followed the natural course of political evolution, with
the burning questions of language, laws, and religion
safely removed from general controversy in after years.
The rights of the English-speaking minority could, of
course, have been still better safeguarded under this
system than under the distracting series of half-measures
which took its place. There should have been no question
of a parliament in the immediate future. Then, with the
peopling of Ontario by the United Empire Loyalists and
the growth of the Maritime Provinces on the other side,
Quebec could have entered Carleton's proposed Confederation
in the nineties to her own and every one else's best
advantage.

On the other hand, the delay of fourteen years after the
Capitulation of 1760 and the unwarrantable extension of
the provincial boundaries were cardinal errors of the
most disastrous kind. The delay, filled with a futile
attempt at mistaken Americanization, bred doubts and
dissensions not only between the two races but between
the different kinds of French Canadians. When the hour
of trial came disintegration had already gone too far.
The mistake about the boundaries was equally bad. The
western wilds ought to have been administered by a
lieutenant-governor under the supervision of a
governor-general. Even leasing them for a short term of
years to the Hudson's Bay Company would have been better
than annexing them to a preposterous province of Quebec.
The American colonists would have doubtless objected to
either alternative. But both could have been defended on