CHAPTER XII

THE AMERICAN MIGRATION

From the first the problem of governing the settlements
above Montreal perplexed the authorities. It was very
early proposed to erect them into a separate province,
as New Brunswick had been erected into a separate province.
But Lord Dorchester was opposed to any such arrangement.
'It appears to me,' he wrote to Lord Sydney, 'that the
western settlements are as yet unprepared for any
organization superior to that of a county.' In 1787,
therefore, the country west of Montreal was divided into
four districts, for a time named Lunenburg, Mecklenburg,
Nassau, and Hesse. Lunenburg stretched from the western
boundary of the province of Quebec to the Gananoqui;
Mecklenburg, from the Gananoqui to the Trent, flowing
into the Bay of Quinte; Nassau, from the Trent to a line
drawn due north from Long Point on Lake Erie; and Hesse,
from this line to Detroit. We do not know who was
responsible for inflicting these names on a new and
unoffending country. Perhaps they were thought a compliment
to the Hanoverian ruler of England. Fortunately they were
soon dropped, and the names Eastern, Midland, Home, and
Western were substituted.

This division of the settlements proved only temporary.
It left the Loyalists under the arbitrary system of
government set up in Quebec by the Quebec Act of 1774,