my, even seven thousand men might have escaped the
blockade of the sixteen thousand militia, under Washington, to whom the
conqueror of Charleston was compelled, by the fortune of war, to
present his sword. The stupidity of the British Generals, combined with
the previous stupidity of the Imperial administrations, led to the
evacuation of those colonies by Great Britain, to which she was in a
great measure indebted for the acquisition of Port Royal and Louisbourg
in Nova Scotia, and for Niagara, Frontenac, Montreal, and Quebec in
Canada. The prediction of Montcalm had come to pass. The United States
were independent. But, however much the war in America, between Great
Britain and her own old colonies, had temporarily interfered with, it
had paved the way for a more extended, commerce in Canada. There were
men in New England who would not, on any account, be rebels. Many of
these, with their families, sought an asylum in Canada, and the
advancement of the Far West, on the British side of the lines, is, in
no small degree, to be attributed to the integrity and energy of those
highly honourable men. Canada was then entirely, or almost entirely,
under military rule. It could not well be otherwise. The necessities of
the times required unity of action. There was no room for party
squabbling, nor were there numbers sufficient to squabble. The
province, the population of which did not extend beyond Detroit, a mere
Indian trading post, and beyond which it was expected civilisation
could not be extended for ages, was divided into two sections, the
western and the eastern. Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester,
had divided all west of the monument of St. Regis into four districts,
after the manner of ancient Gaul, which he termed Lunenburg,
Mecklenburg, Nassau, and Hesse; and the Seminary of Quebec had cut up
the eastern section into parishes, distinguished by cross roads. In the
lower section of the province, the _bonnets rouges_ and _bonnets bleus_
were on the increase, but the increase was like that of the frogs: it
was multiplying in the same puddle, with the same unchanging and
unchangeable habits. The peaweeting, the whistling, the purring, and
the whizzing, were only the louder, as the inhabitants became more
numerous. There was no idea of change of any kind. Language, manners,
and knowledge were the same as they ever had been: only the pomp of the
church had succeeded to the pomp and circumstance of war. There was no