* * * * * Meanwhile, in Quebec, a decade of English rule slipped uneventfully by, marked chiefly by new perceptions of citizenship on the part of the French. The _ancien régime_ had been conducted on the principle of centralised authority, allowing no place to personal liberty. Neither on its civil nor its military side were any rights extended to the individual. Up to the Conquest, the citizens of Quebec had been no more than cogs in the wheel of State, driven fast or slow according to the spasmodic interest felt by the Home government in her always troublesome colony--a land which had first claimed consideration as the gateway to Cathay, and presently appeared to be nothing better than a "thousand leagues of snow and ice." This decline from the equator of enthusiasm to the north pole of neglect indicated the unstable fortunes of the colony. National spirit was left to fill up the ranks of her army when danger threatened the frontiers; and to the simple _habitant_, who had no interest to keep alive the memory of France, Quebec and Louisbourg were the ends of the earth, and the annals of his parish the Alpha and Omega of knowledge. With British rule all this was changed. In Quebec the _Tiers État_ awoke to its latent destiny thirty years before the same realisation came to Paris; and it was the new principles of government which achieved this bloodless revolution. The rights of man were no longer confined to the Governor, Intendant, and the Sovereign Council; and the plainest citizen felt a new pulse within him as soon as he saw the trend of the English system. Instead of being kept in the dark as to what was taking place in the outside world, he found a strange solicitude in high quarters to keep him informed on every subject of public importance. Under General Murray a newspaper was established, the _Quebec Gazette_, which began as a weekly in 1764.[34] The first issue of this pioneer of Canadian journalism consisted of four folio pages, two columns to a page, one French, one English; and the outline of its policy is given in the _Printer's Address to the Public_, promising:--