" When the London business correspondents of the traders
backed up this petition, the Government gave heed. In 1766 Murray
was recalled to England and, though he was acquitted of the
charges against him, he did not return to his post in Canada.
The triumph of the English merchants was short. They had jumped
from the frying pan into the fire. General Guy Carleton, Murray's
successor and brother officer under Wolfe, was an even abler man,
and he was still less in sympathy with democracy of the New
England pattern. Moreover, a new factor had come in to reenforce
the soldier's instinctive preference for gentlemen over
shopkeepers. The first rumblings of the American Revolution had
reached Quebec. It was no time, in Carleton's view, to set up
another sucking republic. Rather, he believed, the utmost should
be made of the opportunity Canada afforded as a barrier against
the advance of democracy, a curb upon colonial insolence. The
need of cultivating the new subjects was the greater, Carleton
contended, because the plan of settlement by Englishmen gave no
sign of succeeding: "barring a Catastrophe shocking to think of,
this Country must, to the end of Time, be peopled by the Canadian
race."
To bind the Canadians firmly to England, Carleton proposed to
work chiefly through their old leaders, the seigneurs and the
clergy.
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