A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Annual Register for 1763, p. 19, identified the St. John river with the Saguenay, and the mistake was long perpetuated.

[2] All the quotations made in the preceding pages are taken from the Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1759-1791, selected and edited by Messrs. Shortt and Doughty, 1907.

[3] Annual Register for 1763, p. 22.

[4] Journals of Major Robert Rogers, London, 1765, p. 207.

[5] Journals of Major Robert Rogers, London, 1765, p. 214.

[6] A Concise Account of North America, by Major Robert Rogers, London, 1765, pp. 240-4.

[7] Rogers’ Journals, p. 229.

[8] A Concise Account of North America, p. 168.

[9] Dalyell seems to have been a good officer. Bouquet on hearing of his death about two months’ later wrote, ‘The death of my good old friend Dalyell affects me sensibly. It is a public loss. There are few men like him.’ Bouquet to Rev. M. Peters, Fort Pitt, September 30, 1763. See Mr. Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives, 1889, Note D, p. 70.

[10] Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives, 1889, note D, p. 59.

[11] Ibid., Note D, pp. 60, 62.

[12] Bouquet to Amherst, July 26, 1763: Canadian Archives, as above, pp. 61-2.

[13] Bouquet to Rev. Mr. Peters, September 30, 1763: Canadian Archives, as above, p. 70.

[14] ‘There have been half a dozen battles in miniature with the Indians in America. It looked so odd to see a list of killed and wounded just treading on the heels of the Peace.’ Letter of October 17 and 18, 1763, to Sir Horace Mann.

[15] Bouquet to Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania, Fort Pitt, August 11, 1763: Canadian Archives, as above, p. 66.

CHAPTER II
CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE QUEBEC ACT

It was said of the Spartans that warring was their salvation and ruling was their ruin. The saying holds true of various peoples and races in history. A militant race has often proved to be deficient in the qualities which ensure stable, just, and permanent government; and in such cases, when peace supervenes on war, an era of decline and fall begins for those whom fighting has made great. But even when a conquering race has capacity for government, there come times in its career when Aristotle’s dictum in part holds good. It applied, to some extent, to the English in North America. As long as they were faced by the French on the western continent, common danger and common effort held the mother country and the colonies together. Security against a foreign foe brought difficulties which ended in civil war, and the Peace of 1763 was the beginning of dissolution.

In the present chapter, which covers the history of Canada from the Peace of Paris to the outbreak of the War of Independence, it is proposed, from the point of view of colonization, to examine the ultimate rather than the immediate causes which led to England losing her old North American colonies, while she retained her new possession of Canada.

Prophecies that the British conquest of Canada would be followed by the loss of the North American colonies. Peter Kalm.

It had been abundantly prophesied that the outcome of British conquest of Canada would be colonial independence in British North America. In the years 1748-50 the Swedish naturalist, Peter Kalm, travelled through the British North American colonies and Canada, and left on record his impressions of the feeling towards the mother country which existed at the time in the British provinces. Noting the great increase in these colonies of riches and population, and the growing coolness towards Great Britain, produced at once by commercial restrictions and by the presence among the English colonists of German, Dutch, and French settlers, he arrived at the conclusion that the proximity of a rival and hostile power in Canada was the main factor in keeping the British colonies under the British Crown. ‘The English Government,’ he wrote, ‘has therefore sufficient reason to consider the French in North America as the best means of keeping the colonies in their due submission.’[16]

Others wrote or spoke to the same effect. Montcalm was credited with having prophesied the future before he shared the fall of Canada,[17] and another prophet was the French minister Choiseul, when negotiating the Peace of Paris. To keen, though not always unprejudiced, observers the signs of the times betokened coming conflicts between Great Britain and her colonies; and to us now looking back on history, wise after the event, it is evident that the end of foreign war in North America meant the beginning of troubles within what was then the circle of the British Empire.

Incorrect view of the conflict between Great Britain and her colonies in North America.

Until recent years most Englishmen were taught to believe that the victory of the American colonists and the defeat of the mother country was a striking instance of the power of right over might, of liberty over oppression; that the severance of the American colonies was a net gain to them, and a net loss to England; that Englishmen did right to stand in a white sheet when reflecting on these times and events, as being citizens of a country which grievously sinned and was as grievously punished. All this was pure assumption. The war was one in which there were rights and wrongs on both sides, but, whereas America had in George Washington a leader of the noblest and most effective type, England was for the moment in want both of statesmen and of generals, and had her hands tied by foreign complications. We can recognize that Providence shaped the ends, without going beyond the limits of human common sense. Had Pitt been what he Great Britain failed for want of leaders. was in the years preceding the Peace of Paris, had Wolfe and the eldest of the brothers Howe not been cut off in early manhood, the war might have been averted, or its issue might have been other than it was. One of Wolfe’s best subordinates, Carleton, survived, and Carleton saved Canada; there was no human reason why men of the same stamp, had they been found, should not have kept for England her heritage. The main reason why she lost her North American colonies was not the badness of her cause, but rather want of the right men when the crisis came.

The result of the War of Independence was not wholly a loss to Great Britain nor wholly a gain to the United States.

Equally fallacious with the view that England failed because wrong-doing never prospers, is, or was, the view that the independence of the United States was wholly a loss to England and wholly a gain to the colonists. What would have happened if the revolting provinces had not made good their revolt must be matter of speculation, but it is difficult to believe that, if the United States had remained under the British flag, Australia would ever have become a British colony. There is a limit to every political system and every empire, and, with the whole of North America east of the Mississippi for her own, it is not likely that England would have taken in hand the exploiting of a new continent. At any rate it is significant that, within four years of the date of the treaty which recognized the independence of the United States, the first English colonists were sent to Australia. The success or failure of a nation or a race in the field of colonization must not be measured by the number of square miles of the earth’s surface which the home government owns or claims at any given time. To judge aright, we must revert to the older and truer view of colonizing as a planting process, replenishing the earth and subduing it. If the result of the severance of the United States from their mother country was to sow the English seed in other lands, then it may be argued that the defeat of England by her own children was not wholly a loss to the mother country.

Nor was it wholly a gain to the United States. Such at least must be the view of Englishmen who believe in the worth of their country, in its traditions, in the character of the nation, in its political, social, moral, and religious tendencies. The necessary result of the separation was to alienate the American colonists from what was English; to breed generations in the belief that what England did must be wrong, that the enemies of England must be right; to strengthen in English-speaking communities the elements which were opposed to the land and to the race from which they had sprung. With English errors and weaknesses there passed away, in course of years and in some measure, English sources of strength; the sober thinking, the slow broadening out, the perpetually leavening sense of responsibility. Had the American provinces remained under the British flag it is difficult to see why they should not have been in the essence as free and independent as they now are; it is at least conceivable that their commercial and industrial prosperity would have been as great; assuredly, for good or for evil, they would have been more English.

Shortcomings of the English in foreign and colonial policy.

The faults and shortcomings of the English, which throughout English history have shown themselves mainly in foreign and colonial matters, seem all to have combined and culminated in the interval of twenty years between the Peace of 1763, which gave Canada to Great Britain, and the Peace of 1783, which took from her the United States; and in addition there were special causes at work in England, which at this more than at any other time militated against national success.

The party System.

The shortcomings in question are, in part, the result of counterbalancing merits, fair-mindedness, and freedom of thought, speech, and action. Love of liberty among the English has begotten an almost superstitious reverence for Parliamentary institutions. Parliamentary institutions have practically meant the House of Commons; and the House of Commons has for many generations past implied the party system. In regard to foreign and colonial policy the party system has worked the very serious evil that Great Britain has in the past rarely spoken or acted as one nation. The party in power at times of national crisis is constantly obliged to reckon on opposition rather than support, from the large section of Englishmen whose leaders are not in office; and ministers have to frame not so much the most effective measures, as those which can under the circumstances be carried with least friction and delay. The result has been weakness and compromise in action; among the friends of England, suspicion and want of confidence; among her foes, waiting on the event which prolongs the strife. The English have so often gone forward and then back, they have so often said one thing and done another, that their own officers, their friends and allies, their native subjects, and their open enemies, cannot be sure what will be the next move. If the Opposition in Parliament and outside, by speech and writing, attacks the Government, the natural inference to be drawn is that a turn of the electoral tide will reverse the policy.

Apart too from this more or less necessary result of party government, the element of cross-grained men and women, who, when their own country is at issue with another, invariably think that their country must be wrong and its opponent must be right, has always been rather stronger, or, at any rate, rather more tolerated in the United Kingdom than among continental nations. This is due not merely to the habit of free criticism, but also to a kind of conceit familiar enough in private as in public life. Englishmen, living apart from the continent of Europe, are, as a whole, more wrapped up in themselves than are other nations; and in this self-satisfied whole there is a proportion of superior persons who sit in judgement on the rest, and who, having in reality a double dose of the national Pharisaism, think it their duty to belittle their countrymen.

Fault-finders of this kind, or political opponents of the Government for the time being, are apt, as a rule, to make light of any minority in the hostile or rival country, who may be friendly to England: they tend to misrepresent them as being untrue to their own land and people, as wanting to domineer over the majority, as seeking their own interests: and, if they have suffered losses for England’s sake, the tale of the losses is minimized. But it is not only the opponents of the Government who take this line; too often in past history it has been to a large extent the line of the Government itself. The perpetual seeking after compromise, and trying to see two sides after the choice of action has been made, has lost many friends to our country and nation, and made none: while the retracing of steps, unmindful of claims which have arisen, of property which has been acquired, and of responsibilities which have been incurred has, as the record of the past abundantly shows, brought bitterness of spirit to the friends of England, and bred distrust of the English and their works.

Want of preparation for war.

The element of uncertainty in British policy and action towards foreign nations or towards British colonies has been in part due to ignorance: and to ignorance and want of preparation have been due most of the disasters in war which have befallen Great Britain. Here again something must be attributed to the fact of the island home. The rulers of continental peoples have been driven by the necessities of their case to learn the conditions of their rivals, by secret service and intelligence agents to ascertain all that is to be known, and at the same time to keep their own arms up to date, and their own powder dry. They have prepared for war. England has prepared for peace. Her policy has paid in the long run, but it would not have been a possible policy for other nations; and at certain times in English history it has wrought terrible mischief. England does not always muddle through, as the English fondly hope she does; notably, she did not muddle through when the United States proclaimed their independence.

In these years, 1763-83, there was the party system in England with all its mischievous bitterness; there was a weak Executive at home, and a still weaker Executive in the colonies; there was ignorance of the real conditions in America, unwise handling of the colonial Loyalists, threatening talk coupled with vacillation in action, laws made which gave offence, and, when they had given offence, not quite repealed. All the normal English weaknesses flourished and abounded at this period, and were supplemented by certain sources of danger which were the outcome of the particular time.

Special evils at work in England in the years 1763-83.

