ands between the Canadian frontier and the Ohio
were exclusively their hunting-grounds, not properly included within the
territory ceded to the United States. Jay's treaty, arranged in 1794,
with the entire approval of Washington, who thereby incurred the
hostility of the anti-British party, was a mere temporary expedient for
tiding over the difficulties between England and the United States. Its
most important result so far as it affected Canada was the giving up in
1797 of the western posts including Old Fort Niagara. It became then
necessary to remove the seat of government from Niagara, as an insecure
position, and York, which regained its original Indian name of Toronto
in 1834, was chosen as the capital by Lord Dorchester in preference to a
place suggested by Simcoe on the Tranche, now the Thames, near where
London now stands. The second parliament of Upper Canada met in York on
the first of June, 1797, when Mr. Russell, who had been secretary to Sir
Henry Clinton during the American war, was administrator of the
government after the departure of Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe from a
province whose interests he had so deeply at heart.

After the declaration of war against England by the republican
convention of France in 1793, French agents found their way into the
French parishes of Lower Canada, and endeavoured to make the credulous
and ignorant _habitants_ believe that France would soon regain dominion
in her old colony. During General Prescott's administration, one McLane,
who was said to be not quite mentally responsible for his acts, was
convicted at Quebec for complicity in the designs of French agents, and
was executed near St. John's gate with all the revolting incidents of a
traitor's death in those relentless times. His illiterate accomplice,
Frechette, was sentenced to imprisonment for life, but was soon released
on the grounds of his ignorance of the serious crime he was committing.
No doubt in these days some restlessness existed in the French Canadian
districts, and the English authorities found it difficult for a time to
enforce the provisions of the militia act. Happily for the peace and
security of Canada, the influence of the Bishop and Roman Catholic
clergy, who looked with horror on the murderous acts of the
revolutionists of France, was successfully exerted for the support of
British rule, whose justice and benignity their church had felt ever
since the conquest. The name of Bishop Plessis must al