I90I-2.] The Beginnino ok Mlnicipal Government in Ontario. 421 



plishing that result were not matters upon which the colonists could be 

 expected to have sound ideas, and a little experience of them proved to 

 Simcoe's own satisfaction that his conviction was well grounded. Only 

 men of military training were fit to be trusted to carry out with loyalty 

 and discretion the commands of their superiors. Hence, while still in 

 London/ Simcoe surrounded himself with a band of military men, 

 chiefly fellow officers in the late American war, and took them with him 

 as his Executive Council, and afterwards as the chief members of his 

 Legislative Council. The minor officials he expected to select in the 

 colony from among the officers already settled there. He had also 

 arranged to have the Assembly composed of military men, trusting that 

 the loyalists would, under his direction, aided by the influence of Sir 

 John Johnson, select as their representatives the half-pay officers in the 

 Province. Here, however, he came upon his first disappointment. 

 Writing from Navy Hall to the Colonial Secretary, on November 4th, 

 1792,- he states that in his passage from Montreal to Kingston, while 

 the first election was in progress, he discovered that the general spirit of 

 the country was against the election of half-pay officers, but that, to use 

 his own words, "the prejudice ran in favour of men of the lower order 

 who keep but one table, that is, who dine in common with their own 

 servants." Only by stopping over at Kingston, and specially exerting 

 his personal influence, did he manage to bring in his attorney-general, 

 Mr. White. If such was the attitude of men but lately disbanded from 

 the ranks in which they had fought against the advocates of self-govern- 

 ment, what might be expected from later arrivals who were merely 

 loyalist in name ? No wonder that Simcoe should gravely attempt to 

 put into practice a scheme for maintaining a number of military com- 

 panies scattered over the colony, into which he intended to recruit crude 

 republicans from the neighbouring states, and there, on soldier's pay, by 

 salutary drilling, useful manual labour, and friendly lectures on the evils 

 of self-government, convert them into well affected British subjects, fit 

 to be trusted with a bush farm in a back township.'' No doubt the broth 

 would have been well flavoured had he been able to catch his hare. 



The settlers having preferred men of the lower order to Simcoe's 

 half-pay officers, we are prepared to find some assertions of popular 

 claims which did not meet with the approval of the governor. We 

 come upon one such at the very threshold of the new legislation. The 



1 His plans for the government of Upper Canada are detailed in his letters to Dundas, written in 

 London. See, for instance, letters of June 2nd and August 12th, 1791, Canadian Archives, Q. 278, pp. 

 228-255, and 28.^-307. 



2 Canadian Archives, Q. 279-1, p. 79. 



3 Canadian Archives, Q. 278, p. 287. 



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