of virtue
and morality and the noble cause of liberty. The refined
amusements of literature and the pleasing veins of
well-pointed wit shall also be considered as necessary to
the collection--interspersed with other chosen pieces and
curious essays extracted from the most celebrated
authors--so that, blending philosophy with politics,
history, etc., the youth of both sexes will be improved,
and persons of all ranks agreeably and usefully
entertained."[35] With such a high conception of its
functions, the _Quebec Gazette_ launched itself
twenty-four years in advance of the London _Times_, and
fourteen years before Benjamin Franklin founded the
_Montreal Gazette_.

[Footnote 34: It was changed into a bi-weekly in 1818, and in 1874 was
merged into the _Chronicle_ as a daily paper.]

[Footnote 35: Article by John S. Reade in the Centenary number,
_Quebec Gazette_, 1864.]

Since the Conquest, Quebec had been governed under the terms of a
royal proclamation which, remarkable to relate, prescribed no definite
forms of administration; and by the articles of capitulation almost
everything was left to the discretion of the Governor. General Murray
proved himself a discreet ruler; but friction of some sort was almost
inevitable in a situation presenting such conflicting interests and
delicate problems; and it now came from those few hundred British
settlers who wrongly supposed that their nationality gave them
privileges over ten times their number of French fellow-subjects.
Governor Murray, fortunately, held no partisan views; and his policy
was followed with equal firmness and greater success by Sir Guy
Carleton, who next assumed the administration in 1766.

The new Governor had, indeed, a remarkable connection with the history
of Quebec. In 1759 he had accompanied his friend James Wolfe to the
siege of the city, and like his General, was wounded on the Plains of
Abraham. He remained with Murray in Quebec during the trying winter of
1760, and fought in the battle of Ste. Foye. And now, after a
brilliant campaign in the West Indies, the gallant soldier was
returning to the fortress on the St. Lawrence at another critical
moment in its history.

Events were rapidly moving to a crisis in the English colonies to the
south. In spite of Burke and Pitt, England was blindly imperilling her
possessions in America by the imposition of the Stamp Act, and a
failure to realise that the Thirteen