The administrator, Mr. Dunn, also expressed himself as confident of the loyalty of the French Canadians. He wrote this testimony as to their {87} conduct, "The president also feels himself justified in asserting that a more ardent devotion to His Majesty's person and government had never been witnessed in any part of the British dominions." Monseigneur Plessis, the Catholic Bishop of Quebec, was always a staunch supporter of English rule. In common with the majority of the priests and leading Roman Catholics, he probably feared that their church would be more in danger if the "Bastonais" as they were called, became masters of the country than if it remained under England. The Bishop's mandement to his flock emphasized his loyalty:--"You have not waited until this province should be menaced by an invasion nor even until war should be declared, to give proofs of your zeal and of your good-will in the public service. At a suspicion even, at the first appearance of a rupture with the neighbouring states, you have acted as it was your duty to do--ready to undertake anything, to sacrifice everything, rather than to expose yourselves to a change of government, or to lose the inestimable advantage that your present condition assures to you." In every parish, as fathers and sons mustered for service, Te Deums were sung and Psalms were chanted, and all along the banks of the St. Lawrence the people of an alien tongue and race and religion rallied round the standard of the English king. [1] Dunn used the title of president in virtue of his position in the council. He was at this time acting governor. [2] A contemporary said of Lieutenant-Colonel Sheaffe:--"He was kind, benevolent and religious, but these sentiments were, in his early days, nearly, if not entirely overruled by his extreme ideas of military authority." [3] Erskine, the British minister at Washington, wrote officially that President Jefferson's embargo was not intended as a measure of hostility against Great Britain, but as a precaution against the capture of United States vessels by France. {89} CHAPTER VIII OLD QUEBEC