The definitive treaty of Paris of February 10, 1763, proclaimed by Governor Gage in Montreal on May 17th, was received with delight by the English merchants, for they looked forward eagerly for the civil government to be set up in which they, but a handful, hoped by the right of conquest to assume the high hand. They had long chafed under what they, more than the “Canadians,” chose to call military despotism. They had looked upon the amicable temporary participation of the Canadians in their own government, with eyes of envy. They were of the same metal as the British merchants of Quebec who, relying on their undoubted energy in developing the commercial interests of the country, and in their self-satisfaction, so aggrandized their own importance that they wished to rule solely, so that they early petitioned his Majesty for a representative assembly in this province as in all the other provinces of His Majesty. “There are,” they said, “a sufficient number of loyal and interested Protestants outside the military officers to form a legislative assembly, and the new subjects of His Majesty, if he should believe it proper, could be authorized to elect Protestants without having to take oath against their conscience.” (See constitutional documents, Doughty & Shortt.)
There were only about two hundred Protestants, and these not all educated or upright men, in the whole country at this time—in Quebec 144, in Montreal 56. Yet they desired to represent the whole people and to exclude the “new subjects” from every position of trust under the new civil government. At the time of Murray’s recall in 1766 they had reached the number of 450.
The Canadians were not prepared for the new turn of the tide. In consequence we shall see that between 1763 and 1774 the country was in an unsettled state, owing to the conflict inevitable between the two forces of the old and new régimes striving for recognition.
Under the military law the “new subjects” had been entrusted with a share in the government. The English rulers were officers and gentlemen who respected the claims of the Seigneurs as well as of the simple habitants, and moreover their religion was held in honour. They had been led to believe that this happy state would continue. Gage and Murray in their report to Egremont seem to hint how they were hoodwinked. “Canadians are very ignorant and extremely tenacious of their religion. Nothing can contribute to make them staunch subjects to His Majesty as the new government giving them every reason to imagine no alteration is to be attempted in that point.”
Thus when the “new subjects” came to understand that they were only to “profess the worship of their religion according to the rights of the Romish church as far as the laws of Great Britain permit,” and that that permission was to be interpreted along the lines of the Catholic civil disabilities in England, they felt that they were proscribed men who had been ensnared by roseate promises of a wise interpretation of British liberty to be extended to them as new subjects.
The situation was impossible and at once there began the inevitable struggle and the long series of accommodations that were eventually to culminate in the Quebec act of 1774, the Magna Charta of French Canadians. The significance of this act cannot be understood unless the religious proscription in the policy of the new government be understood. Hence the opposition among the Seigneurs in Montreal, their headquarters, was secretly fostered, which later alarmed Carleton so much, as we shall see. The French Canadian clergy and Seigneurs of Montreal looked upon the new change of government as an attempt to Anglicize their religion as well as their laws. And they were not far wrong. In a letter to Governor Murray, the secretary of state, Lord Egremont, wrote from Whitehall on August 13, 1763, acquainting him that the King had been graciously pleased to confer on him the civil government of Canada and making special reference to the qualification, “as far as the laws of Great Britain permit,” which laws, he explains, prohibit absolutely all Popish hierarchy in any of the dominions belonging to the Crown of Great Britain and can only admit of a toleration of the exercise of that religion; this matter was clearly understood in the negotiation of the exercise of that religion; the French ministers proposed to insert the words comme ci-devant in order that the Romish religion should continue to be exercised in the same manner as under their government; and they did not give up their point until they were plainly told that it would be deceiving them to admit those words, for the king had not the power to tolerate that religion in any other manner than as far as the laws of Great Britain permit. “These laws must be your guide in any disputes that may arise on this subject.”
The intention was precisely to tolerate for a time the Romish religion and gradually to supplant it. The royal instructions to Governor Murray, given from the court of St. James by King George on the 7th day of December, 1763, leave no doubt on this head. The intention to suppress the natural growth of the Catholic church in Canada by crippling it forever at its fountain head by giving no guarantee of the recognition of the Episcopal power and jurisdiction, had already been foreshadowed in the two clauses submitted by Vaudreuil in the terms of the capitulation of Montreal.
Article XXX: “If by the treaty of peace Canada shall remain in the power of His Britannic Majesty, His Most Christian Majesty shall continue to name the bishop of the colony, who shall always be of the Roman communion and under whose authority the people shall exercise the Roman religion: ‘Refused.’”
Article XXXI: “The bishop shall, in case of need, establish new parishes and provide for the building of his cathedral and his Episcopal palace; and in the meantime he shall have the liberty to dwell in towns or parishes as he shall judge proper. He shall be at liberty to visit his diocese with the ordinary ceremonies and exercise also the jurisdiction which his predecessor exercised under the French dominion, save that an oath of fidelity or a promise to do nothing contrary to His Britannic Majesty’s service, may be required of him: ‘This article is comprised under the foregoing.’”
The reason for this was signalized in the instructions later to Murray, Carleton and Haldimand in the clause beginning: