Strangely enough, the sharpest personal controversy was that between Hubert, the Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec, and his coadjutor Bailly.  Hubert enumerated all the institutions already engaged in educational work and suggested that ’rest and be thankful’ was the only proper attitude for the committee to assume.  But Bailly very neatly pointed out that his respected superior’s real opinions could not be those attributed to him over his own signature because they were at variance with the facts.  Hubert had said that the cures were spreading education with most commendable zeal, had repudiated the base insinuation that only three or four people in each parish could read and write, and had wound up by thinking that while there was so much land to clear the farmers would do better to keep their sons at home than send them to a university, where they would be under professors so ‘unprejudiced’ as to have no definite views on religion.  Bailly argued that the bishop could not mean what these words seemed to imply, as the logical conclusion would be to wait till Canada was cleared right up to the polar circle.  In the end the committee made three very sanguine recommendations:  a free common school in every parish, a secondary school in every town or district, and an absolutely non-sectarian central university.  This educational ladder was never set up.  There was nothing to support either end of it.  The financial side was one difficulty.  The Jesuits’ estates were intended to be made over into educational endowments under government control.  But Amherst’s claim that they had been granted to him in 1760 was not settled for forty years; and by that time all chance of carrying out the committee’s intentions was seen to be hopeless.

Commerce was another burning question and one of much more immediate concern.  In 1791 the united populations of all the provinces amounted to only a quarter of a million, of whom at least one-half were French Canadians.  Quebec and Montreal had barely ten thousand citizens apiece.  But the commercial classes, mostly English-speaking, had greatly increased in numbers, ability, and social standing.  The camp-following gangs of twenty years before had now either disappeared or sunk down to their appropriate level.  So petitions from the ‘British merchants’ required and received much more consideration than formerly.  The Loyalists had not yet had time to start in business.  All their energies were needed in hewing out their future homes.  But two parts of the American Republic, Vermont and Kentucky, were very anxious to do business with the British at any reasonable price.  Some of their citizens were even ready for a change of allegiance if the terms were only good enough.  Vermont wanted a ‘free trade’ outlet to the St Lawrence by way of the Richelieu.  The rapids between St Johns and Chambly lay in British territory.  But Vermont was ready to join in building a canal and would even become British to make sure.