mobbed the seigneurs who tried to enroll them. Ten years of
freedom had worked a democratic change in them, and they were
much less enthusiastic than their betters about the restoration
of seigneurial privileges. Carleton, like many another, had held
as public opinion what were merely the opinions of those whom he
met at dinner. "These people had been governed with too loose a
rein for many years," he now wrote to Burgoyne, "and had imbibed
too much of the American Spirit of Licentiousness and
Independence administered by a numerous and turbulent Faction
here, to be suddenly restored to a proper and desirable
Subordination." A few of the habitants joined his forces; fewer
joined the invaders or sold them supplies--till they grew
suspicious of paper "Continentals." But the majority held
passively aloof. Even when France joined the warring colonies and
Admiral d'Estaing appealed to the Canadians to rise, they did not
heed; though it is difficult to say what the result would have
been if Washington had agreed to Lafayette's plan of a joint
French and American invasion in 1778.

Nova Scotia also held aloof, in spite of the fact that many of
the men who had come from New England and from Ulster were eager
to join the colonies to the south. In Nova Scotia democracy was a
less hardy plant than in Massachusetts. The town and township
institutions, which had been the nurseries of resistance in New
England, had not been allowed to take root there. The
circumstances of the founding of Halifax had given ripe to a
greater tendency, which lasted long, to lean upon the mother
country. The Maine wilderness made intercourse between Nova
Scotia and New England difficult by land, and the British fleet
was in control of the sea until near the close of the war. Nova