But the French Canadians were a submissive people, and although they perceived that they were wronged, they did not on that account turn aside from the path of peaceful industry which opened before them. Trade was prosperous, and steadily increasing; many persons who had left the colony returned to it; agriculture extended; gradually the deep wounds which years of war had inflicted were healed. The people remained long profoundly ignorant. When Volney, the French traveller, visited them towards the close of the century, he found that they knew almost nothing of figures, and were incapable of the simplest calculation. They indicated short distances by telling how many pipes a man could smoke while he walked; a longer distance was that which a man could or could not traverse between sunrise and sunset. But ignorance did not prevent that patient, incessant toil, which year by year added to their possessions and improved their condition. In course of time a desire for representative institutions sprang up among the English settlers. During all these years they had lived under the despotic sway of a Governor and Council appointed by the Crown. They alone among Englishmen were without part in their own government, and they wished the odious distinction to cease. [Sidenote: 1773 A.D.] They petitioned for the House of Assembly which the King had promised them ten years before, and for the permanent establishment of English law among them. The French were not sufficiently instructed to care for representative government, but they earnestly desired the restoration of the laws which had been so hastily abolished after the conquest.