"Government of Quebec," reducing it to a rectangular district of not more than 100,000 square miles extending along both sides of the middle St. Lawrence from the mouth of the river St. John to the point where the St. Lawrence was intersected by the 45th degree of N. Latitude. As thus fixed the boundaries remained till the Quebec Act, the Province so constituted forming but a small part of the region over which the French Government in Canada had claimed sovereignty. The eastern portion cut off was placed under the Government of Newfoundland.

There seems to be no reason for doubting that on this point as on the others the Proclamation is what it appears to be, and that the motives which dictated it are to be fully gathered from the foregoing representations of the Board of Trade. That the measures referring directly to Quebec can scarcely be regarded as unfriendly to the colonies is shown by the fact that they arose partly from a desire to prevent Quebec from having an undue advantage in the Indian fur-trade. It was not regarded as a complete settlement, and was intended to be supplemented by steps which should properly provide for the temporary government of the region. But as it proved, neither time nor energy was available till 1774 for further arrangement, and even the instructions to the Commander-in-Chief, spoken of by the Board of Trade, seem never to have been issued. On the eve of the passing of the Quebec Act, (long after its main features had been decided upon), Dartmouth, then Secretary of State, writes to Lt. Gov. Cramahé that "there is no longer any hope of perfecting that plan of policy in respect to the interior country which was in contemplation when the Proclamation of 1763

1 Knox (Justice & Policy of the Quebec Act, Lond. 1774), states in an authoritative manner that it had been intended to defray the expense of the system contemplated by a tax on the Indian trade, and that the plan was abandoned because it was not judged expedient to lay this tax, while the American budget was already sufficiently burdened. See also Franklin, Works, V. 38.

2

3

was issued." "The details of the plan, (referred to as drawn up by the Board of Trade in 1764), we learn from the instructions to Carleton of 1775, it being incorporated therein as some guide in his future dealings with the Indian trade. The main feature is the institution of a semi-military government, (i. e. by civil officials relying on the military for constant support), administered in a summary manner by a superintendent and deputies; government having almost for its sole object the regulation of the fur-trade, and no consciousness being shown of the existence in the region of any permanent white settlers. The Superintendent was indeed appointed; but being left without sufficient power the result was unsatisfactory, and he was superseded by 1768, each province then having authority to frame regulations for its own traders. The fur trade, subject from the want of effective government to a variety of injurious impediments, became every year more and more disorganized and unproductive, and complaints as to the insecurity of life and property throughout the trading grounds increased every day in volume and vehemence. It was soon seen that some more effective measures must be taken for the control of the region. Dartmouth in the letter just quoted, after speaking of the difficulty of carrying out the plan of policy at first intended, proceeds:"Many circumstances with regard to the inhabitancy of parts of that country were then unknown, and there are a variety of other considerations that do, at least in my judgment, induce a doubt both of the justice and propriety of restraining the colony to the narrow limits prescribed in that Proclamation." The main "circumstance" here spoken of was probably the discovery that white settlers had spread themselves too widely and fixed

1 Can. Arch., Q. 9, p. 157.

Can. Arch., Instructions, 1765-87..

* Hillsborough to Carleton, June 11, 1768 (Can. Arch., Q. 5-1, p. 419). Franklin's letters show the expense of the system as one of the chief reasons for change.

See also same to Carleton Dec. 10, 1774. (Can. Arch., Q. 10, p. 125.)

themselves too firmly throughout the region to make it possible to eject them (as was ordered by the Proclamation of 1763), or to prevent their further increase. Every year only multiplied the evidence that the Western country was fast and irretrievably losing its character as a mere Indian hunting ground, and that settled civil government could not long be delayed.2

5

As to the dangerous and almost anarchial state of things throughout the West during the whole of this period we have abundant evidence. The official reports are full of complaints of the unsettled and inadequate state of gov. ernment and of the impossibility of carrying on the furtrade without constant friction and disorder.3 I cannot better state the situation than by quoting from the wellexpressed report of a committee of the Quebec Council, April 24, 1769, drawn up as the result of an investigation called forth by complaints of the traders. This was after all pretence of control through a general superintendent had been withdrawn and each Province had been given power to frame regulations for its own traders. It begins by representing the great inconvenience and injury of the "situation and present condition of the places where this trade is carried on, and in which all regulations, whether made by this or any other Province, must of consequence have their operative influence. They are at present, as we understand, the subject of no civil jurisdiction whatever, without any internal principles of government within them

1 See Murray to Halifax March 9, 1764, where he speaks of these settlements as certainly noble ones." (Can. Arch., Q. 2, p. 78.) See also Houston, Can. Const. Doc., p. 108, note 2.