It was a special time, a time of reaction. England had lately gone through a great struggle, made a great effort, incurred great expense, and won great success. She was for the moment vegetating, not inclined or ready for a A time of reaction. second crisis. Second-rate politicians were handling matters, and the influence of the new King was all in favour of their being and remaining second-rate; for George the Third intended, by meddling in party politics, Partisan attitude of the Crown. and by Parliamentary intrigues, to rule Parliament. Thus the Crown became a partisan in home politics, and in colonial politics was placed in declared opposition to the colonies, instead of remaining the great bond between the colonies and the mother country.

Sympathy in England with the colonists and their cause.

The result was, that throughout the years of the American quarrel, and in a growing degree, the colonies found powerful support in this country, because they were, after all, not foreigners but Englishmen—Englishmen who compared favourably with Englishmen at home and whom patriotic Englishmen at home could admire and uphold; because they were apparently the weaker side, attracting the sympathy which in England the weaker side always attracts; and because, through the attitude of the King, their cause was associated with the cause of political liberty at home. Add to this that the one great English statesman of world-wide reputation, Chatham, had warmly espoused the colonial side, and it may well be seen that, unless some able general, as Wellington in later days, by military success, saved his country from the results of political blunders, the position was hopeless.

Ultimate causes of the severance of the North American colonies.

But for the special purpose of determining what place the episode of the severance of the British North American colonies holds in the history of colonization we must look still further afield. The constitutional question as to whether the colonies were subject to the Parliament of the mother country or to the Crown alone may, from this particular point of view, be omitted, for the story of the troubled years abundantly shows that theories would have slept, if certain practical difficulties had not called them into waking existence, and if lawyers had not been so much to the front, holding briefs on either side. Nor is it necessary to dwell upon the specific and immediate causes of the strife, except so far as they were ultimate causes also. Among such immediate causes, some of which have been already noted, were the personal character of the English king for the time being, the corruption and jobbery of public life in England, the weakness of the Executive in the colonies, the enforcing of commercial restrictions already placed by the mother country on the colonies, the kind of new taxes which the Home Government imposed, the method of imposing them, and the object with which they were devised; the outrageous laws of 1774 for penalizing Massachusetts, the Quebec Act, and the employment of German mercenaries against the colonists, which gave justification to the colonists for calling in aid from France. All these and other causes might have been powerless to affect the issue, if England had possessed statesmen and generals, and if the growing plant of disunion had not been deeply rooted in the past.

Comparison of Spanish and British colonization in America.

When France lost Canada and Louisiana, two European nations, other than the Portuguese in Brazil, practically shared the mainland of America. They were Spain and Great Britain. Spain won her American empire not far short of a hundred years before Great Britain had any strong footing on the American continent; she kept it for Spain held her American possessions for a longer time than Great Britain held the North American colonies. some thirty or forty years after the United States had achieved their independence. The Spanish-American empire was therefore much longer-lived than the first colonial dominion of Great Britain in North America, and the natural inference is, either that the Spaniards treated their colonies or dependencies better than the English treated theirs, or that the English colonies were in a better position than the Spanish dependencies to assert their independence, or that both causes operated simultaneously.

It is difficult to compare Spain and Great Britain as regards their respective colonial policies in America, for their possessions differed in kind. Spain owned dependencies rather than colonies, Great Britain owned colonies rather than dependencies. Spanish America was the result of conquest: English America, not including Canada, was the result of settlement. But, so far as a comparison can be instituted, it will probably not be seriously contended that the British colonies suffered more grievously at the hands of the mother country than did the colonial possessions of Spain. The main charge brought against England was that she neglected her colonies and left them to themselves. Whether the charge was true or not—as to which there is more to be said—neglect is not oppression; and within limits the kindest and wisest policy towards colonies, which are colonies in the true sense, is to leave them alone. ‘The wise neglect of Walpole and Newcastle,’ writes Mr. Lecky, ‘was eminently conducive to colonial interests.’[18]

The real, ultimate reasons why England held her North American colonies, which now form the United States of America, for a shorter time than Spain retained her Central and South American possessions were two: first, Absence of system in British colonial policy in North America. that the English colonies were in a better position than the Spanish dependencies to assert their independence; secondly, that—largely because she owned dependencies rather than colonies—Spain was more systematic than England in her dealings with her colonial possessions. These two reasons are in truth one and the same, looked at from different sides. The English colonies were able to assert their independence, because they had on the whole always been more or less independent. They had always been more or less independent, because the mother country had never adopted any definite system of colonial administration. The Spanish system was not good—quite the contrary; but it was a system, and those who lived under it were accustomed to restrictions and to rules imposed by the home government. Similarly in Canada, under French rule, there was a system, kindlier and better than that of Spain, but one which had the gravest defects, which stunted growth and precluded freedom: yet there it was, clear and definite; the colonists of New France had grown up under it; they knew where they were in relation to the mother country; it had never occurred to them to try and make headway against the King of France and his regulations. Widely different was the case of the English colonies in North America. All these settlements started under some form of grant or charter, derived ultimately from the Crown: the Crown from time to time interfered and made a show of its supremacy; but there was no system of any sort or kind, and communities grew up, which in practice had never been governed from home but governed themselves. Most of all, the New England colonies embodied to the full the spirit of colonial independence. Their founders, men of the strongest English type, went out to live in their own way, to be free from restrictions which trammelled them at home, to found small English-speaking commonwealths which should be self-governing and self-supporting, ordered from within, not from without.

When the English colonies were planted in North America there was the most complete absence of system at home.

The English have never been systematic or continuous in their policy throughout their history; but the period of English history when North America was colonized was the one of all others when system and continuity were most conspicuously absent. It was a time of violent political changes at home, of strife between king and people. A line of kings was brought in from Scotland, they were overturned, they were restored, and they were finally driven out again. This was the condition of the Crown to which the newly-planted colonies owed allegiance, and which was supposed to exercise supreme authority over the colonies. Under the Crown were Proprietors and Companies, whose charters, being derived from a perpetually disputed source, were a series of dissolving views; and under the Proprietors and Companies were a number of strong English citizens who, caring little for the theoretical basis of their position, cared very much for practical independence, and ordered their ways accordingly, becoming steadily and stubbornly more independent through perpetual friction and perpetual absence of systematic control. Thus it was that the North American colonies drank in, as their mother’s milk, the traditions and the habits of independence. They carried with them English citizenship, but the privileges of such citizenship rather than the responsibilities; and, in so far as the mother country was inclined to ignore the privileges, the colonies were glad to disclaim the responsibilities.

Absence of collective responsibility in the British North American colonies.

They were separate and distinct, not only from the mother country, but also from each other, and they could not in consequence from first to last be held collectively responsible. In the wars with Canada, New England and New York, though alike exposed to French invasion, and from time to time co-operating to repel the invaders or to organize counter-raids, yet acted throughout as entirely separate entities, in no way inclined to bear each other’s burdens as common citizens of a common country. The southern colonies, until the French, shortly before the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, came down into the valley of the Ohio, took no part whatever in the fight between Great Britain and France for North America. The New Englanders, most patriotic of the colonists, beyond all others went their own ways in war and peace; uninvited and unauthorized from home they formed a confederation among themselves: early in their history they tried to make a treaty with Canada on the basis that, whatever might be the relations between France and England in Europe, there should be peace between French and English in North America: they took Port Royal: they attacked Quebec: they captured Louisbourg: and the anonymous French eye-witness of the first siege and capture of Louisbourg commented as follows on the difference between the colonial land forces and the men of the small Imperial squadron which Warren brought to the colonists’ aid: ‘In fact one could never have told that these troops belonged to the same nation and obeyed the same prince. Only the English are capable of such oddities, which nevertheless form a part of that precious liberty of which they show themselves so jealous.’[19]

The colonies had never been taxed for revenue purposes.

Most of all it should be remembered that, though subject to the Navigation laws imposed by the mother country and to that extent restricted in their commercial dealings, no English colony in North America, before the days of the Stamp Act, had ever been taxed by Crown or Parliament for revenue purposes. In the year 1758 Montcalm was supposed to have written on this subject in the following terms: ‘As to the English colonies, one essential point should be known, it is that they are never taxed. They keep that to themselves, an enormous fault this in the policy of the mother country. She should have taxed them from the foundation. I have certain advice that all the colonies would take fire at being taxed now.’[20] This judgement was probably sound. It might have been well if from the first, when charters were issued and colonial communities were formed, some small tax had been levied for Imperial purposes upon the British colonies, if some contribution of only nominal amount had been exacted as a condition of retaining British citizenship. There would then have been a precedent, such as Englishmen always try to find, and there would have been in existence a reminder that all members of a family should contribute to the household expenses.[21]

The political separation of the North American colonies was the natural result of their geographical separation.

We are accustomed to think and to read of the separation of the American colonies from the mother country as wholly an abnormal incident, the result of bad handiwork, not the outcome of natural forces. This view is incorrect. History ultimately depends on geography. When two members of the same race, nation, or family pass their lives at a long distance from each other, in different lands, in different climates, under different conditions, the natural and inevitable result is that they diverge from each other. The centrifugal tendency may be counteracted by tact and clever statesmanship, and still more by sense of common danger; but it is a natural tendency. Men cannot live at a distance from each other without becoming to some extent estranged. The Greeks, with their instinctive love of logic and of symmetry, and with their fundamental conception of a city as the political unit, looked on colonization as separation, and called a colony a departure from home. The colonists carried with them reverence for the mother state, but not dependence upon it; and, if there was any political bond, it was embodied in the words that those who went out went out on terms of equality with, not of subordination to, those who remained behind. The English, in fact, though not in principle, planted colonies on the model of the Greek settlements; their theories and their practice collided; and, being a practical race, their theories eventually went by the board.

Conflicting tendencies. Distance and sentiment.

When an over-sea colony is founded, the new settlement is in effect most distant from the old country; that is to say, means of communication between the one point and the other are least frequent and least developed. The tendency to separation—as far as geography is concerned—is therefore strongest at the outset. On the other hand, in the foundation of a colony, unless the foundation is due to political disruption at home, the sentiment towards the mother country is warmer and closer than in after years, for the founders remember where they were born and where they grew to manhood. As generations go on, the tie of sentiment becomes necessarily weaker, but, with better communication, distance becomes less; there is therefore a competition between the opposing tendencies. Many of the Greek colonies were the result of στάσις στάσις and colonization. or division in the mother cities. The unsuccessful party went out and made a separate home. In a very modified form the same cause was at work in the founding of the Puritan colonies of North America. Notably, the emigrants on the Mayflower were already exiles from England, political refugees, who had found a temporary home in the Netherlands. These founders of the Plymouth settlement were by no means the chief colonizers of North America, or even of New England, but their story—the story of the ‘Pilgrim fathers’—became a nucleus of Puritan tradition; and from it after generations deduced that New England was the home of English citizens whom England had cast out. Thus one group, at any rate, of North American colonies traced their origin to separation. Then came the element of distance. ‘The European colonies in America,’ wrote Adam Smith, with some exaggeration, ‘are more remote than the most distant provinces of the greatest empires which had ever been known before.’[22] The Atlantic Ocean lay between them and the motherland, and cycles went by before that distance was perceptibly modified. In our own time, steam and telegraphy have been perpetually counteracting the effects of distance. It was not so in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Navigation was improved, but was still the humble handmaid of wind and tide; and on the very eve of the American War of Independence the remoteness of the North American colonies, and the prevailing ignorance in England about the North American colonies were, though no doubt much exaggerated, a commonplace among the speakers and writers of the time.

