to an official of long standing and known discretion. If other matters had been of weight in the Imperial councils there would seem to have been no reason for the careful concealment, and no possibility of the unintentional neglect, of them in this quarter.

On the other hand, although it is true that before the actual appearance of the Quebec Act we have no indication that the extension of the Province made by it had any connection whatever with the contemporary difficulties of government in the other colonies, and although it must be conceded that apart from such reference the Imperial authorities seem to have ample justification for that extension, yet it is undeniable that the considerations which excited the fears of the Continental Congress were put forward by supporters (as well as by opponents), of the measure, both in Parliament and outside. But this was not prominently done, at least at first; so incidentally indeed that in the whole of the spirited debates in both the Commons and Lords on the Quebec Bill in May and June, 1774, such references appear in the mouths of only two supporters of the Bill, and their utterances are apparently not spe cifically noticed by the opposition. One of these more candid or incautious speakers was Solicitor-General Wedderbourne, who stated in the Commons that one of the objects of the measure was to deter Englishmen from settling in Canada, and that one of the great advantages of the extension of territory would be that the other inhabitants of North America "will have little temptation to stretch themselves northwards. He added moreover, "I think this limitation of the boundary (i. e. of the older colonies) will be a better mode than any restriction laid upon govern

"1

1 Cavendish, Report, p. 58. Wedderbourne was at this time one of the pillars of the Government in the Commons. But he was not responsible for the present Bill, and though in his official capacity supporting it as a whole, he plainly intimated that it had not his entire approval. The statement had been immediately preceded by the remark that he did not think that any temptation should be held out to natives of England to emigrate.

ment. In the grant of lands we ought to confine the inhabitants to keep them according to the ancient policy of the country along the line of the sea and river."

This statement as I have said seems to have excited no comment from either side of the House;' an oversight on the part of the opposition which is the more remarkable from the fact that several of their speakers hint darkly at "the secret designs" of the Bill, and taunt the Ministry with concealing their real motives,2-hints and taunts which elicited no reply. Lord North, the leader of the House, upheld the extension as made simply in the interests of the fisheries in the East and of security to life and trade in the West; though it will be seen that the preamble of the Act refers only for the Western territory to the need of civil government for the "several colonies and settlements." The enacting clause pays special attention to the northern and western boundaries of Pennsylvania as "granted by the Charter," beside making the provision "that nothing herein contained shall in any wise affect the boundaries of any other colony;" but there is no reference to the Western claims of any of the Provinces. As first introduced the clause read very differently,-" all the said territories, islands and countries, extending southward to the banks of the river Ohio, Westward to the banks of the Mississippi not within the limits of any other British colony, as allowed and confirmed by the Crown." A petition against this indefiniteness was presented by the Pennsylvania proprietories, and Burke also objected in behalf of New York. Lord North professed every readiness to pay regard to both settled and unsettled boundaries, while declaring that the original intent had been to leave the fixing of more precise southern bounds to later local agreement; and on Burke's motion, representing that otherwise 1 The chance reporters from whom the Parliamentary History of the period was com piled, seem also not to have heard it or to have not thought it worth while noting.

2 Cavendish, pp. 1, 37, 85, 214-pagings which refer to the beginnings of the speeches in which the references occur.

the Colonies would in this matter be left at the mercy of the executive, the established clause was substituted for the above.

When with this and other Amendments the bill went back to the Lords it was received by a small but spirited opposition, headed by Chatham. Its principal defender was Lord Lyttleton, who referred to the idea put forward by Chatham that Canada would at a future day be used as a proper instrument to quell British America, with the remark that he was not apprehensive of this, but that if the Americans were determined to persist in their rebellious course he saw no reason why Canada, with the rest of the Empire, should not be so employed; and that in such an event he regarded it as happy that the local situation of the Canadians was such that they might form some check to the "fierce fanatic spirits" of the other Provinces. This however illiberal, does not apparently refer to this situation as one resulting from the provisions of the Quebec Act. Whatever the inference, this and the statement of Wedderbourne quoted above are the strongest suggestions of hidden motives on this point, that, so far as I have discovered, appear at this time in the mouths of supporters of the Government. In the close tracing of the preliminary steps through the ten years preceding the Act I have met with no other evidence fitted in any degree to support the belief that the extension by it of the boundaries of Quebec was dictated by hostility to the growth and liberties of the other colonies other than that which may perhaps be said to mark every part of the colonial system. And whether these statements are fitted to support that belief will appear very doubtful to those who have entered into the spirit of that colonial system. Even if it should be established that they were not merely private and incidental utterances, but were really expressive of definite ideas and motives on the part of the originators of the Quebec Act, it will yet remain to be 1 Parliamentary History. Vol. 17, p. 1402 et seq.

