ry. He was thwarted, possibly in good intentions, by the commands
of the imperial government, requiring him imperatively to obtain the
submission of the colonial legislature to Downing-street dictation,
without remonstrance. A colonial legislature, tethered as it is, and
ever will be, until the Governor is elected by the people, to English
administrative incapacity might, with no lack of prudence, have been
permitted rope enough to wander round the tethering post, so that it
would only have been at considerable intervals that the effect of the
tethers would have been in any degree galling or even felt.

In 1815, the revenue of Lower Canada amounted to L150,273 currency, the
expenditure to L125,218 sterling, in which was included L16,555 for the
erection of the gaol in Quebec; L26,439 for militia services; and
L35,325, the proportion of duties to Upper Canada. Only 194 vessels of
37,382 tons, were cleared at Quebec, not taking into account ten new
vessels of only 1,462 tons altogether, hardly equal to the tonnage of a
single vessel of the present day.

Sir John Sherbrooke did not arrive at Quebec until the 21st of July. He
was then received with all the honors due to his rank and station.
Every body was as obsequious as any body could be, and great things
were, of course, expected from the new man. Nor was Sir John deficient
in ability. He had been most successful in his government of Nova
Scotia, and he had been most prudent in his negotiations with the
people of Maine. He had too an opportunity for acquiring popularity
immediately on his arrival, and he did not suffer the opportunity to
escape him. The wheat crop had failed in the lower part of the district
of Quebec. The days though warm as usual were succeeded by cold frosty
nights, which killed the wheat. There was indeed a prospect of a
famine. Representations of anticipated distress, came pouring in upon
him from first one parish and then another. A less decided man would
have called upon the provincial parliament to have acted as became the
emergency. Sir John threw open the King's stores, and on his own
responsibility, advanced a large sum of money from the public treasury,
for the purchase of such supplies as the imperial store-houses did not
afford. The season, in Lower Canada, he knew was a short one, and to
have procrastinated would have been fatal to the farmer.

Nor was Sir John less prudent in other matters. He saw the mistake
committed by his predecess