We start then with colonies planted from a land which had no thought of systematic control over colonies or dependencies, whose government was at the time of colonization in a chaotic state, whose colonists went out in part, at any rate, intent on practical separation, and who all settled themselves or were settled in a remote region at a time when distance did not grow less.

The next point to notice is that it has always been held that, as between a mother country and its colonies, if they are colonies in the true sense and not merely tributary states, it is rather for the mother country to give and her colonies to take, than vice versa. This is a view which has been held at all times and among all races, but especially among members of the English race. Other nations and General view of the duty of a mother country towards its colonies. races have, it is true, felt as strongly as, or more strongly than, the English the duty of protecting their outlying possessions: they have in some cases lavished more money directly upon them at the expense of the taxpayers at home; but, on the other hand, they have almost invariably regarded their colonies as dependencies pure and simple, constrained to take the course of the dominant partner in preference to their own. The English alone in history have bred communities protected by, but in practice not subject to, the mother country. They have given, without exacting toll in return.

Adam Smith on the subject.

No writer has laid greater stress on this view of the relations between the mother country and the colonies than Adam Smith, who published the Wealth of Nations just as the American colonies were breaking away from Great Britain. ‘The English colonists,’ he wrote, ‘have never yet contributed anything towards the defence of the mother country, or towards the support of its civil government. They themselves, on the contrary, have hitherto been defended almost entirely at the expense of the mother country;’ and again, ‘Under the present system of management, Great Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she has assumed over her colonies.’ ‘Great Britain is, perhaps, since the world began, the only state which, as it has extended its empire, has only increased its expense without once augmenting its resources.’[23] His opinion would have been modified could he have foreseen the help given to the mother country in our own day by the self-governing colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in a war far removed from their shores; but even in our own day the old view, against which he contended, largely holds the field, that more is due from the mother country to the colonies than from the colonies to the mother country, that what the mother country spends on the Empire is payment of a debt, while what the colonies spend on the Empire is a free gift.

The mother country, being usually greater than the colony, is expected to give rather than to receive.

This view of the relations between a mother country and its colonies takes its ultimate source largely from the fact that the mother country is nearly always[24] greater and stronger than any one colony or group of colonies; and in the English mind the instinct of fair play invariably makes in favour of the party to a contract which is or appears to be the weaker party. It is in the light of the fact that the American colonies were numerically the weaker party in their contention with the mother country, and with the misleading deduction that any demand made upon them was therefore unjust, that the story of the War of Independence has over and over again been wrongly told. In one of the more recent books on the subject, Sir George Trevelyan’s American Revolution, it is stated that all the colonies asked of the King was to be let alone.[25] That is all that any man or any community asks, when called upon to pay a bill; and the question at issue between the mother country and the colonies in the eighteenth century was the eternal question, which vexes every community and every federation of communities, who ought to pay. The bill was one for defence purposes; but, when it was presented, the colonists’ answer was in effect, first, that it was the duty of the mother country to Contentions of the colonists. defend the colonies; secondly, that that duty had been neglected; and thirdly, that, assuming that it had been performed, it was for the colonies and not for the mother country to determine what proportion of the expense, if any, should be defrayed by the colonies.

(1) It was the duty of the mother country to bear the expense of defending the colonies.

The first of these three contentions may not have been fully avowed, but deep down in the minds of men there lay the conviction that the mother country ought to pay for defending the colonies, and there it has remained, more or less, ever since. It is true that the grant of self-government in its fullest sense to the present great provinces of the British Empire has been coupled with the withdrawal of the regular forces from all but a few points of selected Imperial vantage, and to that extent the colonies have taken up, This view still prevails. and well taken up, the duty of self-defence; but the burden of the fleet, the great defensive force of the Empire as a whole, is still borne in the main, and was till recently entirely borne, by the mother country. When colonies or foreign possessions are in a condition of complete political dependence upon the mother country, it may fairly be argued that the latter, in insisting upon dependence, should, as the price of supremacy, undertake to some extent the duty of defence. And yet a survey of the British Empire at the present day shows that no self-governing province of the Empire is so highly organized or so fully charged for the purposes of defence as is the great dependency of India.

Independence implies self-defence.

The first and most elementary duty of an independent community, the one condition without which it cannot be independent, is providing for its own defence. The American colonies claimed in reality political independence, at any rate as far as internal matters were concerned; but they did not admit, except to a limited extent, that it was their duty to provide against foreign invasion. That duty, in their eyes, devolved upon the mother country because it was the mother country; because it was held that the mother country derived more advantage from the colonies than—apart from defence—the colonies derived from her; and because the mother country dictated the foreign policy of the Empire; in common parlance, it called the tune and therefore, it was argued, should pay the piper.

The Navigation Acts an inadequate return for the charge imposed on the mother country for defending the colonies.

The Navigation laws, the commercial restrictions imposed by Great Britain on her colonies, were assumed to represent the price which the colonies paid in return for the protection which the mother country gave or professed to give to the colonies; and these same laws and restrictions, viewed in the light of later times, have been held to be the burden of oppression which was greater than the colonies could bear. Adam Smith, the writer who most forcibly exposed the unsoundness of the old mercantile system, also demonstrated most conclusively that that system was universal in the eighteenth century; that it was less oppressively applied by England than by other countries which owned colonies; that under it, if the colonies were restricted in trade, they were also in receipt of bounties; and lastly, that the undoubted disadvantages which were the result of the system were shared by the mother country with the colonies, though they weighed more heavily upon the colonies than on the mother country, and were to the colonies ‘impertinent badges of slavery’. The conclusion to be drawn is that, assuming Great Britain to have adequately discharged the duty of protecting the colonies, she was not adequately paid for doing so by the results of the mercantile system.

(2) Did Great Britain neglect the defence of the North American colonies?

But it was further contended that the duty of protecting her colonies was one which Great Britain neglected. While the colonies were poor and insignificant, the mother country, it was alleged, neglected them. When they became richer and more valuable she tried to oppress them. If the charge of neglect in the general sense was true, we may refer to Mr. Lecky’s words already quoted, as showing that it may well be argued that the colonies profited by it.[26] Mr. Lecky writes of conditions in the eighteenth century, but Adam Smith used similar terms with reference to the earlier days of the colonies. Contrasting the Spanish colonies in America with those owned by other European nations on that continent, he wrote: ‘The Spanish colonies’ (in consequence of their mineral wealth) ‘from the moment of their first establishment attracted very much the attention of their mother country; while those of the other European nations were for a long time in a great measure neglected. The former did not perhaps thrive the better in consequence of this attention, nor the latter the worse in consequence of their neglect.’[27] It may be answered, however, that the neglect here referred to was neglect of the colonies in their internal concerns, leaving them, as Adam Smith puts it, to pursue their interest in their own way. This was an undeniably beneficial form of neglect, wholly different from the neglect which leaves distant dependencies exposed to foreign invasion and native raids. Was then the British Government guilty of the latter form of neglect in the case of the American colonies?

The attitude of the mother country in the earlier history of the colonies.

There were many instances in the history of these colonies, while they were still under the British flag, of the Imperial Government promising assistance which was never sent, or only sent after months of delay: there were instances of gross incapacity on the part of leaders of expeditions sent out from home, notably in the case of Walker and Hill, who commanded the disgracefully abortive enterprise against Quebec in 1711. The state of Acadia, when nominally in British keeping after the Treaty of Utrecht, was a glaring illustration of English supineness and procrastination. There was, at any rate, one notable instance of the mother country depriving the colonies of a great result of their own brilliant enterprise, viz. when Louisbourg, taken by the New Englanders in 1745, was restored by Great Britain to France under the terms of the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle in 1748. Undoubtedly Great Britain on many occasions disappointed and disheartened the colonies, and especially the most patriotic of the colonies, the New England states. On the other hand, it is beyond question that the colonies were never seriously attacked by sea. They were threatened, sometimes badly threatened, as by d’Anville’s fleet in 1746; they were liable to the raids of daring partisan leaders, such as d’Iberville; but either good fortune or the British fleet, supplemented no doubt by a wholesome respect for the energy and activity of the New England sailors themselves, kept the coasts and seaports of the American colonies in comparative security through all the years of war. It must be noted too that, while the colonies suffered because Great Britain had interests elsewhere than in America; while, for instance, a fleet designed for the benefit of the colonies in 1709 was sent off to Portugal, and the New Englanders’ prize of Louisbourg was forfeited in order to secure Madras for the British Empire, the colonies at the same time shared in the results of victories won in other parts of the world than America. The Peace of Utrecht, with what it gave to the English in America, was entirely the outcome of Marlborough’s victories on the continent of Europe. Nothing that was done in America contributed to it. The failures of England were under the colonies’ eyes; her successes, the fruits of which they shared, were often achieved at the other side of the world.

But, taking the main events which contributed to the security and greatness of the American colonies, how far should they be credited to Great Britain and how far to the colonies themselves? In earlier days, nothing was more important to the future of the English in America than securing a continuous seaboard and linking the southern to the northern colonies. This object was obtained by taking New York from the Dutch, the result of action initiated in Europe, not in America. The final reduction of Port Royal was effected with the assistance of troops and ships from England. The Peace of Utrecht, which deprived the French of Acadia and their settlements in Newfoundland, was, as already stated, wholly the result of Marlborough’s fighting in Europe. Though the The conquest of Canada was mainly due to the mother country. New Englanders took Louisbourg, and England gave it back to France, the colonists’ success was largely aided by Warren’s squadron of Imperial ships. But, most of all, the final conquest of Canada was due far more to the action of the mother country than to that of the colonies.

