separated from them. The isolation of Lower Canada from the
rest of the world was to be as complete as possible.

Not very long after the declaration of American Independence, Canada
was divided, by Act of the Imperial Parliament, into two distinct
provinces, called Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Mr. Adam Lymburner, a
merchant of Quebec, not being particularly anxious for isolation,
appeared at the bar of the House of Commons on behalf of himself and
others. He was against the separation. The united province was not even
in a condition to maintain a good system of government. Oppressed by
the tyranny of officials, industry and improvement had been neglected,
and a state of languor and depression prevailed. The public buildings
were even falling into a state of ruin and decay. There was not a Court
House in the province, nor a sufficient prison nor house of correction.
Nor was there a school house between Tadousac and Niagara. The country
upon the Great Lakes was a wilderness. Lymburner did not, however,
prevail. The British government desired to put the United Empire
loyalists upon the same footing with regard to constitutional
government as they had previously enjoyed before the independence of
the United States in that country, a condition about which a certain
class of merchants in Quebec have always been indifferent. Lord
Dorchester was appointed Governor-in-Chief in Canada, and administrator
in Lower Canada, while General Simcoe was named Lieutenant Governor of
Upper Canada. General Simcoe selected for his capital Niagara,[10] and
resided there at Navy Hall. On the site of Toronto, in 1793, there was
a solitary wigwam. That tongue of land called the peninsula, which is
the protection wall of the harbour, was the resort only of wildfowl.
The margin of the lake was lined with nothing else but dense and
trackless forests. Two families of Massassagas had squatted somewhere
in the neighbourhood of the present St. Lawrence Hall when General
Simcoe removed to little York with his canvass palace, and drew around
him the incipient features of a Court. The progress in material
improvement in this country may be guessed at from the then condition
an