[4] (Canadian Archives, Q 5, page 269.) This is printed in full in Canadian Archives for 1888, page 44.
[5] This letter does not appear among the state papers in the Canadian Archives.
[6] Cf. F.P. Walton, Dean of the Faculty of Law, McGill University, in an article in the University Magazine, April, 1908, entitled “After the Cession.”
CHAPTER VII
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR OF 1775
MONTREAL THE SEAT OF DISCONTENT
THE QUEBEC ACT, A PRIMARY OCCASION OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION—MONTREAL BRITISH DISLOYAL—THE COFFEE HOUSE MEETING—WALKER AGAIN—MONTREAL DISAFFECTS QUEBEC—LOYALTY OF HABITANTS AND SAVAGES UNDERMINED—NOBLESSE, GENTRY AND CLERGY LOYAL—KING GEORGE’S BUST DESECRATED—“DELENDA EST CANADA”—“THE FOURTEENTH COLONY”—BENEDICT ARNOLD AND ETHAN ALLEN—BINDON’S TREACHERY—CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS FEEBLY ANSWERED—MILITIA CALLED OUT—LANDING OF THE REBELS—ENGLISH OFFICIAL APATHY—MONTREAL’S PART IN THE DEFENCE OF CANADA—THE FIRST SOLELY FRENCH-CANADIAN COMPANY OF MILITIA—NOTE: THE MILITIA.
The Quebec act, which was hailed by the leaders of the French-Canadians as their Magna Charta, was received with execration in England and America. On the day of the prorogation of Parliament, June 22d, the mayor of London, attended by the recorder, several aldermen and 150 of the common council, went to St. James with a petition to the king to withhold his assent from the bill. The lord chamberlain receiving them, told them that it was too late, that the king was then on the point of going to parliament to give his consent to a bill agreed on by both houses of parliament and that they must not expect an answer. Among other objections this petition claimed: “that the Roman Catholic religion which is known to be idolatrous and bloody is established by this bill and no legal provision is made for the free exercise of our reformed faith nor the security of our Protestant fellow subjects of the church of England in the true worship of Almighty God according to their consciences.”