tenure, suggested that the question was one for compromise or amicable arrangement. In the end nothing was done in the matter in the direction of Craig’s and Ryland’s views, and many years later, in 1840,[228] by an ordinance of Lower Canada, the Sulpicians of Montreal were incorporated under certain conditions and confirmed in the possession of their estates. [Sidenote: Sir James Craig’s administration.] It is not easy to form an accurate estimate of Sir James Craig’s administration. His views and his methods have been judged in the light of later history rather than in that of the years which had gone before. It is somewhat overlooked that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the normal conditions of the world were conditions of war not of peace, and that the governors of colonies were as a rule soldiers whose first duty was the military charge of possessions held by no very certain tenure. The account usually given and received is that Craig was an honest but mistaken man, tactless and overbearing, trying to uphold an impossible system of bureaucratic despotism, instead of realizing the merits of representative institutions and giving them full play. The apology made for him has been that he was guided by and saw with the eyes of a few rapacious officials, who had no interest in the general welfare of the community. ‘The government, in fact,’ writes Christie, ‘was a bureaucracy, the governor himself little better than a hostage, and the people looked upon and treated as serfs and vassals by their official lords.’[229] [Sidenote: Uniacke.] [Sidenote: James Stuart.]