10 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



sary to renew the instructions to magistrates and others in author- 

 ity to watch closely all strangers moving from place to place in 

 the Province without any apparent purpose ; and in the following 

 year David McLean, an American citizen, was apprehended on a 

 charge of high treason. The plan conceived by this man was 

 nothing less than the extirpation of British power from the con- 

 tinent of America. A beginning was to be made at Quebec, which 

 was to be taken by surprise. His trial brought out full details 

 of the organization set on foot for this purpose. He represented 

 himself as a General in the French service, and as acting under 

 the immediate direction of Mr. Adet, the minister of Barras in the. 

 United States. He was condemned to death and executed at 

 Quebec. 



Some years before 1812 General Tureau, French ambassador 

 at Washington tried to get into communication with the people 

 of Lower Canada, but was made the victim of an elaborate joke. 

 Some one wrote him a letter speaking most hopefully of the chances 

 of French intervention, and giving a perfectly absurd account of 

 the state of affairs in this country. Absurd as it was, however, 

 he was completely taken in, and sent the letter to Paris where it 

 appears it was accepted as ail authentic document. The names 

 appended to the letter with their titles, etc., were all purely imag- 

 inary. 



The idea of protecting home industries had spread in the 

 New England States, and the result was the enacting of a tariff 

 against English goods. It soon beca-me evident, however, that a 

 large illicit trade was being carried on across the extensive and 

 almost wholly unguarded Canadian border. Vessels from Great 

 Britain entering the St. Lawrence delivered their cargoes at Bic, 

 Quebec or Montreal, as the case might be, and thence goods were 

 clandestinely conveyed to the other side of the line , to the serious 

 injury of American manufacturing interests. Mention is made of 

 a particular smuggler who justified his operations by saying that 

 he had " declared war against the United States. " , 



The greatest concentration of American manufacturing en- 

 terprise was in Massachusetts, and it was there consequently that 

 the spirit of retaliation first found expression. The people of 

 that state shrewdly calculated, moreover, that in case of war 

 they would have the furnishing of the larger part of the equipment 

 required by the troops. The Canadians of course, as interme- 

 diaries of the contraband trade, came in for their due proportion 

 of American ill-will. 



