But then comes the last and the strongest argument of the colonies. The mother country dictated the policy; distant and without direct representation, though their agents were active in England, the colonies could only follow where the mother country led: the mother country, therefore, should pay the cost of defending the outlying provinces; or, if the latter contributed at all to the cost, it was for them and not for the mother country to determine the amount and the method of the contribution. The real answer to this argument was, as Adam Smith Question of colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament. saw,[30] that the colonies should be represented in the Imperial Parliament. He allowed that such a proposal was beset by difficulties, but he did not consider, as Burke considered, that the difficulties were insurmountable. Yet the problem, infinitely easier in the days of steam and telegraphy, has not yet been solved, and the preliminary task of combining a group of self-governing colonies into a single confederation had, in the eighteenth century, only been talked of and never been seriously attempted in North America.

In theory, English citizens, who had never been taxed directly for Imperial purposes, might fairly claim not to be taxed, unless and until they were taken into full partnership and given a voice in determining the policy of the Empire. But the actual facts of the case made the demand of the mother country on the American colonies in itself eminently reasonable. It was true that England had Moderation of the English demand on the colonies. dictated the policy; but it was also true that the policy had been directly in the interests of the colonies, and such as they warmly approved. They were asked for money, but only for their own protection, and to preclude the possibility of a further burden falling on the mother country, already overweighted with debt incurred on behalf of these particular provinces of the Empire. The demand was a small one; the money to be raised would clearly defray but a fraction of the cost of defending the North American colonies. To the amount no reasonable exception could be taken; and as to the method of raising it the colonies were, as a matter of fact, consulted, for Grenville, the author of the Stamp Act, gave a year’s notice, before the Act was finally passed,[31] in order that the colonies might, in the meantime, if they could, agree upon some more palatable method of providing the sum required.

The merits of England, no less than her defects, tended to alienate the North American colonies. It is possible that, if she had made a larger and more sweeping demand, she would have been more successful. Her requisition was so moderate, that it seemed to be petty, and might well have aroused suspicion that there was more behind; that what was actually proposed was an insidious preliminary to some far-reaching scheme for oppressing the colonies and bringing them into subjection. It has been held, too, that, if the Stamp Act had been passed without delay, there would have been less opposition to it than when it had been brooded over for many months. In other words, the fairness of dealing, which gave full warning and full time for consideration of a carefully measured demand, was turned to account against the mother country. But after all what was in men’s minds, when the American colonies began their contest for The analogy of family life in the case of a mother country and its colonies. independence was, speaking broadly, the feeling, right or wrong, that a mother country ought to pay and colonies ought not. Men argued then, and they still argue, from the analogy of a family. The head of the family should provide, as long as the children remain part of the household.

The analogy of family life suggests a further view of the relations between a mother country and its colonies, which accounts for the possibilities of friction. A colonial empire consists of an old community linked to young ones. The conditions, the standards, the points of view, in politics, in morals, in social and industrial matters, are not identical in old and young communities. Young peoples, like young men, do not count the cost, and do not feel responsibility to the same extent as their elders. They are more restive, more ready to move forward, more prompt in action. Their horizon is limited, and therefore they see immediate objects clearly, and they do not appreciate compromise. The problems which face them are simple as compared with the complicated questions which face older communities, and they are impatient of the caution and hesitation which come with inherited experience in a much wider field of action. The future is theirs rather than the past, they have not yet accumulated much capital and draw bills on the coming time. Most of all, being on promotion, they are sensitive as to their standing, keenly alive to their interests, and resent any semblance of being slighted. It is impossible to generalize as to the comparative standards of morality in old and young communities, either in public or in private life, but, as a matter of fact, political life, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was much purer in the North American colonies than in England: whereas at the present day, in this respect, England compares favourably with the United States. The North American colonies were a group of young communities, whose citizens were, at any rate in New England and Pennsylvania, of a strong, sober, and very tenacious type: the late war had taught them to fight: its issue had given them a feeling of strength and security: there had been no extraordinary strain upon their resources: they had reached a stage in their history when they were most dangerous to offend and not unlikely to take offence unless very carefully handled, and careful handling on the part of the mother country, as all the world knows, was conspicuous by its absence.

