He arrived in Halifax on the Adamant on 6 October 1773 with orders to determine what were the financial difficulties in Nova Scotia and cure them.
According to one account: "[He] began to expose every scandalous detail of the spoils system which permeated Halifax and extended across the province.
Even granting that he was an officer and a gentleman dealing with civilians whom he deemed socially his inferiors, he showed an alarming lack of imagination about how men behave when they are cornered and revealed almost none of the art of making himself agreeable to those whom he sought to influence or to work with.
[4]Legge's actions, particularly an attempt to audit the province's accounts, earned him a growing number of opponents among the local merchant oligarchy and turned both the Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly against him, and open rebellion broke out against Legge in the south of the province.
The Board of Trade in London founding him "wanting" in "that Gracious and Conciliating Deportment which the delicacy of the times and the Tempers of Men under agitation & alarm more particularly demanded".