The great, almost the only, foreign danger to the English colonies in North America was from the French in Canada and Louisiana, but it is not generally realized how enormously the English on the North American continent outnumbered the French. At the time of the conquest of Canada, the white population of the English colonies in North America was to that of the French colonies as thirteen to one. It is true that the English did not form one community, whereas the French were united; but it is also true, on the other hand, that the several English communities were more concentrated than the French, and that they held the base of the triangle, which base was the sea. A single one of the larger English colonies had a white population equal to or surpassing the whole French population in North America. Under these circumstances it might fairly be asked why the English colonists required any help at all from the mother country to conquer Canada. The war was one in which they were vitally concerned. Its object was to give present security to their frontiers, to rid them once for all from the raids of French and Indians, which had for generations desolated their villages, farms, and homesteads, and to leave the West as a heritage to their children’s children, instead of allowing the valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio to remain a French preserve. No doubt it was to the interest of Great Britain, as an Imperial Power, that France should be attacked and, if possible, overthrown in the New World as in the Old. The conquest of Canada was part of Pitt’s general scheme of policy, and English regiments were not sent to America for the sake of the American colonists alone.[28] But the allegation made in after years, that the campaigns in America were of great concern to the mother country and of little concern to the American colonies, was on the face of it untrue. To the English colonists in North America the French in Canada were the one great present danger, and the conquest of Canada was the one thing needful. Yet we find that, in 1758, the troops, nearly 12,000 in number, which achieved the second capture of Louisbourg were nearly all regulars; that in the force which Abercromby led against Ticonderoga about one-half of the total fighting men were soldiers of the line, and that even Forbes’ little army, which took Fort Duquesne, contained 1,600 regulars out of a total of 6,000 men. In the following year, Wolfe’s army, which took Quebec, was almost entirely composed of Imperial troops. Nor was this all. Although, in 1758, the colonies, or rather the New England colonies, readily answered to Pitt’s call for a levy of 20,000 men, a considerable part of the expense which was thus incurred was recouped from the Imperial exchequer.[29] The conclusion of the whole matter is that to the mother country, rather than to the colonies themselves, was it due that the great danger which had menaced the latter for a century and a half was finally removed. England gave the best of her fighting men, and loaded her people at home with a debt of many millions, in order that her great competitor might be weakened, and that her children on the other side of the Atlantic might be for all time secure on land from foreign foes, while her fleets kept them safe from attack by sea; and, inasmuch as the French in America were numerically insignificant as compared with the English colonists, the only real justification for the colonists requiring aid from the mother country to overcome the difficulty was, that the English colonies were by geography and interest divided from each other and consequently indifferent to each other’s burdens and perils; while Canada, united in aim and organization, received also assistance, though niggardly assistance, from France.

The French were the main enemies to the English in North America. The native Indians were the only other human beings against whom the colonists had to defend themselves, and here clearly it was their concern alone. Aid given by the mother country against the Indians. The New Englanders took the burden on themselves manfully, so far as related to their own borders, but they were not prepared to fight the battles of the Pennsylvanians and Virginians; and the Pennsylvanians and Virginians were slow to help themselves. The result was, as told in the last chapter, that the brunt of the war with Pontiac and his confederates fell largely on the mother country, her officers, and her troops, and this fact alone was sufficient justification for Grenville’s contention, that a small Imperial force ought to be maintained in, and be in part paid by, the American colonies.

(3) Argument that because the mother country dictated the policy she ought to bear the expense.

But then comes the last and the strongest argument of the colonies. The mother country dictated the policy; distant and without direct representation, though their agents were active in England, the colonies could only follow where the mother country led: the mother country, therefore, should pay the cost of defending the outlying provinces; or, if the latter contributed at all to the cost, it was for them and not for the mother country to determine the amount and the method of the contribution. The real answer to this argument was, as Adam Smith Question of colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament. saw,[30] that the colonies should be represented in the Imperial Parliament. He allowed that such a proposal was beset by difficulties, but he did not consider, as Burke considered, that the difficulties were insurmountable. Yet the problem, infinitely easier in the days of steam and telegraphy, has not yet been solved, and the preliminary task of combining a group of self-governing colonies into a single confederation had, in the eighteenth century, only been talked of and never been seriously attempted in North America.

In theory, English citizens, who had never been taxed directly for Imperial purposes, might fairly claim not to be taxed, unless and until they were taken into full partnership and given a voice in determining the policy of the Empire. But the actual facts of the case made the demand of the mother country on the American colonies in itself eminently reasonable. It was true that England had Moderation of the English demand on the colonies. dictated the policy; but it was also true that the policy had been directly in the interests of the colonies, and such as they warmly approved. They were asked for money, but only for their own protection, and to preclude the possibility of a further burden falling on the mother country, already overweighted with debt incurred on behalf of these particular provinces of the Empire. The demand was a small one; the money to be raised would clearly defray but a fraction of the cost of defending the North American colonies. To the amount no reasonable exception could be taken; and as to the method of raising it the colonies were, as a matter of fact, consulted, for Grenville, the author of the Stamp Act, gave a year’s notice, before the Act was finally passed,[31] in order that the colonies might, in the meantime, if they could, agree upon some more palatable method of providing the sum required.

England suffered for her merits as well as for her defects.

The merits of England, no less than her defects, tended to alienate the North American colonies. It is possible that, if she had made a larger and more sweeping demand, she would have been more successful. Her requisition was so moderate, that it seemed to be petty, and might well have aroused suspicion that there was more behind; that what was actually proposed was an insidious preliminary to some far-reaching scheme for oppressing the colonies and bringing them into subjection. It has been held, too, that, if the Stamp Act had been passed without delay, there would have been less opposition to it than when it had been brooded over for many months. In other words, the fairness of dealing, which gave full warning and full time for consideration of a carefully measured demand, was turned to account against the mother country. But after all what was in men’s minds, when the American colonies began their contest for The analogy of family life in the case of a mother country and its colonies. independence was, speaking broadly, the feeling, right or wrong, that a mother country ought to pay and colonies ought not. Men argued then, and they still argue, from the analogy of a family. The head of the family should provide, as long as the children remain part of the household.

The analogy of family life suggests a further view of the relations between a mother country and its colonies, which accounts for the possibilities of friction. A colonial empire consists of an old community linked to young ones. The conditions, the standards, the points of view, in politics, in morals, in social and industrial matters, are not identical in old and young communities. Young peoples, like young men, do not count the cost, and do not feel responsibility to the same extent as their elders. They are more restive, more ready to move forward, more prompt in action. Their horizon is limited, and therefore they see immediate objects clearly, and they do not appreciate compromise. The problems which face them are simple as compared with the complicated questions which face older communities, and they are impatient of the caution and hesitation which come with inherited experience in a much wider field of action. The future is theirs rather than the past, they have not yet accumulated much capital and draw bills on the coming time. Most of all, being on promotion, they are sensitive as to their standing, keenly alive to their interests, and resent any semblance of being slighted. It is impossible to generalize as to the comparative standards of morality in old and young communities, either in public or in private life, but, as a matter of fact, political life, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was much purer in the North American colonies than in England: whereas at the present day, in this respect, England compares favourably with the United States. The North American colonies were a group of young communities, whose citizens were, at any rate in New England and Pennsylvania, of a strong, sober, and very tenacious type: the late war had taught them to fight: its issue had given them a feeling of strength and security: there had been no extraordinary strain upon their resources: they had reached a stage in their history when they were most dangerous to offend and not unlikely to take offence unless very carefully handled, and careful handling on the part of the mother country, as all the world knows, was conspicuous by its absence.

The Native question.

One more point may be noted as having an important bearing upon the general question of the relations between a mother country and its colonies, one which in particular contributed to ill-feeling between England and the North American states. Colonization rarely takes place in an empty land. The colonists on arrival find native inhabitants, strong or weak, few or many, as the case may be. In North America there were strong fighting races of Indians, and the native question played an all-important part in the early history of European settlement in this part of the world. It is almost inevitable that white men on the spot, who are in daily contact with natives, should, unless they hold a brief as missionaries or philanthropists, take a different view of native rights and claims from that which is held at a distance. It is true that in our own time, to take one instance only, the Maori question in New Zealand has been well handled by the colonial authorities, when thrown on their own resources, with the result that there are no more loyal members of the British Empire at the present day than the coloured citizens of New Zealand; but in the earlier days of colonization the general rule has been that native races fare better under Imperial than under colonial control, for the twofold reason that the distant authority is less influenced by colour prejudice, and that white men who go out from Europe to settle among native races are, in the ordinary course, of a rougher type than those who stay at home, and that they tend to become hardened by living among lower grades of humanity. The Quaker followers of Penn, in the state which bears his name, were conspicuous for just and kindly treatment of the Indians, but in the back-lands of Pennsylvania the traders and pioneers of settlement were to the full as grasping as their neighbours. The North American Puritan, like the South African Dutchman, looked on the coloured man much as the Jewish race regarded the native tribes of Canaan. The colonists came in and took the land of the heathen in possession. Indian atrocities, stimulated by French influence and French missionary training, were not calculated to soften the views of the English settlers. They saw their homes burned: their wives and children butchered: to them arguments as to the red men’s rights were idle words.

The only authority which could and would hold the balance even between the races was the Imperial Government; and in the hands of that Government, represented for the purpose in the middle of the eighteenth century by a man of rare ability and unrivalled experience, Sir William Johnson, the superintendence of native affairs was placed. But this duty, and the attempt to carry it out justly and faithfully, involved friction with the more turbulent and the less scrupulous of the colonists. Colonization is a tide which is always coming in; and, unless restrictions are imposed upon the colonists by some superior authority, the native owners are gradually expropriated. ‘Your people,’ said the representatives of the Six Nations to Sir William Johnson in 1755, ‘when they buy a small piece of land of us, by stealing they make it large;’[32] and Johnson amply corroborated this view. In October, 1762, he wrote: ‘The Indians are greatly disgusted at the great thirst which we all seem to show for their lands.’[33]

Sir William Johnson.

A word must be said of Sir William Johnson, for he was one of the men who, in the long course of British colonial history, have rendered memorable service to their country by special aptitude for dealing with native races. In this quality the French in North America, as a rule, far excelled the English, and at the particular place and time, Johnson’s character and influence were an invaluable asset on the British side. An Irishman by birth, and nephew of Sir Peter Warren, he had come out to America in 1738 to manage his uncle’s estates on the confines of the Six Nation Indians, and some eleven years later he was made Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern division. He lived on the Mohawk river, as much Indian as white man, his second wife being Molly Brant, sister of the subsequently celebrated Mohawk leader, and among the Iroquois his influence was unrivalled. In the wars with France he did notable work, especially at the battle of Lake George in 1755, and at the taking of Fort Niagara in 1759; and, when he died in July, 1774, on the eve of the War of Independence, his death left a gap which could not be filled, for no one among his contemporaries could so persuade and so control the fiercest native fighters in North America.

As has been seen, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 carefully safeguarded the Indians’ lands, and in 1765 a line was drawn from the Ohio valley to Wood Creek in the Oneida country, dividing the country which should in future be open to white settlers from that which the Six Nations were to hold for their own. This boundary was, through Johnson’s influence, confirmed by an agreement signed at Fort Stanwix on the 5th of November, 1768, in The Fort Stanwix line. the presence of Johnson himself as well as of Benjamin Franklin’s son, who was at the time Governor of New Jersey. The signatories were representatives of the colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia on the one hand, and deputies of the Six Nations on the other; and the Indians were described as ‘true and absolute proprietors of the lands in question’. The line diverged from the Alleghany branch of the Ohio some miles above Pittsburg; it was carried in a north-easterly direction to the Susquehanna; from the Susquehanna it was taken east to the Delaware; and from the Delaware it was carried north along the course of the Unadilla river, ending near Fort Stanwix, now the town of Rome, in Oneida county of the state of New York. Under the terms of the agreement all the land east of the line was, for a sum of £10,460 7s. 3d. sold to the King, except such part as was within the province of Pennsylvania.[34] It was a definite recognition of the Indians as being owners of land, and a definite pronouncement that what they sold should be sold to the Crown. Neither tenet was likely to commend itself to the border colonists. They would find it hard to believe that a savage’s tenure of land was as valid as that of a white man, nor would they welcome the Imperial Government as landlord of the hinterland. The red man thought otherwise. The power from over the seas, which the colonists soon learnt to denounce as the enemy of liberty, was to them the protector of life and land: and, when the struggle was over, many of the Six Nation Indians were to be found in Canada, not in their old homes under the flag of the United States.

