the area of
their new constitution. He looked at popular institutions with the
distrust natural to an old soldier, and the period of his
administration became known in the annals of the province as "the
reign of little King Craig." Born at Gibraltar, he had entered the
army at the tender age of fifteen, and having earned rapid promotion
on many battlefields, he finally reached the rank of major-general at
the close of the American revolutionary war. Further experience in
India and the Mediterranean increased his reputation, and in the
autumn of 1807 he arrived in Quebec full of military honours, and
imbued with the high political views then held by the most exclusive
wing of the Tory party. The members of the Legislative Council and the
administrative clique drew close about the person of this new
champion, and in the same degree the French majority in the
Legislative Assembly held aloof. The burning questions of the day,
whether the judges should sit and vote in Parliament, whether the
Assembly could communicate directly with the Home Government--these
were but the occasions of an antagonism really due to diversity of
race and temperament; for, as Lord Durham discovered a generation
later, "this sensitive and polite people" revolted, not so much
against political disability, as against the exclusive manners and
practices of a ruling class far removed from themselves by language
and mode and code, who ruffled their racial pride at every turn.

[Illustration: FERRY-BOAT ON THE ST. LAWRENCE]

The new Governor was now the forcible instrument of this unsympathetic
power. With an undue sense of the importance of the vice-royalty, the
_ipse dixit_ of "the little king" dissolved Parliament on more than
one occasion. On the other side, _Le Canadien_, the journal of the
French party, rhetorically stood for liberty, fraternity, and equality
as against arbitrary government. Moderate men, wavering for a time,
were at last scandalised by its editorial violence, and rallied to the
side of the Governor. The situation quickly became acute, and
stringent measures of repression were adopted by Sir James Craig and
his councillors. The offending journal was suppressed; five
recalcitrant officers of militia were relieved of their command; and,
finally, the city guards were strengthened to meet the peril of a
possible insurrection. Soon a new element of danger appeared in the
threatened war between England and the United States, offering t