anada single-handed. This time
its new policy remained at fever heat for over three
years and only cooled down when a British man-of-war
captured the incongruously named _Olive Branch_, in which
Ira Allen was trying to run the blockade from Ostend with
twenty thousand muskets and other arms which he represented
as being solely for the annual drill of the Vermont
militia. Thus Carleton had to watch the raging South,
the dangerous West, and bellicose Vermont, all together,
besides taking whatever measures he could against the
swarms of secret enemies within the gates. The American
immigrants who wanted 'property not liberty' were ready
enough for a change of flag whenever it suited them. But
they were few compared with the mass of French Canadians
who were being stirred into disaffection. The seigneurs,
the clergy, and the very few enlightened people of other
classes had no desire for being conquered by a regicide
France or an obliterating American Republic. But many of
the habitants and of the uneducated in the towns lent a
willing ear to those who promised them all kinds of
liberty and property put together.

The danger was all the greater because it was no longer
one foreigner intriguing against another, as in 1775, but
French against British and class against class. Some of the
appeals were still ridiculous. The habitants found themselves
credited with an unslakable thirst for higher education.
They were promised 'free' maritime intercommunication
between the Old World and the New, a wonderful extension
of representative institutions, and much more to the same
effect, universal revolutionary brotherhood included.
But when Frenchmen came promising fleets and armies, when
these emissaries were backed by French Canadians who had
left home for good reasons after the troubles of 1775,
and when the habitants were positively assured by all
these credible witnesses that France and the United States
were going to drive the British out of Canada and make
a heaven on earth for all who would turn against Carleton,
then there really was something that sensible men could
believe. Everything for nothing--or next to nothing. Only
turn against the British and the rest would be easy. No
more tithes to the cures, no more seigneurial dues, no
more taxes to a government which put half the money in
its own pocket and sent the other half to the king, who
spent it buying palaces and crowns.

'Nothing is too absurd for them to believ