One more point may be noted as having an important bearing upon the general question of the relations between a mother country and its colonies, one which in particular contributed to ill-feeling between England and the North American states. Colonization rarely takes place in an empty land. The colonists on arrival find native inhabitants, strong or weak, few or many, as the case may be. In North America there were strong fighting races of Indians, and the native question played an all-important part in the early history of European settlement in this part of the world. It is almost inevitable that white men on the spot, who are in daily contact with natives, should, unless they hold a brief as missionaries or philanthropists, take a different view of native rights and claims from that which is held at a distance. It is true that in our own time, to take one instance only, the Maori question in New Zealand has been well handled by the colonial authorities, when thrown on their own resources, with the result that there are no more loyal members of the British Empire at the present day than the coloured citizens of New Zealand; but in the earlier days of colonization the general rule has been that native races fare better under Imperial than under colonial control, for the twofold reason that the distant authority is less influenced by colour prejudice, and that white men who go out from Europe to settle among native races are, in the ordinary course, of a rougher type than those who stay at home, and that they tend to become hardened by living among lower grades of humanity. The Quaker followers of Penn, in the state which bears his name, were conspicuous for just and kindly treatment of the Indians, but in the back-lands of Pennsylvania the traders and pioneers of settlement were to the full as grasping as their neighbours. The North American Puritan, like the South African Dutchman, looked on the coloured man much as the Jewish race regarded the native tribes of Canaan. The colonists came in and took the land of the heathen in possession. Indian atrocities, stimulated by French influence and French missionary training, were not calculated to soften the views of the English settlers. They saw their homes burned: their wives and children butchered: to them arguments as to the red men’s rights were idle words.

The only authority which could and would hold the balance even between the races was the Imperial Government; and in the hands of that Government, represented for the purpose in the middle of the eighteenth century by a man of rare ability and unrivalled experience, Sir William Johnson, the superintendence of native affairs was placed. But this duty, and the attempt to carry it out justly and faithfully, involved friction with the more turbulent and the less scrupulous of the colonists. Colonization is a tide which is always coming in; and, unless restrictions are imposed upon the colonists by some superior authority, the native owners are gradually expropriated. ‘Your people,’ said the representatives of the Six Nations to Sir William Johnson in 1755, ‘when they buy a small piece of land of us, by stealing they make it large;’[32] and Johnson amply corroborated this view. In October, 1762, he wrote: ‘The Indians are greatly disgusted at the great thirst which we all seem to show for their lands.’[33]

A word must be said of Sir William Johnson, for he was one of the men who, in the long course of British colonial history, have rendered memorable service to their country by special aptitude for dealing with native races. In this quality the French in North America, as a rule, far excelled the English, and at the particular place and time, Johnson’s character and influence were an invaluable asset on the British side. An Irishman by birth, and nephew of Sir Peter Warren, he had come out to America in 1738 to manage his uncle’s estates on the confines of the Six Nation Indians, and some eleven years later he was made Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern division. He lived on the Mohawk river, as much Indian as white man, his second wife being Molly Brant, sister of the subsequently celebrated Mohawk leader, and among the Iroquois his influence was unrivalled. In the wars with France he did notable work, especially at the battle of Lake George in 1755, and at the taking of Fort Niagara in 1759; and, when he died in July, 1774, on the eve of the War of Independence, his death left a gap which could not be filled, for no one among his contemporaries could so persuade and so control the fiercest native fighters in North America.

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.

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 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.

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.

While Canada was still under military rule, and before the Peace of Paris was signed, the British Government took steps to collect full information as to their newly-acquired possession, with a view to determining the lines on which it should be administered in future. At the end of 1761 Amherst was instructed to obtain the necessary reports, which were in the following year duly supplied by Murray, Burton, and Gage in respect of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal respectively.[36]

Canada at this time contained little more than 70,000 white inhabitants. The population, Murray thought, had tended to decrease for twenty years past, owing to war, to the strictness of the marriage laws, and to the prohibition of marriages between Protestants and Roman Catholics; but he looked for a large increase from natural causes in the next twenty years, the men being strong and the women extremely prolific.

