A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

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.