In the Red River region there was at this time a population of about twelve thousand (chiefly half-breeds, and more of French than of English extraction). No one thought it necessary to consult them about the transfer, and when surveyors were sent into the country, the Red River farmers began to fear that their claims to their farms and their right to cut hay on the adjacent wild lands (a privilege of great value in their eyes) would be disregarded. Louis Riel, a young man who had been educated at Montreal, giving voice to their vague alarm, stirred them up to violent agitation, and soon the half-breeds were in open rebellion. They seized the Hudson Bay Company’s post of Fort Garry (where Winnipeg now is) and set up a “Provisional Government,” with Riel at its head. Some who dared to oppose his authority were imprisoned, and finally a young Irishman from Ontario—Thomas Scott—after a mock trial, was brutally murdered. This roused a storm of indignation throughout Canada, and a body of regular troops and militiamen, under the command of Colonel (afterwards Lord) Wolseley, was sent to put down the insurrection. The journey from the east was so toilsome and difficult that, though the troops left Toronto in June, 1870, they did not reach the Red river till August; but Riel fled on their approach, and many of the militiamen who spent the winter in Manitoba ultimately settled there. In the same year the government of the country as a Canadian province was inaugurated. Manitoba followed Ontario in having only a single chamber in the Provincial Legislature; and it is represented in the Dominion parliament by four members in the Upper, and ten in the Lower, House. “The electoral franchise is practically based on residence and manhood suffrage.” Between the taking of the first Dominion census affecting Manitoba in 1871, and the fourth (and last) the population of the province has been multiplied by eighteen, being set down in 1911 at 455,614; but, while the urban population showed an increase in the previous decade of nearly one hundred and thirty thousand, the rural population increased only by a little over seventy thousand five hundred.