Attitude of the Canadians.

Nor were the Indians the only inhabitants of North America who did not see eye to eye with the colonists in their contest with the mother country. In October, 1774, the General Congress of the recalcitrant colonies issued a long manifesto to their ‘friends and fellow subjects’ in Canada, inviting them to ‘unite with us in one social compact formed on the generous principles of equal liberty’. The manifesto appealed to the writings of ‘the immortal Montesquieu’, the ‘countryman’ of the French Canadians, and warned the latter not to become the instruments of the cruelty and despotism of English ministers, but to stand firm for their natural liberties, alleged to be threatened by the Quebec Act which had just been passed. But the high-sounding appeal missed its mark. It is true that at the beginning of the war, when Canada was left almost undefended, and when, in consequence, Montgomery and the Congress troops overran the country up to the walls of Quebec, a considerable number of the French Canadians, together with the British malcontents in Canada, openly or secretly made common cause with the invaders; but even then the large majority of the French Canadians remained neutral, and, if some joined the ranks of the invaders, others, including especially the higher ranks of the population, supported her cause. Here was a people lately conquered, under the rule of an alien race. A golden opportunity was given them, it seemed, to recover their freedom. Why did the French colonists not throw in their lot wholehearted with the English settlers in North America? Why did they prefer to remain under the British Crown?

The Canadians were not oppressed under English rule.

The first reason was that they were not oppressed. On the contrary they had already enjoyed more liberty under the British Government than under the old French régime. There were complaints, no doubt, as will be seen, but the Canadians were free to make them; there was no stifling of discontent, no stamping out of inconvenient pleas for liberty. With British rule came in the printing press. The Quebec Gazette was first issued in June, 1764, and in it the ordinances were published in French as well as in English. Even under military administration a formerly submissive people learnt their privileges and their rights, and General Murray, whose recall was due to allegations that he had unduly favoured the French population at the expense of the Protestant Loyalists, wrote of the Canadians as a ‘frugal, industrious, moral race of men who, from the just and mild treatment they met with from His Majesty’s military officers, who ruled the country four years, until the establishment of civil government, had greatly got the better of the natural antipathy they had to their conquerors’.[35] Canada was not anxious to overturn a system under which Canadians were being trained to be free. If England oppressed, she oppressed Englishmen rather than Frenchmen or natives, and one element in the alleged oppression of her own people consisted in safeguarding the rights of other races.

They preferred the English in and from England to the English colonists in America.

The second and the main reason why Canada did not combine with the United States was that, though Canadians did not love the English from England, they loved less their English neighbours in America. Charles the Second told his brother that the English would not kill himself to make James king. Similarly the Canadians, on reflection, were not prepared to turn out the British Government in order to substitute the domination of the English colonies. Generalities as to natural rights and equal liberties, borrowed from the writings of European philosophers, could not cover up the plain facts of the case. Canada, united to the English colonies, would have been submerged, and French Roman Catholics would have been permanently subject to English Protestants, far less tolerant than Englishmen at home. The colonists who had issued the high-sounding manifesto had done so with strong resentment at the extension of the limits of the province of Quebec, at the widening of the field in which the Canadian system and the religion of Canada should hold its own. They were speaking with two voices at one and the same time; calling on the Canadians not to submit to British tyranny, and denouncing as tyranny a measure which favoured Canada. Many years back the Canadians and their friends had differentiated between the English from England, who came out to fight, and the English colonists in America. The eye-witness of the siege and capture of Louisbourg in 1745 favourably, and probably unfairly, contrasted Warren and his British sailors with Pepperell and the New England levies. To the men from a distance, better disciplined, less prejudiced, less imbued with provincial animosity, there was no such aversion as to the enemy who was ever under their eyes. At all times and in all parts of the world there has been the same tale to tell; if one race must be subordinated to another, it prefers that its rulers should not be those who for generations have been their immediate neighbours and their persistent rivals.

It was written in the book of fate that New France should sooner or later become incorporated in the British Empire; it was written too that, when that time came, the British provinces in North America would assert and win complete independence. It is impossible to estimate aright the loss except in the light of the gain which preceded it. Only consummate statesmanship or military genius could have averted the severance of the North American colonies, for the very qualities which had brought success alike to them and to the motherland, dogged persistence, sense of strength, all the instincts and the principles which have made the English great, were ranged on either side in the civil war between England and her children: and that war was the direct, almost the inevitable result of their recent joint effort and their united victory. Friction began: years went on: bitterness was intensified: the noisier and less scrupulous partisans silenced the voice of reason: in the mother country the Sovereign and his advisers made a good cause bad: the revolting colonies were ennobled by Washington. Success justified the action of the colonists. England was condemned because she failed. Yet the story, if read aright, teaches only this: that the defeat of England by her own children was due to the simple fact that partly by her action, partly by her inaction, the children in wayward and blundering fashion had grown to greatness.

After the capitulation of Montreal, in September, 1760, Canada was, for the time being, under military rule. Canada under military rule. There were three military governors, General Murray at Quebec, Colonel Burton at Three Rivers, and General Gage at Montreal. All three were subordinate to Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief in North America, whose head quarters were usually at New York. Amherst left for England in 1763, and was succeeded by General Gage, whose place was filled by the transfer of Burton from Three Rivers, while the military governorship of Three Rivers was entrusted to Colonel Haldimand, one of the Swiss officers who deserved so well of England in North America.

The French Canadians at the time of the British conquest of Canada.

While Canada was still under military rule, and before the Peace of Paris was signed, the British Government took steps to collect full information as to their newly-acquired possession, with a view to determining the lines on which it should be administered in future. At the end of 1761 Amherst was instructed to obtain the necessary reports, which were in the following year duly supplied by Murray, Burton, and Gage in respect of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal respectively.[36]

Canada at this time contained little more than 70,000 white inhabitants. The population, Murray thought, had tended to decrease for twenty years past, owing to war, to the strictness of the marriage laws, and to the prohibition of marriages between Protestants and Roman Catholics; but he looked for a large increase from natural causes in the next twenty years, the men being strong and the women extremely prolific.

The Canadians, Murray wrote, were ‘mostly of a Norman race’ and, ‘in general, of a litigious disposition’. He classified them into the gentry, the clergy, the merchants, and the peasantry or habitants. The gentry or seigniors, descendants of military or civil officers, the creation largely of Louis XIV, Colbert, and Talon, he described as for the most part men of small means, unless they had held one or other of the distant posts, where they could make their fortunes. ‘They are extremely vain, and have an utter contempt for the trading part of the colony, though they made no scruple to engage in it, pretty deeply too, whenever a convenient opportunity served. They were great tyrants to their vassals, who seldom met with redress, let their grievances be ever so just. This class will not relish the British Government, from which they can neither expect the same employments or the same douceurs they enjoyed under the French.’ Of the clergy he wrote that the higher ranks were filled by Frenchmen, the rest being Canadian born, and in general Canadians of the lower class. Similarly the wholesale traders were mostly French, and the retail traders natives of Canada. The peasantry he described as ‘a strong, healthy race, plain in their dress, virtuous in their morals, and temperate in their living’, extremely ignorant, and extremely tenacious of their religion. At the time of writing, Murray and his colleagues evidently anticipated more loyalty from the peasantry than from the higher classes of Canadians. Protected in their religion, given impartial justice, freed from class oppression and official corruption, they seemed likely to develop into happy and contented subjects of the British Crown. The sequel was, however, to show that more support would accrue to the new rulers of Canada from the classes which had something to lose than from the credulous habitants.

‘The French,’ so ran Murray’s report, ‘bent their whole attention in this part of the world to the fur-trade.’ They neglected agriculture and the fisheries. ‘The inhabitants are inclinable enough to be lazy, and not much skilled in husbandry, the great dependencies they have hitherto had on the gun and fishing-rod made them neglect tillage beyond the requisites of their own consumption and the few purchases they needed.’ Gage wrote that ‘the only immediate importance and advantage the French king derived from Canada was the preventing the extension of the British colonies, the consumption of the commodities and manufactures of France, and the trade of pelletry’. He noted how common it was ‘for the servants, whom the merchants hired to work their boats and assist in their trade, through a long habit of Indian manners and customs, at length to adopt their way of life, to intermarry with them, and turn savages’. Burton’s report was to the same effect: ‘The laziness of the people, and the alluring and momentary advantages they reaped from their traffic with the Indians in the upper countries, and the counterband trade they carried on with the English colonies, have hitherto prevented the progress of husbandry;’ and again, ‘The greatest part of the young men, allured by the debauched and rambling life which always attend the Indian trade in the upper countries, never thought of settling at home till they were almost worn out with diseases or premature old age.’

It was a country and a people of strong contrasts, wholly unlike their own colonies, that the English were called upon to rule. At head quarters and near it there was a cast-iron system in Church and State, trade monopoly, an administration at once despotic and corrupt. Behind there was a boundless wild, to which French restlessness, French adaptability for dealing with native races, and the possibilities of illicit wealth called the young and enterprising, who were impatient of control, and who could not share the gains of corruption at Montreal and Quebec. In Canada there was no gradual and continuous widening of settlement, such as marked the English colonies in North America. In those colonies development was spontaneous but, in the main, civilized; not according to fixed rule, but not contrary to law, the law being home-made and not imposed from without.

In Canada extreme conservatism existed side by side with complete lawlessness. At one pole of society were a certain number of obedient human beings, planted out in rows; at the other were the wandering fur-traders, who knew no law and had no fixed dwelling-place. Excluding the officials from France, ill paid and intent on perquisites alone, and excluding French or Canadian merchants, the main constituents in the population of Canada were the seignior, the priest, the habitant, and the voyageur; of these four elements it would be hard to say which was farthest removed from citizenship, as it was understood in England and the English colonies. Yet all these elements were to be combined and moulded into a British community.

Beginning of civil government.

The beginning of civil administration in Canada under British rule was the Royal Proclamation of 7th October, 1763, which has been noticed in the preceding chapter. Before it was issued, an intimation was sent to Murray that he had been selected as the first civil governor of the new British province of Quebec. His commission as governor was dated 21st November, 1763; and the Royal Instructions, which accompanied the Commission, bore the date of 7th December, 1763; but it was not until August, 1764, that he took up his new position and military rule came to an end.[37]

General Murray.

James Murray was still under forty years of age. He proved himself a stanch, loyal, and capable soldier, resolute in critical times, as when he defended Quebec through the trying winter of 1759-60, and later, in 1781-2, held Minorca until his handful of troops, stricken with famine and disease, surrendered their arms, as they said, to God alone. His words and his actions alike testified that he was a humane and just man. Like other soldiers, before and since, having seen war face to face, he was more ready than civilians who had not risked their lives, but breathed threatenings and slaughter from a safe distance, to treat the conquered with leniency.

