Haldimand’s dispatches might have been written by Carleton. There is the same point of view, almost the same turn of expression. On the 25th of October, 1780, in a long dispatch to Lord George Germain, giving an account of the general conditions of men and things in Canada, he wrote, ‘As it is my duty, it has been my business to inform myself of the state of the country, and I coincide with the majority of the Legislative Council in considering the Canadians as the people of the country, and think that in making laws and regulations for the administration of these laws, regard is to be paid to the sentiments and manner of thinking of 60,000 rather than of 2,000--three-fourths of whom are traders and cannot with propriety be considered as residents of the province. In this point of view the Quebec Act was both just and politic, though unfortunately for the British Empire it was enacted ten years too late. It requires but little penetration to discover that, had the system of government solicited by the old subjects been adopted in Canada, this colony would in 1775 have become one of the United States of America.’[154] Three years later, when the war was over, in his letter to Lord North referred to above, he wrote ‘This province can only be preserved by bringing back the Canadians to a regular subordination, and by rendering them useful as a well-disciplined militia. In order to effectuate this, the authority of government must be strengthened and not diminished’.[155] Like Carleton and like Murray, Haldimand had it at heart to provide the people of Canada with an upright and kindly administration. Among the various grievances, real or alleged, which were ventilated from time to time, one of the most substantial, so far as the French Canadians were concerned, was the excessive amount which was exacted from them by officials and lawyers in the form of fees of office. In 1780 Haldimand assented to an ordinance regulating the fees for two years, at the expiration of which time he hoped that the Legislature would, from the experience gained in the meantime, be able to draw up ‘a more perfect list of fees, more permanent and less burthensome to the people’ for, he wrote, ‘the fees in general are by far too high and more than the people of this province can bear.’[156] A favourite complaint of the British minority, who had as little to complain of as they were loud and persistent in complaining, was that there was no statutory provision for the right of Habeas Corpus, which was supposed to have been abolished by the Quebec Act. When peace was restored and the step could safely be taken, Haldimand met this grievance by passing, in 1784, an ordinance ‘for securing the liberty of the subject and for the prevention of imprisonments out of this province’.[157] When reporting the passing of the fees ordinance Haldimand wrote, ‘Sir Guy Carleton had in the sessions 1775 proposed to regulate the fees of office, and had that business very much at heart.