If Arnold’s claims were at all typical of others, it is not to be wondered at that Prescott took a strong line on the land question, with a view to putting a stop to speculation. The controversy which arose between himself and his Council was embittered by the course which he adopted of making public their proceedings. Chief Justice Osgoode and other members of the Council ranged themselves in opposition to him; and the state of feeling was well summed up in the words of a correspondent, writing from Quebec in August, 1798, that the Council must either get a new governor or the governor a new Council. The Duke of Portland, Secretary of State, preferred the former alternative. On the 10th of April, 1799, he ordered Prescott home. Robert Shore Milnes was sent out as Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada, and General Hunter as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. They reached Quebec on the 13th of June, and on the 29th of July Prescott sailed for England, having received before he left addresses of confidence from all classes, British and French residents combining to pay honour to him, as a man, who, whatever his faults may have been, had won the respect and esteem of the people. By the evil custom of those days, though recalled from Canada, he was allowed to retain for years in England the office of Governor-General and to receive the pay. [Sidenote: Close of the eighteenth century.] Thus the eighteenth century came to an end, that memorable century, in all parts of the world fruitful alike for good and for evil to the British Empire, but nowhere so fruitful as in North America. It had seen New France severed from its motherland. It had seen the rival British colonies severed from Great Britain. It had seen the beginnings of an English province in Canada side by side with the French, and the grant of the first instalment of political privileges to Canadians of either race. The maritime provinces, when the century closed, were four in number, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, which owed its separate existence to the incoming of the Loyalists, Cape Breton, which was later to be incorporated with Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The North-West was beginning to be a factor in Canadian history, and the exclusive power of the Hudson’s Bay Company in these regions was challenged by the formation of the North-West Company. Canada was still the land of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes, but light was breaking into the limitless area beyond, and as men’s visions widened, there came more movement and more unrest. [Sidenote: Milnes’ views as to strengthening the Executive.] [Sidenote: Independence of the Canadian habitants.] [Sidenote: Decay of the Canadian aristocracy.]