3 AUGUST 1907, Page 25

MAKERS OF CANADA.

Lord Dorchester. By A. G. Bradley. (T. C. and E. C. Jack. 21s. net.)—This volume belongs to the "Makers of Canada" Series, and it may safely be said that it is not surpassed by any one of its fellows in respect of the interest of its subject and the distinction of style with which it is written. Guy Carleton was from the North of Ireland, of Scotch-Irish stock. He was a soldier, and a friend of James Wolfe, who took him on his Staff as Quartermaster-General in the Quebec Campaign, not without much opposition from the King, to whom he had given mortal offence by criticising the Hanoverian troops. In 1766 he was appointed Deputy-Governor of Canada; three years later he succeeded to the chief place, and this he held for thirty years. Mr. Bradley thus concisely describes the work which he did towards the "making of Canada" during this period :—" His first mission, from 1766 to 1778, was to attach the French and save the Colony from the tremendous magnetism of the American Republic. His second, from 1786 to 1796, was to reconstitute the country when two rival races of about equal strength were struggling in unsympa- thetic and dangerous fashion for mastery." In the first period his principal achievement was the defence of Quebec against Mont- gomery and Arnold. It is by this that he is known to most readers of history. It was a great feat; but there were other soldiers of the time who could have performed it, though the man's personal character, inspiring, as it did, absolute confidence, largely contributed. What he did for the building up of the country is less easily told, but it was by far the greater achievement of the two. The story is admirably given in the second half of this book. Guy Carleton was created Lord Dorchester in 1756. The title became extinct in 1897, but recently was revived in a descendant.—Another volume in the same series, Lemuel Allan Wilmot and Samuel Leonard Tilley, by James Hannay, introduces us to the provincial politics of New Brunswick. We do not question its claim to appear in the series, but its subject is of a kind that will not interest the general reader. As part of the story of how the Colonies became self-governing it has its importance, but the details are not of a striking kind.