A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

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.