The
quitrents were rarely paid, and the tenants of the absentee
landlords kept up an agitation for reform which was unceasing but
which was not to be successful for a hundred years. In all three
Maritime Provinces political and party controversy was little
known for a generation after the Revolution.
It was more difficult to decide what form of government should be
set up in Canada, now that tens of thousands of English-speaking
settiers dwelt beside the old Canadians. Carleton, now Lord
Dorchester, had returned as Governor in 1786, after eight years'
absence. He was still averse to granting an Assembly so long as
the French subjects were in the majority: they did not want it,
he insisted, and could not use it. But the Loyalist settlers, not
to be put off, joined with the English merchants of Montreal and
Quebec in demanding an Assembly and relief from the old French
laws. Carleton himself was compelled to admit the force of the
conclusion of William Grenville, Secretary of State for the Home
Department, then in control of the remnants of the colonial
empire, and son of that George Grenville who, as Prime Minister,
had introduced the American Stamp Act of 1765: "I am persuaded
that it is a point of true Policy to make these Concessions at a
time when they may be received as a matter of favour, and when it
is in Our own power to regulate and direct the manner of applying
them, rather than to wait till they shall be extorted from us by
a necessity which shall neither leave us any discretion in the
form nor any merit in the substance of what We give.
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