shown that they betoken a different standpoint than that occupied by, the Board of Trade for some time back. Closely connected with that view of the interests of Great Britain which for a long time had inspired the hostility to colonial manufactures, for example, was a strongly rooted preference of shore to inland colonies; a preference based on the belief that the farther the colonists removed themselves from the ocean and the mother country, the more inevitably would they be led to manufacturing enterprises and the less easy would it be for Great Britain to restrain this activity. It was simply another aspect of the trade considerations which led to such emphasis being placed upon the conciliation of the savages; it cannot be shown to imply any new development of anti-colonial policy, or any insidious scheme of building up in the West new communities of alien social and governmental constitution, with the aim of being later used as instruments against the growth and liberties of the older colonies. By the ordinary colonial views of the older illiberal school the attitude of Wedderbourne and Lyttelton can I think be sufficiently explained.

And not their views alone; but also such parts of the Imperial policy in regard to the West as cannot be attributed to real solicitude for the Indian and for the safety of the colonies. For if I have been successful in presenting my point of view in the above, it will be already evident what position I take with regard to continuity of policy throughout this period in respect to the Western lands. I see no reason to agree with Hinsdale even in the more moderate assertion that "the Western policy of the British was not steady or consistent, but fitful and capricious;" it seems to me that no inconsistency is to be detected between the policy that dictated the Proclamation of 1763,- a policy that was manifest as early at least as 1756, -and that which was expressed in the Quebec Act of 1774. It has been one

1 Old Northwest, p. 141.

of my objects throughout this investigation to show the long course of weakness, ignorance, and procrastination that stretches between the acquisition of Canada and the final settlement of its constitution. These qualities are not entirely absent in the treatment of the matter under discussion; but that treatment nevertheless presents more consistency and firmness than we find in almost any other part of the dealing with the situation. The frequent changes of Ministry and Secretary seem to have affected the peculiar sphere of the Board of Trade less than any other part of the administration; simply, it is to be contended, because that Board was now acting on long established principles, applied to the new conditions as a matter of course, and only slowly giving way to the inevitable western changes. These are the principles of the old colonial-commercial policy; and no better expression of them can perhaps be found than in the words of the Board of Trade itself in 1768, in its adverse report with regard to the proposed new settlements at Detroit and in the Illinois country.' The significant part of this is as follows:

"The proposition of forming inland colonies in America is, we humbly conceive, entirely new. It adopts principles in respect to American settlements different from what has hitherto been the policy of this kingdom, and leads to a system which, if pursued through all its consequences, is, in the present state of that country, of the greatest import

ance.

The great object of colonizing upon the continent of

1 Franklin's answer to Hillsborough, 1772 (Works, V. 55, Bigelow edition, 1887). For the report itself see its quotation by Hillsborough (Ibid. V. 5-12). For very interesting record of the progress of the scheme to which this was the death-blow, see letters of Franklin to his son, Sept. 27, 1766-March 13, 1768 (Ibid., 138-45). This reference I owe to the unpublished monograph on western settlements of Mr. G. H. Alden of the University of Wisconsin. It exhibits Shelbourne, Secretary of State for the Southern Department when the scheme was first advanced (by Franklin and others), as decidedly favorable to it, together perhaps with some other officials. But Shelbourne was evidently in this as in some other matters, in advance of his time (see Fitzmaurice, Shelbourne, II, 31); the Board of Trade seems not to have wavered in its position, and Shelbourne's retirement in January 1768 in favor of Hillsborough, the chief representative of the opposite view, may perhaps not unreasonably be regarded as helped on by his heterodox liberalism. It is apparently the first vigorous shaking of the older policy; but that policy is still triumphant.

1