The Province was about fifteen years old before the inhabitants of Upper Canada generally began to realize what an intolerable burden they had to bear in this irresponsible Executive. Before that time some of the better educated and more intelligent among them recognized its existence as an evil with which they or their descendants would at some future time be called upon to deal. But such persons were comparatively few in number, and as the burden did not lie with special heaviness upon their own backs, they did not feel called upon to involve themselves in what might prove a ruinous quarrel with persons who would not tamely submit to interference. As for the inhabitants generally, they were too busily occupied in clearing their lands, in hewing out homes for themselves and their families in the vast wilderness, and in reducing the soil to a state fit for cultivation, to give themselves much concern about public affairs. There was no newspaper press to stimulate them to enquiry. The only sheet published in the Province which by any license of language could be called a regular newspaper was _The Upper Canada Gazette_, which was the official mouthpiece of the Administration. _The Canada Constellation_, which was a quaint long folio, published at the old capital, Niagara, had but a brief existence, and expired during the very early years of the century. The _Upper Canada Guardian_, to be hereafter referred to, did not come into being till 1807. Editorial articles, except of the briefest and crudest sort, were a still later development. The bucolic mind had no intellectual stimulant whatever except such as was to be obtained from contact with other bucolic minds through the medium of conversation. It was no wonder, then, that for the first fifteen years after the creation of Upper Canada, the Provincial Government should have been permitted to do very much as it chose, without being subjected to any formidable criticism on the part of the community.