The Canadians, Murray wrote, were ‘mostly of a Norman race’ and, ‘in general, of a litigious disposition’. He classified them into the gentry, the clergy, the merchants, and the peasantry or habitants. The gentry or seigniors, descendants of military or civil officers, the creation largely of Louis XIV, Colbert, and Talon, he described as for the most part men of small means, unless they had held one or other of the distant posts, where they could make their fortunes. ‘They are extremely vain, and have an utter contempt for the trading part of the colony, though they made no scruple to engage in it, pretty deeply too, whenever a convenient opportunity served. They were great tyrants to their vassals, who seldom met with redress, let their grievances be ever so just. This class will not relish the British Government, from which they can neither expect the same employments or the same douceurs they enjoyed under the French.’ Of the clergy he wrote that the higher ranks were filled by Frenchmen, the rest being Canadian born, and in general Canadians of the lower class. Similarly the wholesale traders were mostly French, and the retail traders natives of Canada. The peasantry he described as ‘a strong, healthy race, plain in their dress, virtuous in their morals, and temperate in their living’, extremely ignorant, and extremely tenacious of their religion. At the time of writing, Murray and his colleagues evidently anticipated more loyalty from the peasantry than from the higher classes of Canadians. Protected in their religion, given impartial justice, freed from class oppression and official corruption, they seemed likely to develop into happy and contented subjects of the British Crown. The sequel was, however, to show that more support would accrue to the new rulers of Canada from the classes which had something to lose than from the credulous habitants.

‘The French,’ so ran Murray’s report, ‘bent their whole attention in this part of the world to the fur-trade.’ They neglected agriculture and the fisheries. ‘The inhabitants are inclinable enough to be lazy, and not much skilled in husbandry, the great dependencies they have hitherto had on the gun and fishing-rod made them neglect tillage beyond the requisites of their own consumption and the few purchases they needed.’ Gage wrote that ‘the only immediate importance and advantage the French king derived from Canada was the preventing the extension of the British colonies, the consumption of the commodities and manufactures of France, and the trade of pelletry’. He noted how common it was ‘for the servants, whom the merchants hired to work their boats and assist in their trade, through a long habit of Indian manners and customs, at length to adopt their way of life, to intermarry with them, and turn savages’. Burton’s report was to the same effect: ‘The laziness of the people, and the alluring and momentary advantages they reaped from their traffic with the Indians in the upper countries, and the counterband trade they carried on with the English colonies, have hitherto prevented the progress of husbandry;’ and again, ‘The greatest part of the young men, allured by the debauched and rambling life which always attend the Indian trade in the upper countries, never thought of settling at home till they were almost worn out with diseases or premature old age.’

It was a country and a people of strong contrasts, wholly unlike their own colonies, that the English were called upon to rule. At head quarters and near it there was a cast-iron system in Church and State, trade monopoly, an administration at once despotic and corrupt. Behind there was a boundless wild, to which French restlessness, French adaptability for dealing with native races, and the possibilities of illicit wealth called the young and enterprising, who were impatient of control, and who could not share the gains of corruption at Montreal and Quebec. In Canada there was no gradual and continuous widening of settlement, such as marked the English colonies in North America. In those colonies development was spontaneous but, in the main, civilized; not according to fixed rule, but not contrary to law, the law being home-made and not imposed from without.

In Canada extreme conservatism existed side by side with complete lawlessness. At one pole of society were a certain number of obedient human beings, planted out in rows; at the other were the wandering fur-traders, who knew no law and had no fixed dwelling-place. Excluding the officials from France, ill paid and intent on perquisites alone, and excluding French or Canadian merchants, the main constituents in the population of Canada were the seignior, the priest, the habitant, and the voyageur; of these four elements it would be hard to say which was farthest removed from citizenship, as it was understood in England and the English colonies. Yet all these elements were to be combined and moulded into a British community.

The beginning of civil administration in Canada under British rule was the Royal Proclamation of 7th October, 1763, which has been noticed in the preceding chapter. Before it was issued, an intimation was sent to Murray that he had been selected as the first civil governor of the new British province of Quebec. His commission as governor was dated 21st November, 1763; and the Royal Instructions, which accompanied the Commission, bore the date of 7th December, 1763; but it was not until August, 1764, that he took up his new position and military rule came to an end.[37]

James Murray was still under forty years of age. He proved himself a stanch, loyal, and capable soldier, resolute in critical times, as when he defended Quebec through the trying winter of 1759-60, and later, in 1781-2, held Minorca until his handful of troops, stricken with famine and disease, surrendered their arms, as they said, to God alone. His words and his actions alike testified that he was a humane and just man. Like other soldiers, before and since, having seen war face to face, he was more ready than civilians who had not risked their lives, but breathed threatenings and slaughter from a safe distance, to treat the conquered with leniency.

