CHAPTER IX

Canada after its conquest. 14 G. III., c. 83.

CANADA

IN the foregoing summary of American affairs, one potent cause of colonial dissatisfaction has been purposely omitted. The Quebec Act of 1774 must be considered in connection with the general question of Canada. We have already noted how the long struggle for pre-eminence between France and England ended in the final triumph of the latter, and how the genius of Pitt and Wolfe decided that whatever might be the political future of North America, at least it should not fall under French dominion. The government of French Canada was a new experiment in British Colonial history. It is true that Jamaica had been acquired by conquest, but Jamaica, so far as settlement was concerned, was a tabula rasa, on which England might write what she pleased. The peculiarity of Canada was that it possessed a French population, enjoying French customs and French laws. The total population at the time of the treaty of Paris was about 62,000 and for many years the number of English immigrants was very small. The French were concentrated in the present province of Quebec, there being no French settlers in Ontario. In this state of things, the problem of obtaining both security to the Empire and liberty to the subject was one of no little difficulty. The keynote of British policy was given in Amherst’s instructions to Gage 1 —“These newly-acquired subjects, when they have taken the oath, are as much His Majesty’s subjects as any of us, and are, so long as they remain deserving of it, entitled to the same protection.’’ The period between 1760 and 1764 is known as the “Règne Militaire,” but, in fact, the government introduced had nothing in common with martial law. French Canadian

1 Kingsford Hist, of Can., Vol. IV., p. 441.

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