2 See petition for such a government, from inhabitants of the Illinois, June 27, 1773. Cal. Hald. Coll., p. 203. Also Dartmouth to Gage concerning same. Ibid., p. 232. This was an old French settlement; it was not to be expected that English settlers would be less forward in opposition to military government.

Advocate-General Marriott asserted in 1774 that for want of a good government since the Conquest, the trade was then only one-third of what it had been under the French. Code of Laws.

4 Can. Arch., Q. 6, p. 83.

For these complains see Minutes of the Quebec Council, Jan. 15 and March 2, 1768. They were directed mainly against the Provincial regulations theu in being.

"1

"

selves, nor annexed for the purposes of civil government to any Province which has; so that we are at a loss to conceive how any province in particular or all the separate jurisdictions in America combined, can form a system. and give it binding effect upon persons casually residing in a country not liable to receive a law from them, or enforce obedience to it when formed." The inevitable result of the situation here outlined is briefly referred to by Dartmouth in a letter to Gen. Gage, of March 3, 1773, in which the latter is ordered to bring to England every thing required to explain as well the causes as the effects of those abuses and disorders which in some of your former dispatches you say had prevailed to a great degree of enormity in that country. The report of the Quebec Council proceeds to maintain that matters could not be remedied without Imperial action in the annexing of the whole of the trade region to some one of the existing civil governments, and contends that no plan of concerted colonial action, (such as New York shortly after proposed), could be satisfactory. There were the usual difficulties of the time in regard to such co-operation; but over and above these, it was made almost impossible by the fact that Quebec, the province most concerned, was in a radically different governmental and industrial position from its neighbors. In 1771 New York proposed a scheme of joint action by Pennsylvania, Quebec, and itself, which Quebec refused to accede to; Lt. Gov. Cramahé writing home on the subject, Oct. 31, 1771, that "the interest of the two Provinces [Quebec and New York] differ too widely to expect they will ever perfectly agree upon regulations." 2

1 Cal. Hald. Coll., p. 232.

2 Can. Arch., Q. 8, p. 82. This is the occasion of the significant interference of Hillsborough against American Congresses which have I spoken of above (p. 389.) Cramahé, though recognizing earlier the peculiar interests of Quebec, seems to have been willing at first, through despair of other remedies, to join in discussing common measures. January, 1772, we find the Quebec Council in receipt of a more definite proposal for joint action from New York, and rejecting the same on the grounds, (1), that the Quebec government had no authority to take the financial measures involved, and (2), that the steps

It will then be seen that it might well appear to the home administration that no other step was open than the annexing of the territory to some existing civil government. To have kept it separate would have meant merely the continuance of a military or semi-military control, sure to be productive of even greater friction with the other Provinces and their traders, of increasing damage to the trade, and of more serious discontent on the part of the various small settled communities. And having reached this conclusion it was almost inevitable that the Imperial authorities should choose for this purpose the Province with which the region had been earliest and most closely associated, and to which it was believed by so many to belong, that of Quebec.' The report of the Quebec Council quoted above, had been transmitted home; its main conclusion was the setting forth with considerable force the pre-eminent claims of Quebec to this acquisition. Whatever influence the state of affairs in the other Provinces exerted in this regard, we meet no trace of such influence in the confidential communications between the British and Canadian authorities. We have no reason to suspect the candour of Dartmouth in the letter above quoted, addressed as it was in the regular course of private correspondence proposed would be detrimental to the Provincial trade. We have here mainly no doubt jealousy of the more powerful neighbor and apprehension at the inroads she was making in a branch of trade which had so long been Quebec's chief stay. Apart from the prohibition of the Minister, (which it is noteworthy, is not referred to), the Quebec Government had probably confidence that the old advantages would soon be restored to the Province by Imperial action. No further intercourse with the other colonies appears on the subject before the Quebec Act. How far the bearing on this matter of the provisions of the Quebec Act was instrumental in affecting the Revolutionary attitude of New York and Pennsylvania, as rousing their commercial anger and jealousy, would probably be worth a closer investigation. At least we have here no inconsiderable element in the general and profound dislike of the measure among the older Northern colonies. See the commercial aspect of the Remonstrance of the N. Y. Legislature, March 25, 1775. (Parl. Hist., XVIII, 650.)

1 To attach it to any one other Province would be objectionable (we may reasonably assume the authorities to have felt), because of the various conflicting colonial claims in the West, sure to be aroused to the greatest activity by such a measure. Whereas the Government could, consistently with the Treaty, disregard all, and put the matter on another basis by givin it to Quebec. This would be at least a plausible line of argument.