Under French rule, the habitants had been part of the same feudal system found in metropolitan France, with the "noblesse" occupying all civil and military posts and the clergy holding sway over every public official up to and including the governor. However, by the 1750s the high cost of labor to manage the estates, the limited size and harsh realities of the Canadian economy, and the absence of the international political opportunities that existed in Europe, left many seigneurs poorer than their tenants, and even forced some to work their own land.
British rule had, entirely unintentionally, altered this dynamic still further, depriving the seigneurs and clergy of their political prominence and, with it, their last hold over the habitants (who became noticeably more spirited and independent - or rude and disobedient, depending on the observer's view). In fact, the habitants had become as independent-minded as the Americans - something that the seigneurs were quick to point out to their new rulers and that Americans saw as a weapon that they could use in their own struggle. For their part, the more educated and politicized habitants were eager to see who would triumph in the battle of wills between Great Britain and her other North American colonies.
Despite their numbers, the "Old Subjects" were extremely vociferous in demanding control of the political process in Canada, not least through their agents in London and the American colonies. About 400 of them were merchants, mainly in the fur trade, from which they had gradually displaced the French-speaking population, not without some bad feeling. They saw concessions to the majority as a threat to their right as British subjects to exploit any and every opportunity to make money - legal or otherwise. The first British governor, Major-General James Murray, saw most of them as "adventurers of mean education ... [with] ... their fortunes to make and little Sollicitous about the means," and his successor, Guy Carleton, held them in equal contempt.
Prominent among them was Thomas Walker, a Montreal merchant and former magistrate who seemed to thrive on persecution. In 1773 he encouraged the merchants of Quebec to form a committee, under John McCord, to draft a petition to Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, opposing the Quebec Bill. The petition attracted 61 signatures, not one of them from a French-speaking merchant. At the same time, Walker circulated a similar petition in Montreal that attracted 66 more. As it became increasingly obvious that the British government would frustrate their wishes, men such as McCord, Zachary Macaulay, John Dyer Mercier, Edward Antill and Udnay Hay in Quebec, Walker, James Price, William Heywood and Joseph Bindon in Montreal, and James Livingston and Moses Hazen at Chambly and St Johns, became an increasingly active fifth column. Many corresponded - often quite openly - with American politicians, and later with the commanders of the invading forces. Eventually, they would provide large sums of money and vital intelligence, or assist in recruiting other Canadians for the cause.
