he represented as being solely for the annual drill of the Vermont militia.  Thus Carleton had to watch the raging South, the dangerous West, and bellicose Vermont, all together, besides taking whatever measures he could against the swarms of secret enemies within the gates.  The American immigrants who wanted ‘property not liberty’ were ready enough for a change of flag whenever it suited them.  But they were few compared with the mass of French Canadians who were being stirred into disaffection.  The seigneurs, the clergy, and the very few enlightened people of other classes had no desire for being conquered by a regicide France or an obliterating American Republic.  But many of the habitants and of the uneducated in the towns lent a willing ear to those who promised them all kinds of liberty and property put together.

The danger was all the greater because it was no longer one foreigner intriguing against another, as in 1775, but French against British and class against class.  Some of the appeals were still ridiculous.  The habitants found themselves credited with an unslakable thirst for higher education.  They were promised ‘free’ maritime intercommunication between the Old World and the New, a wonderful extension of representative institutions, and much more to the same effect, universal revolutionary brotherhood included.  But when Frenchmen came promising fleets and armies, when these emissaries were backed by French Canadians who had left home for good reasons after the troubles of 1775, and when the habitants were positively assured by all these credible witnesses that France and the United States were going to drive the British out of Canada and make a heaven on earth for all who would turn against Carleton, then there really was something that sensible men could believe.  Everything for nothing—­or next to nothing.  Only turn against the British and the rest would be easy.  No more tithes to the cures, no more seigneurial dues, no more taxes to a government which put half the money in its own pocket and sent the other half to the king, who spent it buying palaces and crowns.

’Nothing is too absurd for them to believe, wrote Carleton, who felt all the old troubles of 1775 coming back in a greatly aggravated form.  He lost no time in vain regrets, however, but got a militia bill through parliament, improved the defences of Quebec, and issued a proclamation enjoining all good subjects to find out, report, and seize every sedition-monger they could lay their hands on.  An attempt to embody two thousand militiamen by ballot was a dead failure.  The few English-speaking militiamen required came forward ‘with alacrity.’  The habitants hung back or broke into riotous mobs.  The ordinary habitant could hardly be blamed.  He saw little difference between one kind of English-speaking people and another.  So he naturally thought it best to be on the side of the prospective winners, especially when they persuaded him that he would get