Those he served and those by whom he was served were in turn disloyal to him. Colonial questions, such as in times of profound peace and goodwill, and after generations of experience, are yet almost insoluble, confronted him, without precedent, without guidance, in their most uncompromising form. He faced them, and through all the mire and mud in which England and English civilians and soldiers and sailors wallowed in these miserable years, he carried one name at any rate which stood for dignity, uprightness, and firm prescient statesmanship. It is not to the credit of English memories or English perception that his name has outside Canada passed into comparative oblivion. If ever a man had temptation to despair of or be untrue to his country, and if ever a man’s character and work redeemed his country and his country’s cause in unworthy times, that man was Carleton. A great figure in the colonial history of Great Britain as a whole, in the history of Canada he is very great indeed. His character is poles apart from that of old Count Frontenac, and yet he filled in some sort a similar place. Both were soldier-governors; both came back to rule a second time; in either case the individual personality of a firm masterful man was the saving feature of a time of life and death for the colony. Carleton had none of Frontenac’s ruthlessness and arrogance, he had not his French quick wit; but either man in his turn, the one at the end of the seventeenth century, the other towards the end of the eighteenth, was in the fullest sense the saviour of Canada. [Sidenote: General Prescott succeeds Dorchester.] Dorchester did not actually cease to be Governor-in-Chief of Canada until the end of April, 1797, some months after his return to England. He was then succeeded in the office by Prescott, who in the meantime had been Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada and Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America, having been sworn in at Quebec on the 12th of July, 1796. Robert Prescott, of Lancashire descent, was an old man when he was sent to Canada. Born in 1725, he was seventy-one years of age, only one year younger than Dorchester. He was a Lieutenant-General in the army and had seen much fighting, principally in North America and the West Indies. He had served under Amherst and Wolfe, at Louisbourg and Quebec. He had fought in the War of American Independence and been present at the battle of Brandywine. In 1794 he was in command of the force which took Martinique from the French and, as civil governor of the island, he earned the goodwill of French and natives alike by his tact and humanity.[211] Thus he had a good record when he was chosen to succeed Lord Dorchester, and, though his rule in Canada was short and stormy, when he left, there was abundant evidence of his popularity. [Sidenote: Intrigues of the French minister in the United States against Canada.]