Difficulties of the situation.

He had many difficulties to contend with. Military matters did not run smoothly. In September, 1763, there had been a dangerous mutiny among the troops at Quebec. It was caused by an ill-timed order sent out from home to the effect that the soldiers should pay for their rations; and serious consequences might have followed but for the prompt and firm attitude of the general and his officers. At Quebec, Murray combined civil and military powers; but after civil administration had been proclaimed, though his government included the whole of the province as constituted by the Royal proclamation, he was left without authority over the troops at Montreal, where Burton jealously retained an independent military command. The inevitable result was to fetter his action to a great extent, to give to the Canadians the impression of divided authority,[38] and to accentuate friction between soldiers and civilians, which Ill feeling between soldiers and civilians. culminated in an assault at Montreal in December, 1764, on a magistrate named Walker, who had made himself specially obnoxious to the officers of the garrison. Two years later the supposed perpetrators of the outrage were tried and acquitted, but the affair left ill feeling behind it, and Walker remained an active and pertinacious opponent of the British Government in Canada.

Among the Canadian population there were various causes of unrest. The priesthood were anxious as to their position and privileges. The depreciation of the paper money, which had been issued under the French régime, gave trouble. The law was in a state of chaos; and, most of all, the first Governor of Canada had to withstand the pretensions of the handful of Protestants, in The Protestant minority. 1764 about 200 in number, in 1766 about 450, who wished to dominate the French Canadians, alien in religion and in race.

Against the claims of this small but noisy and intriguing minority Murray resolutely set his face, but the difficulties which arose led to his being summoned home. He left Murray leaves for England and is succeeded by Carleton. Canada for England towards the end of June, 1766, and though he retained the post of Governor till April, 1768, he never returned to Quebec.

His successor was Guy Carleton, who arrived in Canada in September, 1766, and carried on the administration as Lieutenant-Governor till 1768, when he became Governor-in-chief. Like Murray, he was a soldier of distinction, and had been a warm personal friend of Wolfe, who made him one of the executors of his will. He was born in 1724, at Strabane in the north of Ireland, the third son of General Sir Guy Carleton. He went into the Guards, was transferred to the 72nd Regiment, and served in Germany, at Louisbourg, and, as Quartermaster-General, with Wolfe at Quebec. He remained at Quebec with Murray during the eventful winter of 1759-60; and, after further active service at Belle Isle and Havana, he came back to Quebec in 1766, to do more than any one man in war and peace for the safety and well-being of Canada as a British possession.

The difficulties which Murray had been called upon to meet confronted him also, and, like Murray, he saw the necessity as well as the justice of resisting the extravagant claims of the minority, and conciliating to British rule the large body of the Canadian population. For nearly four years he remained at his post, forming his views as to the lines on which Canada should be remodelled. In August, 1770, he left for England on leave of absence, and in England he remained until the Quebec Act had been passed. The Act was passed in June, 1774, taking effect from the 1st of May in the following year; and in the middle of September, 1774, Carleton arrived again at Quebec. Conditions which led to the passing of the Quebec Act. It is now proposed to review the conditions which led to the passing of the Act, and the policy which was embodied in it, omitting as far as possible minor incidents and dealing only with the main features, which illustrate the general course of British colonial history.

The Conquest of Canada presented a new problem in British colonial history.

The acquisition of Canada presented to British statesmen a wholly new problem. The British Empire had hitherto widened mainly by means of settlement, for the seventeenth century, as far as Great Britain was concerned, was a time of settlement, not of conquest. Jamaica, it is true, had been taken from the Spaniards, and New York from the Dutch; but, great as was the importance of securing those two dependencies in the light of subsequent history, the conquest or cession of both the one and the other was rather an incident than the result of an era of war and conquest. Such an era came with the eighteenth century; and, when the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 secured Great Britain in undivided possession of Newfoundland, and confirmed to her the possession of the Acadian peninsula, and of the Rock of Gibraltar, a notable outpost of the future Empire, there was a beginning, though a small beginning, of territorial expansion as the result of war.

The Seven Years’ War brought with it British conquest alike in East and West; but in India the British advance was in some sort a repetition on a wider scale of what other European nations had done in the same regions. It was the natural outcome of trade rivalry, and of white men coming among Eastern races. The conquest of Canada, Canada was: (1) a continental area; (2) colonized by another European race; (3) bordering on a sphere of British colonization; (4) the home of a coloured race. on the other hand, differed in kind from all that had gone before in British history. The Imperial Government of Great Britain took over a great expanse of continent, and became, by force of arms, proprietor of a country which another colonizing race had acquired by settlement. The new problems were how to administer and to develop not a small island or peninsula but a very large continental area, and how to rule a rival white race which from the beginnings of colonization in North America had made that area, or part of it, its own. To these two most difficult problems was added a third, how to administer the new territory and to rule the French colonists, so as to work in harmony with the adjacent British colonies. Conquest and settlement, so to speak, overlapped. If Canada had not been a French colony, and had been inhabited by coloured men alone, or if Canada, as a French colony, had been in a different continent from the British North American colonies, the task of construction or re-construction would have been infinitely easier. It would have been easier, too, if the French Canadians had been the only inhabitants of Canada. But, as it was, one white race conquered another white race, which in its turn had secured mastery over a coloured race, and in the land of that coloured race had not merely conquered or traded, but settled and colonized; and the new conquerors were of the same kith and kin as settlers in the adjoining territories, whose traditions were all traditions not of ruling nor of conquering so much as of gradually acquiring by settlement at the expense of the coloured race.

Conditions which guided British policy in Canada as embodied in the Proclamation of 1763.

What had British statesmen to guide them in dealing with the question, and what considerations led to the provisions which were embodied in their first measure, the Royal Proclamation of 7th October, 1763? It was evident, Geographical division between the settled districts and the hinterland. in the first place, that a line could, if it was thought advisable, be drawn between the settled parts of Canada and the Western territories, where the French had only maintained outposts and trading stations. The government of The Indian question. Quebec, therefore, which was the new colony, was, as has been seen, limited to the districts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, and did not include the regions of the lakes, or the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In the second place, past experience had proved that English dealings with the Indians had been very much less successful than French management, the characteristic features of which were personal relations with a despotic governor and his authorized agents and representatives; and that the Indians enjoyed more protection and were likely to develop greater loyalty and contentment under a central authority—the Imperial Government—represented and advised by Sir William Johnson, than if left to bargain with and to resent encroachments by the various British colonies. Consequently the proclamation reserved the western hinterland ‘under our sovereignty, protection, and dominion for the use of the said Indians’, in addition to safeguarding the existing rights and lands of the natives within the borders of the colonies. In the third place it Necessity for attracting British colonists was obviously desirable to introduce into Canada a leaven of colonists of English race, and more especially of colonists who had been trained to arms and already knew the land and the people. Hence, just as in bygone days Colbert and Talon, when colonizing Canada on a definite system, planted time-expired soldiers along the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu rivers, so the Proclamation of 1763 empowered free land grants to be given in Canada, as well as in the other American possessions of Great Britain, to officers and soldiers who had served in the late war; and it also encouraged British settlers generally by providing that, as soon as circumstances allowed, a General Assembly was to be summoned ‘in such manner and form as is used and directed in those colonies and provinces in America which are under our immediate government.’[39]

and for conciliating the French Canadians.

But most of all it was necessary to mete out fair and liberal treatment to the new subjects, the French Canadians, and make them contented citizens of the British Empire. This object, Englishmen naturally argued, could best be attained, first, by securing ‘the ancient inhabitants in all the titles, rights, and privileges granted to them by Treaty’[40]; and secondly, by giving the Canadians as soon as possible the laws and institutions which British subjects valued and under which they had thrived, by assimilating Canada as far as possible in these respects to the neighbouring British colonies. Accordingly the Canadians were Desire to give British privileges to Canada. from the first to enjoy the benefit of the laws of England, and courts of justice were to be established with power to determine all causes criminal and civil ‘as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England’. The question of religion was ignored in the proclamation; freedom of worship had already been guaranteed to the Roman Catholics by the 4th Article of the Peace of Paris,[41] and Murray’s instructions were that he should ‘in all things regarding the said inhabitants, conform with great exactness to the stipulations of the said treaty in this respect’. There the matter was left for the moment, though Murray’s commission provided that the persons who should be elected as members of the future Assembly were to subscribe the declaration against Popery, enacted in Charles the Second’s reign, which provision would have excluded Roman Catholics from sitting in the Assembly.

Liberal intention of the Proclamation of 1763.

There is no question that the proclamation itself was conceived in a wise and tolerant spirit. There was every intention to safeguard the best interests alike of the French Canadians and of the Indians; to give to the latter the protection of Imperial rule, to give to the former the benefits of British laws, and as far as possible the privileges of British citizenship. The proclamation, too, was not drawn on hard and fast lines. As soon as circumstances permitted, and not before, representative institutions were to be introduced, and the laws were not to be necessarily the laws of England, but ‘as near as may be agreeable to’ the laws of England.

Murray’s Commission.

Murray’s commission as governor empowered him, ‘so soon as the situation and circumstances of our said province under your government will admit thereof, and when and as often as need shall require, to summon and call General Assemblies of the freeholders and planters within your government.’ But by the terms of the commission a council was joined with the governor and Assembly as the authority for making laws and ordinances, and the Royal Instructions provided that, pending the calling of a General Assembly, the governor was to act on the advice of his council in making regulations, which would have the force of law, and which were, as a matter of fact, styled ordinances, certain important subjects, such as taxation, being excluded from their scope. Thus, until representative institutions could be given to Canada, legislative and executive authority was placed in the hands of the governor acting on the advice of a nominated council. But the council, again, was constituted on liberal The Council of government. lines, as its members were to be the Lieutenant-Governors of Montreal and Three Rivers, the Chief Justice of the province of Quebec, the Surveyor-General of Customs in America for the Northern district, and ‘eight other persons to be chosen by you from amongst the most considerable of the inhabitants of, or persons of property in, our said province’. From the first, therefore, it was intended that the unofficial element in the council should outnumber the officials—evidence, if evidence were wanted, that it was desired to govern Canada in accordance with the wishes of the people.

Immediately after civil government had taken the place of military rule, an ordinance was, in September, 1764, promulgated, constituting courts of justice, the law to Courts of justice established. be administered being in the main the law of England, and trial by jury being introduced without any religious qualification for jurymen. One provision in the ordinance, it may be noticed in passing, abolished the district of Three Rivers, which had hitherto been, like Montreal, in charge of a Lieutenant-Governor. Thus Canada was started on its course as a British colony, with the best intentions, the prospect of such self-government as other American colonies enjoyed, British law and justice, and above all a governor who was in sympathy with the Causes of the difficulties which arose. people, and earnestly worked for their good; but difficulties arose almost immediately, and the causes of them are not far to seek.

The religious question.

