Bedard and several other members of the assembly who were understood to be contributors to its pages, or to control its opinions, were summarily arrested by the orders of Sir James Craig. Though some of these persons obtained their release by an expression of regret for their conduct, M. Bedard would not yield, and was not released until the Governor-General himself gave up the fight and retired to England where he died soon afterwards, with the consciousness that his conduct with respect to Bedard, and other members of the assembly, had not met with the approval of the Imperial authorities, although he had placed the whole case before them by the able agency of Mr. Ryland, who had been secretary for years to successive governors-general, and represented the opinions of the ruling official class. In Upper Canada there were no national or racial antipathies and rivalries to stimulate political differences. In the course of time, however, antagonisms grew up between the Tories, chiefly old U. E. Loyalists, the official class, and the restless, radical element, which had more recently come into the country, and now desired to exercise political influence. Lieutenant-governors, like Sir Francis Gore, sympathised with the official class, and often with reason, as the so-called radical leaders were not always deserving of the sympathy of reasonable men. One of these leaders was Joseph Willcocks, for some time sheriff of the Home district--one of the four judicial divisions of the province--and also the proprietor and editor of the _Upper Canada Guardian_, {315} the second paper printed in Upper Canada--the first having been the _Upper Canada Gazette_, or the _American Oracle_, which appeared at Newark on the 18th April, 1793. He was a dangerous agitator, not worthy of public confidence, but he was able to evoke some sympathy, and pose as a political martyr, on account of the ill-advised conduct of the majority of the assembly ordering his arrest for expressing some unfavourable opinion of their proceedings in his paper. In the maritime provinces the conflict between the executive and the assemblies was less aggravated than in the St. Lawrence country, although Sir John Wentworth, the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, who had been a governor of New Hampshire before the revolution, had a very exalted idea of the prerogative, and succeeded in having an acrimonious controversy with Mr. Cottnam Tonge, the leader of the popular party, and the predecessor of a far greater man, Joseph Howe, the father of responsible government.