COFFIN THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, 1760 76

541

Durham's opinion of the policy that should have been fol lowed, and of the degree of success that might have kn attained from the first, has already been goed m vinced was he of its necessity and pray !! strongly urged the adoption of the polytech

date at which he wrote.

rapidly or so roughly as for nye w
trample on the welfare of

henceforth" he declared,

of the British Governmez:

tion with English laws and a + 1

to trust its government

Legislature. In his versenyz

was the truest mercy to the two. is

in the midst of an Anglobaron

determine whether the sal Lutta

inhabit Lower Canada stare &

erament which car protest te

shall be delayed

undergo an the rude Lands of s

entmetion of a nationa

44

Apart from speculation or the consideration of national or natural rights, my judgment of the Quebec Act and my opinion as to alternative measures must rest upon the facts which I have brought forward. I have tried to show that in ten years of British civil rule, the French Canadian had advanced steadily in the comprehension of English principles of society and government, and had lived in prosperity and fair contentment;' that by 1774 he was ready for a compromise civil code which might have left him the principles of the regulation of landed property to which he was most wedded, and yet have proclaimed itself as an English code, the starting point of English accumulation. This would have established a system which with regard to land would not from the very beginning have been without analogy in England itself at that period, and which on all other important sides, including procedure, would have been exclusively English in spirit, substance and development. With this aspect the Province could not have presented to English-speaking immigrants at the close of the American war the forbidding features that it did present under French law. This does not seem a visionary outcome with regard to the most difficult of the matters involved, the Civil Code. The grant of representative institutions and the fostering of local self-government would naturally accompany the English legal aspect. Connected with settlement there might have been, and would almost necessarily have been, an avoidance of those other features of the Quebec Act settlement which I have shown above were objectionable to the mass of the people, and the only discoverable causes of their disloyalty in the American invasion. With a system distinctly and avowedly English in spirit and main substance there would have

1 How speedily the Quebec Act had operated for the undoing of this work may be judged from Pitt's declaration in 1791 in regard to the separation into two Provinces by the Constitutional Act, that "he had made the division of the province essential, because he could not otherwise reconcile their clashing interests" [i. e. of the English and French elements]. Parl. Hist. XXIX, 404.

been no room for those fears as to reversion to the old feudal order which so aroused the peasantry, and consequently no field of labor for the revolutionary agitator; in the absence of the so-called establishing of the Church there would have been lacking that most distasteful re-fastening upon them of compulsory tithes. In other words, without any conceivable antagonizing on other grounds of the ordinary French Canadian, there would have been avoided all those aspects of the Act by which alone can be explained the hostile attitude of the habitant during the war; while the greatest of all steps would have been taken for the preserving of the future from the perils of racial hostility and alien institutions. The various lines along which Anglicising might for the future have proceeded can be as easily imagined as described; the way of every one was effectually barred by the Quebec Act.

APPENDIX I.

THE QUEBEC ACT, 1774.1

An act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America.

Whereas his Majesty, by his Royal Proclamation, bearing date the seventh Day of October, in the third Year of his Reign, thought fit to declare the Provisions which had been made in respect to certain Countries, Territories and Islands in America, ceded to his Majesty by the definitive Treaty of Peace, concluded at Paris on the tenth Day of February, one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three: And whereas, by the Arrangements made by the said Royal Proclamation, a very large Extent of Country, within which there were several Colonies and Settlements of the Subjects of France, who claimed to remain therein under the Faith of the said Treaty, was left without any Provision being made for the Administration of Civil Government therein; and certain Parts of the Territory of Canada, where sedentary Fisheries had been established and carried on by the Subjects of France, Inhabitants of the said Province of Canada, under Grants and Concessions from the Government thereof, were annexed to the Government of Newfoundland, and thereby subjected to regulations inconsistent with the Nature of such Fisheries: May it therefore please your most Excellent Majesty that it may be enacted; and be it enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by

1 14 Geo. III., Cap. 83. In full from British Statutes at Large (London, 1776), xii., pp. 184-187.

and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the Authority of the same, That all the Territories, Islands and Countries in North America, belonging to the Crown of Great Britain, bounded on the South by a Line from the Bay of Chaleurs, along the High Lands which divide the Rivers that empty themselves into the River Saint Lawrence from those which fall into the Sea, to a point in forty-five Degrees of Northern Latitude, on the Eastern bank of the River Connecticut, keeping the same Latitude directly West, through the Lake Champlain, until, in the same Latitude, it meets the River Saint Lawrence; from thence up the Eastern Bank of the said River to the Lake Ontario; thence through the Lake Ontario, and the River commonly called Niagara; and thence along by the Eastern and the South-eastern Bank of Lake Erie, following the said Bank, until the same shall be intersected by the Northern Boundary, granted by the Charter of the Province of Pennsylvania, in case the same shall be so intersected; and from thence along the said Northern and Western Boundaries of the said Province, until the said Western Boundary strike the Ohio: But in case the said Bank of the said Lake shall not be found to be so intersected, then following the said Bank until it shall arrive at that Point of the said Bank which shall be nearest to the North-western Angle of the said Province of Pennsylvania, and thence by a right line, to the said North-western Angle of the said Province; and thence along the Western Boundary of the said Province, until it strike the River Ohio; and along the Bank of the said River, Westward, to the Banks of the Mississippi, and Northward to the Southern Boundary of the Territory granted to the Merchants Adventurers of England, trading to Hudson's Bay; and also all such Territories, Islands, and Countries, which have, since the tenth of February, one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three, been made Part of the Government of Newfoundland, be, and they are hereby,