It was the honest desire of the British Government to give liberty to Canada, to treat it, not as a conquered country, but as a British colony. Liberty, as the English understand it, has connoted three things, representative institutions, British law and justice, including especially trial by jury and the Habeas Corpus Act, and freedom of conscience. But in past times to Protestants freedom of conscience meant practical exclusion from the political sphere of those, like Roman Catholics, whose creed was in principle an exclusive creed; and therefore, in a Roman Catholic country under Protestant supremacy, like Ireland or Canada in the eighteenth century, representative institutions from the strong Protestant point of view meant institutions which did not represent the bulk of the population. In this matter, as in others, in the case of Canada, English statesmen and English governors, though not at once prepared to dispense with religious tests, were more liberally inclined towards the ‘new subjects’, the French Canadians, than were the English colonists in America; and the soldier Murray had far more breadth of mind than the local lawyers and politicians who prated of liberties which they had no intention of granting to others.

Murray’s letter to Lord Shelburne.

Shortly after his return to England, in 1766, Murray expressed his views as to the small Protestant minority in Canada in plain outspoken terms. In a letter addressed to Lord Shelburne on the 20th of August in that year, His opinion of the Protestant minority in Canada. he wrote, ‘most of them were followers of the army, of mean education, or soldiers disbanded at the reduction of the troops. All have their fortunes to make, and I fear few of them are solicitous about the means when the end can be obtained. I report them to be in general the most immoral collection of men I ever knew, of course little calculated to make the new subjects enamoured with our laws, religion, and customs, far less adapted to enforce these laws and to govern.’ As the Canadian peasantry, he continued, ‘have been taught to respect their superiors and not get intoxicated with the abuse of liberty, they are shocked at the insults which their noblesse and the King’s officers have received from the English traders and lawyers, since the civil government took place.... Magistrates were to be made and juries to be composed from four hundred and fifty contemptible sutlers and traders ... the Canadian noblesse were hated because their birth and behaviour entitled them to respect, and the peasants were abhorred because they were saved from the oppression they were threatened with.’ Equally severe was his judgement on ‘the improper choice and the number of the civil officers sent out from England’, ignorant of the law and language, rapacious, and lowering the dignity of government. In short his letter[42] was a wholesale condemnation of the representatives of the party which claimed to represent British civic life in a newly-acquired possession.

These men had bitterly attacked Murray, and no doubt Murray was bitter in turn; but his strictures were largely justified. He had lived for some years among the Canadians; he had commanded the King’s troops; himself a man of high principle and good breeding, he resented the mischief wrought by a low class of domineering interlopers who, in the name of freedom, meant to oppress, and painted as tyranny the policy which prevented oppression. A continuance of military rule, which the Canadians understood, would have been infinitely preferable to representative institutions in which the overwhelming majority of the population would have had no share.

Carleton’s view was much the same as Murray’s. His sympathies too were with Canada and the Canadians, and yet the forces and the instincts on the other side are at least intelligible. It was natural that, when war was over, in the train of the conquering army there should drift into the conquered country a certain number of adventurers, eager for official and professional gain, exploiting the land and the people, indifferent to higher objects, for they had not known them. They were an inevitable evil, such as must be reckoned with in similar circumstances at all times and in all places. It was natural too that Protestantism, when ascendant, should be aggressive; Character of American Protestantism. and Protestantism in Canada was borrowed from the New England States; it was the Puritanism of past days, hardened by memories of the evil wrought by Roman Catholic teaching among the natives of North America, the fruits of which had been, times without number, a series of savage crusades against the border villages of the British colonies. But the British Government, with all its kindly intentions, was at fault too; and the fault was the same evil which was poisoning political life at home. Unfit men were being sent out from home, Unfit men sent out from England. and the subordinate instruments for carrying out a new policy, and making a new régime congenial to those who were to live under it, were not well chosen. Men were wanted at first rather than institutions. The soldier governors were good, but the same could not be said of the civilians and lawyers.

Pouring new wine into old bottles.

Once more, too, it must be noticed that the actual merits of British statesmanship and policy militated against its success. It was so keenly desired to give the new subjects all the privileges enjoyed by the old, that too little account was taken of the training, the wishes, and the present needs of the new subjects. The Canadians were politically children. They had never known even the semblance of representative institutions. They had from all time been born and bred under authority—under the King, under the Church, under the seigniors. They had learnt unquestioning obedience, and could not at once be re-cast in a democratic mould. The printing press, the Assembly for law-making and debate, the standing quarrels with governors, the withholding of supplies, the aggressive freedom in every form which characterized the English communities in North America, all were alien to the French Canadian. The wine might be good, but it was new, and pouring it into old bottles could only have one result, the loss of the wine and the bursting of the bottles. So also with British law and justice: that too was new and largely unintelligible; the language puzzled and confused, and the lawyers who came in found the confusion profitable. Premature attempts or proposals to assimilate only served to emphasize differences, and for the moment good intentions paved the way to something like anarchy.

Presentment of the Grand Jury in October, 1764.

In September, 1764, the ordinance constituting courts of justice was promulgated, and in the following month the Grand Jury at Quebec made a presentment, enumerating a number of alleged grievances, concerned not merely with the administration of justice, but also with various matters which lay wholly outside their sphere. ‘We represent,’ so the framers of the presentment wrote, ‘that as the Grand Jury must be considered at present as the only body representative of the colony, they, as British subjects, have a right to be consulted, before any ordinance that may affect the body that they represent be passed into a law.’ It was an impertinent document, a kind of manifesto against the Government; and, taken by itself alone, gave ample evidence of the class and the temper of the men who were determined to make trouble in Canada. It was signed by some French jurors as well as English, but a supplement to it, signed by the English, or, at any rate, by the Protestant members alone, protested against Roman Catholics being admitted as jurors, and it soon appeared that the French jurors had signed the main document in ignorance of its contents.[43] ‘Little, very little,’ wrote Murray, ‘will content the new subjects, but nothing will satisfy the licentious fanatics trading here, but the expulsion of the Canadians who are perhaps the bravest and the best race upon the globe, a race who, could they be indulged with a few privileges which the laws of England deny to Roman Catholics at home, would soon get the better of every national antipathy to their conquerors and become the most faithful and most useful set of men in this American Empire.’[44]

The Grand Jury’s presentment was followed by a petition for the recall of Murray, drawn up in the next Petition for recall of Murray. year and signed by twenty-one persons, which accused him of military prejudice against civil liberties, and of discouraging the Protestants and their religion. It asked for a new governor of a less military type, and for a House of Representatives composed of Protestants alone, though Roman Catholics might be allowed to vote for Protestant members. Never did a small minority make more extravagant claims, or attack with greater want of scruple those who were trying to hold the balance even.

Carleton succeeded Murray, and soon after his arrival showed that he was as little disposed, as Murray had been, to submit to dictation. A side issue had arisen as to the appointment and precedence of members of the council, and, in answer to a protest addressed to him by some of the councillors, he laid down that ‘I will ask the advice and opinion of such persons, though not of the council, as I shall find men of good sense, truth, candour, and impartial justice; persons who prefer their duty to the King, and the tranquillity of his subjects to unjustifiable attachments, party zeal, and to all selfish mercenary views.... I must also remind you that His Majesty’s service requires tranquillity and peace in his province of Quebec, and that it is the indispensable duty of every good subject, and of every honest man, to promote so desirable an end.’[45] Still intrigue went on: religious bitterness did not abate, as men spoke and wrote on either side: legal confusion became worse confounded, and reports were made on what was and what ought to be the state of the law, by the English law officers of the Crown, by a delegate sent out from England, and by Masères, the Attorney-General in Canada. One crying evil, however, The ordinance of 1770. arising from the proceedings for the recovery of debts, which were enriching magistrates and bailiffs and reducing Canadian families to beggary, was remedied by Carleton in an ordinance dated 1st February, 1770, which among other provisions deprived the justices of the peace of jurisdiction in cases affecting private property.[46] It was a righteous ordinance, and those who had profited by the old system raised an outcry against it, but in vain. Eventually The Quebec Act. the Quebec Act was passed in 1774, the provisions of which must now be considered.

Its objects.

‘The principal objects of the Quebec Bill,’ we read in the Annual Register for 1774,[47] ‘were to ascertain the limits of that province, which were extended far beyond what had been settled as such by the King’s Proclamation of 1763. To form a legislative council for all the affairs of that province, except taxation, which council should be appointed by the Crown, the office to be held during pleasure; and His Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects were entitled to a place in it. To establish the French laws, and a trial without jury, in civil cases: and the English laws, with a trial by jury, in criminal; to secure to the Roman Catholic clergy, except the Regulars, the legal enjoyment of their estates, and of their tythes from all who were of their own religion. These were the chief objects of the Act.’

It has been seen that, under the Proclamation of 1763, the province of Quebec included the settled part of Canada,Extension of the boundaries of the province of Quebec. as far as the point where the 45th parallel of latitude intersected the St. Lawrence, midway between Montreal and Lake Ontario. Outside the province were the Labrador coast from the river St. John to Hudson Straits, which, with the island of Anticosti and other small islands in the estuary of the St. Lawrence, was placed ‘under the care and inspection’ of the Governor of Newfoundland; the government of Nova Scotia, including at the time Cape Breton Island, the territory now forming the province of New Brunswick, and the island of St. John, afterwards Prince Edward Island; the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company; and the great undefined region of the lakes and the Ohio as far as the Mississippi. The Quebec Act restored to Canada or, as it was still styled, the province of Quebec, the Labrador coast and Anticosti, and included in it, within the lines which the Act prescribed, the Western territories for which England and France had fought so hard.

The Labrador coast added to the province of Quebec.

The reason for re-annexing the Labrador coast to Canada was that since 1763, when it had been placed under the Governor of Newfoundland, there had been constant disputes and difficulties as to the fishing rights on that coast. It was the old story, so well known in the case of Newfoundland itself, of a perpetual struggle between those who lived on or near the spot, and the fishermen who came over the Atlantic from English ports, and who wanted the fisheries and the landing-places reserved for their periodical visits. The Governor of Newfoundland in the years 1764-8 was an energetic man, Sir Hugh Palliser, who built a fort in Labrador, and set himself to enforce the fishing rules which prevailed in Newfoundland. But the Labrador fisheries, it was contended, were of a more sedentary nature than those of the Newfoundland Banks, sealing was as prominent an occupation as cod-fishing;[48] the regulations which kept Newfoundland for the Dorset and Devon fishing fleets could not fairly be applied to the mainland, and the coast of Labrador should be placed under regular civil government, and not be left in the charge of the sea captains who held authority in Newfoundland.

It was really a case, on a very small scale, of England against America; and the interesting point to notice is that the opponents of the Newfoundland régime included alike French Canadians and New Englanders. The few settlers on the Labrador coast, and the fishermen and sealers who came either from Canada or from the New England states, were all concerned to prevent Labrador from being kept, like Newfoundland, as a preserve for Englishmen, and a nursery for English sailors; and it illustrates the confusion of thought which existed among the opponents of the Quebec Act that, in the debate on the Act, we find Chatham, the champion of the rights of the American colonists, denouncing the provision which gave back Labrador to Quebec, on the ground that it would become a nursery for French instead of English sailors, forgetful that the system which he wished to perpetuate, had been persistently obstructed by the men of Massachusetts, forgetful too that true statesmanship conceived of the French Canadians, on sea or land, as future loyal citizens of the British Crown.

