Before he went out, a debate in the House of Commons, towards the end of June, 1786, gave evidence of the high repute in which he was held. William Pitt, Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented a Royal Message, asking the House, in consideration of Carleton’s public services, to enable His Majesty to confer a pension of £1,000 per annum upon Carleton’s wife, Lady Maria Carleton, and upon his two sons for their several lives. The pension, it was explained, had been promised by the King in 1776, but partly by accident and partly by Carleton’s own wish the grant had been postponed. It was recounted by one of the speakers that ‘when all our other colonies had revolted, he (Carleton) by his gallantry, activity, and industry saved the city of Quebec, and by that means the whole province of Canada’; and when one malcontent--the only one--Courtenay by name, denied that Carleton had rendered any services, asserting with wonderful hardihood, that ‘Sir Guy had by no means protected Quebec. It was the inhabitants in conjunction with Chief Justice Livius (whom General Carleton afterwards expelled from his situation) that protected it’, another member, Captain Luttrell, rejoined that ‘In the most brilliant war we ever sustained, he was foremost in the most hard earned victories, and in the most disgraceful contest in which we ever were engaged, he alone of all our generals was unconquered’. But the most delightful tribute to Carleton was paid by Burgoyne, when the resolution had been agreed to and was being reported. Referring to the help which Carleton had given him in his fateful expedition, he said ‘Had Sir Guy been personally employed in that important command, he could not have fitted it out with more assiduity, more liberality, more zeal, than disappointed, displeased, and resentful against the King’s servants, he employed to prepare it for a junior officer’. Burgoyne then went on to testify to the uprightness of Carleton’s administration, ‘the purity of hand and heart with which he had always administered the expenditure of the public purse.’ The pension was sanctioned unanimously, to date from the 1st of January, 1785.[191] [Sidenote: Population of Canada in 1784.] [Sidenote: The first canals in Canada.]