General Haldimand, a Swiss who has served in the Seven Years' War, succeeds Carleton as governor in 1778. The times are troublous. There is still a party in favor of Congress. The great unrest, which ends in the French Revolution, disturbs habitants' life. Then that provision of the Quebec Act, by which legislative councilors were to be nominated by the crown, works badly. Councilors, judges, crown attorneys, even bailiffs are appointed by the colonial office of London, and find it more to their interests to stay currying favor in London than to attend to their duties in Canada. The country is cursed by the evil of absent officeholders, who draw salaries and appoint incompetent deputies to do the work. As for the social unrest that fills the air, Haldimand claps the malcontents in jail till the storm blows over; but the tricks of speculators, who have flocked to Canada, give trouble of another sort. Naturally the ring of English speculators, rather than the impoverished French, became ascendant in foreign trade, and during the American war the ring got such complete control of the wheat supply that bread jumped to famine price. Just as he had dealt with the malcontents soldier fashion, so Haldimand now had a law passed forbidding tricks with the price of wheat. Like Carleton, {312} Haldimand too came down hard on the land-jobbers, who tried to jockey poor French peasants out of their farms for bailiff's fees. It may be guessed that Haldimand was not a popular governor with the English clique. Nevertheless, he kept sumptuous bachelor quarters at his mansion near Montmorency Falls, was a prime favorite with the poor and with the soldiers, and sometimes deigned to take lessons in pickle making and home keeping from the grand dames of Quebec. In 1786 Carleton comes back as Lord Dorchester.