Inclusion of the western hinterland in the province of Quebec.

But the extension of the boundaries of the province of Quebec on the Atlantic side was after all a small matter, though the most was made of it for party purposes. Nor could exception be taken to the enlargement of the province to the north and north-west, until it reached the territories which had been granted to, or were claimed by, the Hudson’s Bay Company. Far more important and more debatable was the inclusion of the western and south-western regions, which had been left outside the government of Quebec by the Proclamation of 1763.

click here for larger image.

Canada under the Quebec Act 1774. from T. Pownall’s map of the Middle British Colonies of N. America, London 1775. to face page 81

B. V. Barbishire, Oxford, 1908

It will be remembered[49] that these territories had not been included in the province of Quebec for three reasons: that their incorporation with the conquered province might have been held to be an admission that the British title to them only dated from the conquest of Canada, that their annexation to any particular province would have given to that province a preponderating advantage in regard to trade with the Indians, and that the extension to them of the laws and administration of the province of Quebec would have necessitated the establishment of a number of military garrisons throughout the territories. The first of these three objections was, in fact, taken in the debates on the Quebec Bill. ‘The first object of the Bill,’ said Mr. Dunning in the House of Commons on the 26th of May, 1774, ‘is to make out that to be[50] Canada, which it was the struggle of this country to say, was not Canada.’ The second objection was clearly potent in the minds of the partisans of the old British colonies, who opposed the Bill. It would seem that when the Proclamation of 1763 was issued, the British Government had contemplated passing an Act of Parliament, constituting a separate administration for the Western territories, but the plan, whatever it was, never came to the birth;[51] and, as the King had foreseen, ‘great inconvenience’ had arisen ‘from so large a tract of land being left, without being subject to the civil jurisdiction of some governor’.[52] This inconvenience the Quebec Act tried to rectify by bringing these western lands under the government of Canada.

The line now laid down, on the motion of Burke in the House of Commons, was carried from the point where the 45th parallel of latitude intersected the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, up Lake Ontario and the Niagara river into Lake Erie, and along the southern or eastern shore of Lake Erie, until it met the alleged frontier of the state of Pennsylvania, or, if that frontier was found not to touch the lake, up to the point nearest to the north-western angle of Pennsylvania. From that angle it skirted the western boundary of Pennsylvania down to the Ohio, which river it followed to the Mississippi.

Claims of Pennsylvania.

In the debate in the House of Commons a petition was presented from the Penns, claiming that part of the province of Pennsylvania was situated to the north-west of the Ohio, and Lord North offered no opposition to the petition, on the ground that the Bill was not intended to affect existing rights. On a map of 1776, after the passing of the Act, Pennsylvania was shown as jutting out at an acute angle into Lake Erie, and the boundary line, identical with the western frontier of the state, started from the lake near Presque Isle, and struck the Ohio at Logs Town, west of Fort Duquesne and slightly east of Beaver Creek, leaving to Pennsylvania the whole course of the Alleghany, and Fort Duquesne or Pittsburg. It will be noted that, further east, the line, being drawn along the St. Lawrence and the lakes, excluded from Canada the whole country of the Six Nations, which had been demarcated as Indian Territory by the Agreement of 1768.[53] The net result was to leave the boundary line south of the St. Lawrence, where it had been drawn in 1763, as far as the intersection of the 45th parallel with the river, and thence to follow the waterways up to the point in the southern shore of Lake Erie where the old French route to the Ohio left the lake. From the Atlantic up to this point the present international line between Canada and the United States is not far different at the present day, though more favourable to the United States, especially where, since the Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the state of Maine runs northward into the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick. But, by carrying the boundary from Lake Erie to the Ohio and down the Ohio to the Mississippi, all the Illinois country and all the western lands, for which English and French had contended, were confirmed to Canada.

Reasons for the extension of the province.

There were good reasons for taking this step. Eleven years had passed since the territories in question had been left as an Indian reserve. Events move quickly in a border land, and encroachments grow apace. The time had come for some defined system, some recognized law and government. As far as there were permanent settlers in these regions, they were, it would seem, although the contrary was averred in the House of Commons, French rather than English; and it would be more palatable for colonists of French origin to be incorporated with Canada than to be absorbed by the purely English colonies. The native population would unquestionably be better cared for under the government of Quebec than under the legislatures of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The waterways still, as in old times, made communication easier from Canada than from the southern colonies; and to those colonies, on the brink of war against the mother country, the mother country could hardly be expected to entrust the keeping of the West.

Arguments urged against it.

On the other hand there was bitter and intelligible opposition to the annexation to Canada of ‘immense territories, now desert, but which are the best parts of that continent and which run on the back of all your ancient colonies’.[54] The decision which was now taken meant cutting off the existing English colonies from the West; and, in view of the other provisions of the Act, the incorporation of the new territories with Canada placed them under an administration in which there was at the time no element of self-government and which gave formal recognition to the Roman Catholic Church. It was, in short, or seemed to be, an admission that the old claim of Canada to the regions of the Ohio, against which, while Canada was still a French possession, the British Government and the British colonies had alike contended, was after all a valid claim; and it was, or seemed to be, a pronouncement that in years to come the future of the Western lands was to be shaped on Canadian principles and Canadian traditions, rather than on those which had moulded and inspired the ever-growing colonies of the British race.

It has been argued that true statesmanship would, in accordance with the plan which had been at one time contemplated, have constituted the territories beyond the 45th parallel a separate province under the Crown, separate alike from Canada on the one hand, and from Pennsylvania and Virginia on the other. This might possibly have been a preferable course; but, as subsequent experience showed in the case of Upper Canada, an inland colony, whose only outlet is through other provinces, is always in a difficult position; and the multiplication of communities in North America had already borne a crop of difficulties. Moreover, the particular circumstances of the time accounted for the decision which was taken, as they accounted also for the strong antagonism which that decision called forth. In the same session in which the Quebec Act was passed, the British Parliament had already enacted three punitive laws against the recalcitrant colony of Massachusetts; one closing the harbour of Boston; another altering the legislature, and giving to the governor the power of appointing and removing the judges, magistrates, and sheriffs; and a third empowering the trial of persons accused of capital offences in the discharge of their public duties to be held outside the limits of the province. If it was thought necessary thus to limit the liberties of one of the English colonies by Imperial legislation, it would have been hopelessly illogical to enlarge the borders of others among the sister communities; and if the only possible alternative was to keep the Western territories directly under the Crown, it was simpler, and involved less friction and debate, to attach them by a single clause in a Bill to the existing province of Quebec, than to treat them as a separate unit and to provide them with an administration and a legislature by a separate law. Furthermore, their annexation to Canada outwardly, at any rate, strengthened at a critical time the one province in America where the Crown still held undivided sway.

Sections in the Act which dealt with the religious question.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh sections of the Act dealt with religion. They provided for the free exercise of the Roman Catholic faith by the members of that Church, subject to the King’s supremacy as established by the Act passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but they substituted a simple oath of allegiance for the oath required by Queen Elizabeth’s statute, and they confirmed to the Roman Catholic clergy ‘their accustomed dues and rights’. Protestants were expressly exempted from these payments; but the Act provided that, from such dues as they would otherwise have paid, provision might be made for the encouragement of the Protestant religion and the maintenance of a Protestant clergy. In other words, freedom of religion was guaranteed, the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church was recognized by law, and the principle of concurrent endowment was introduced.

Other provisions of the Act.

The eighth section of the Act restored Canadian law and custom in civil matters, and confirmed existing rights to property, with the exception of the property of the religious orders. The eleventh section continued the law of England in criminal matters. The twelfth, laying down that it was at present inexpedient to call an Assembly, provided for a nominated Legislative Council, consisting of not more than twenty-three and not less than seventeen members, no religious test being imposed. The next section withheld from the council the power of taxation, such additional taxes as were deemed necessary being imposed by a separate Act of the Imperial Parliament.[55]

The Act embodied a compromise.

Such were the principal provisions of the Quebec Act. It embodied a fair and reasonable compromise. In part the Government retraced their steps; they restored Canadian civil law, they postponed indefinitely a representative legislature, but they gave what could under the circumstances be suitably and prudently given, religious toleration, trial by jury in criminal matters, and a council to which the Crown could call representatives of all creeds and interests. The Bill was attacked in the House of Opposition to it. Lords, and in the House of Commons; and, even after it had become law, in 1775, Lord Camden in the House of Lords, and Sir George Savile in the House of Commons, presented petitions from the British inhabitants of the province of Quebec against the Act and moved for its repeal. The corporation of London petitioned against it. The American colonists made it the text of the manifesto to the people of Canada, which has already been noticed.[56] In the debates in Parliament various points were taken. Fox argued that, as the Bill gave tithes to the Roman Catholic clergy, it was a money Bill, and should not have originated, as it did originate in the House of Lords. Others criticized the absence of any provision for the rights of Habeas Corpus,[57] and the abolition of trial by jury in civil cases; but the main attack was on the lines that the law gave formal recognition to the Roman Catholic Church, that it withheld popular representation, and that it extended these two unsound principles to new territories whose lot should rather have been cast with the English colonies. Reference was made to the case of the colony of Grenada, in which limited representation in the popular Assembly had been given to Roman Catholics; but the opponents of the Quebec Act had not the courage to declare for a popular Assembly for Canada, without any religious test, for it would have meant an almost exclusively Roman Catholic legislature. They Inconsistency of the opponents. were at one and the same time fighting for the Protestant minority and contending for popular representation, but Protestant claims and popular representation in Canada were hopelessly at variance. This made the case of the opposition weak, and this was the justification of the Act. Lord Chatham denounced it as a most cruel, oppressive, and odious measure. Burke tried to appeal to popular prejudice against the Canadian seigniors. He attacked them, and he pressed the claims of the Protestant minority on the ground of their commercial importance, descending to such clap-trap as that in his opinion, in the case in point, one Englishman was worth fifty Frenchmen. The tone of the opposition was unworthy of the men, but minds had been so embittered and judgements so clouded by years of wrangle and debate on the American question, that the Act for the better government of Canada was viewed by the opponents of the ministry and the partisans of the colonies mainly as a case of French against English, and Papists against Protestants. None the less, the Act was a just and generous measure, and, when Carleton returned to Canada in September, 1774, his reception by the leading French Canadians showed that they appreciated it. Because, when war came, the Canadians as a whole stood aloof in a quarrel which was no concern of theirs, and some of them joined the revolting colonies, it was argued in the English Parliament that the Act had not conciliated them, and therefore stood condemned; but history has proved that this view was not true. No one measure or series of measures can at once obliterate differences of race, language, and creed; but, passed as it was at a time of failures, recrimination, and bitterness, the Quebec Act stood and will to all times stand to the credit of English good sense, in dealing with the actual facts of a difficult position, and the feelings and prejudices of an alien people.