The old Green Mountain Boys had changed their tune.  Ethan Allen himself had buried the hatchet and, like his brother, become Carleton’s friendly correspondent.  He frankly explained that what Vermonters really wanted was ’property not liberty’ and added that they would stand no coercion from the American government.  About the same time Kentucky was bent on getting an equally ‘free trade’ outlet to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Mississippi.  The fact that France Spain, the British Empire, and the United States might all be involved in war over it did not trouble the conspirators in the least.  The central authority of the new Republic was still weak.  The individual states were still ready to fly asunder.  Federal taxation was greatly feared.  Anything that savoured of federal interference with state rights was passionately resented.  The general spirit of the westerners was that of the exploiting pioneer in a virgin wilderness—­a law unto itself alone.  There were various plans for opening the coveted Mississippi.  One was to join Spain.  Another was to seize New Orleans, turn out the French, and bring in the British.  Then, to make the plot complete, the French minister to the United States was asking permission to make a tour through Canada at the very time when Carleton was sending home reams of documents bearing on the impending troubles.  The letters exchanged on this subject are perfect models of politeness.  But Carleton’s answer was an emphatic No.

Foreign complications were thickening fast.  The French Revolution had already begun, though its effect was not yet felt in Canada.  The American government was anxiously watching its refractory states, while an anti-British political party was making headway in the South.  As if this was not enough to engage whatever attention Carleton had to spare from the internal affairs of Canada, he suddenly heard that the Spaniards had been seizing British vessels trading to a British post on Vancouver Island. [Footnote:  See Pioneers of the Pacific Coast in this Series.] This Nootka Affair, which nearly brought on a war with Spain in 1790, was settled in London and Madrid.  But the threat of war added to Carleton’s anxieties.

Meanwhile the governor was busily employed with an immigration problem.  It was desirable that the English-speaking immigrants should settle on the land with the least possible friction between them and the French Canadians.  The French Canadians differed among themselves.  But no such differences brought them any closer to their new neighbours on questions of land settlement.  The French had granted lands in seigneuries.  The British would hear of nothing but free and common socage.  French farms were measured by the arpent and were staked out in long and narrow oblongs.  British farms were measured by the acre and staked out ‘on the square.’  Language, laws, religion, manners and customs, ways of life, were also different.  So there was hardly any intermixture of settlements.  The French Canadians