12 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



nevertheless, to form a plan for the occupation of the Province, 

 feeling confident that, if they succeeded in this, the Upper Pro- 

 vince would fall into their hands as a matter of course. 



During the summer of 1807, says Christie, "there were serious 

 apprehensions of war with the United States, whose interests were 

 suffering between the two great belligerents of Europe. The 

 feeling of hostility throughout the Republic was aggravated by 

 the affair between the Leopard and the Chesapeake, in which the 

 former had fired . . . for the purpose of searching her, and had 

 taken from her four deserters, unhappily killing six men and 

 wounding twenty-six others. " 



One-fifth of the militia was drafted without delay and put 

 under drill. In 1808 the fortifications of Quebec were commenced. 



''The extraordinary state of affairs in Europe, with the 

 American non-intercourse and embargo system, operated favour- 

 ably for the Canadian trade, particularly in the article of lumber, 

 which, owing to the quasi exclusion of the British from the Baltic, 

 took about this time, a prodigious start, evincing at once the 

 independence of Great Britain on a foreign power, for that article, 

 and consequently the value of her continental North American 

 possessions, taking in return for their timber, large supplies of 

 British manufactures. " (Christie.) 



In the year 1810 the number of vessels entered and cleared 

 at Quebec was 635 with a tonnage of 138,057. The vessels built 

 at that place and cleared numbered 26 — with a tonnage of 5,836. 

 The revenue of the province was £68,000 and the expenditure 

 £42,000. 



The total population of the two Provinces did not at the time 

 exceed 300,000 souls, while that of the United States numbered 

 8,000,000 at least. The fortune of war, however, is not always a 

 matter of numbers; the issue may be governed by some totally 

 different circumstance or condition. The confidence of the 

 Americans was unbounded. Their Secretary of War boasted in. 

 public speeches and official papers that "We can take the Cana- 

 das without soldiers. We have only to send officers into the 

 Provinces and the people disaffected toward their own Govern- 

 ment will rally round our standard. " Mr. Henry Clay said in 

 the Congress: "It is absurd to suppose we shall not succeed. 

 We have the Canadas as much under our command as Great 

 Britain has the ocean, and the way to conquer on the seas is to 

 drive her from the land. I am not for stopping at Quebec, or 