He had many difficulties to contend with. Military matters did not run smoothly. In September, 1763, there had been a dangerous mutiny among the troops at Quebec. It was caused by an ill-timed order sent out from home to the effect that the soldiers should pay for their rations; and serious consequences might have followed but for the prompt and firm attitude of the general and his officers. At Quebec, Murray combined civil and military powers; but after civil administration had been proclaimed, though his government included the whole of the province as constituted by the Royal proclamation, he was left without authority over the troops at Montreal, where Burton jealously retained an independent military command. The inevitable result was to fetter his action to a great extent, to give to the Canadians the impression of divided authority,[38] and to accentuate friction between soldiers and civilians, which Ill feeling between soldiers and civilians. culminated in an assault at Montreal in December, 1764, on a magistrate named Walker, who had made himself specially obnoxious to the officers of the garrison. Two years later the supposed perpetrators of the outrage were tried and acquitted, but the affair left ill feeling behind it, and Walker remained an active and pertinacious opponent of the British Government in Canada.

Among the Canadian population there were various causes of unrest. The priesthood were anxious as to their position and privileges. The depreciation of the paper money, which had been issued under the French régime, gave trouble. The law was in a state of chaos; and, most of all, the first Governor of Canada had to withstand the pretensions of the handful of Protestants, in The Protestant minority. 1764 about 200 in number, in 1766 about 450, who wished to dominate the French Canadians, alien in religion and in race.

Against the claims of this small but noisy and intriguing minority Murray resolutely set his face, but the difficulties which arose led to his being summoned home. He left Murray leaves for England and is succeeded by Carleton. Canada for England towards the end of June, 1766, and though he retained the post of Governor till April, 1768, he never returned to Quebec.

His successor was Guy Carleton, who arrived in Canada in September, 1766, and carried on the administration as Lieutenant-Governor till 1768, when he became Governor-in-chief. Like Murray, he was a soldier of distinction, and had been a warm personal friend of Wolfe, who made him one of the executors of his will. He was born in 1724, at Strabane in the north of Ireland, the third son of General Sir Guy Carleton. He went into the Guards, was transferred to the 72nd Regiment, and served in Germany, at Louisbourg, and, as Quartermaster-General, with Wolfe at Quebec. He remained at Quebec with Murray during the eventful winter of 1759-60; and, after further active service at Belle Isle and Havana, he came back to Quebec in 1766, to do more than any one man in war and peace for the safety and well-being of Canada as a British possession.

The difficulties which Murray had been called upon to meet confronted him also, and, like Murray, he saw the necessity as well as the justice of resisting the extravagant claims of the minority, and conciliating to British rule the large body of the Canadian population. For nearly four years he remained at his post, forming his views as to the lines on which Canada should be remodelled. In August, 1770, he left for England on leave of absence, and in England he remained until the Quebec Act had been passed. The Act was passed in June, 1774, taking effect from the 1st of May in the following year; and in the middle of September, 1774, Carleton arrived again at Quebec. Conditions which led to the passing of the Quebec Act. It is now proposed to review the conditions which led to the passing of the Act, and the policy which was embodied in it, omitting as far as possible minor incidents and dealing only with the main features, which illustrate the general course of British colonial history.

The acquisition of Canada presented to British statesmen a wholly new problem. The British Empire had hitherto widened mainly by means of settlement, for the seventeenth century, as far as Great Britain was concerned, was a time of settlement, not of conquest. Jamaica, it is true, had been taken from the Spaniards, and New York from the Dutch; but, great as was the importance of securing those two dependencies in the light of subsequent history, the conquest or cession of both the one and the other was rather an incident than the result of an era of war and conquest. Such an era came with the eighteenth century; and, when the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 secured Great Britain in undivided possession of Newfoundland, and confirmed to her the possession of the Acadian peninsula, and of the Rock of Gibraltar, a notable outpost of the future Empire, there was a beginning, though a small beginning, of territorial expansion as the result of war.

The Seven Years’ War brought with it British conquest alike in East and West; but in India the British advance was in some sort a repetition on a wider scale of what other European nations had done in the same regions. It was the natural outcome of trade rivalry, and of white men coming among Eastern races. The conquest of Canada, Canada was: (1) a continental area; (2) colonized by another European race; (3) bordering on a sphere of British colonization; (4) the home of a coloured race. on the other hand, differed in kind from all that had gone before in British history. The Imperial Government of Great Britain took over a great expanse of continent, and became, by force of arms, proprietor of a country which another colonizing race had acquired by settlement. The new problems were how to administer and to develop not a small island or peninsula but a very large continental area, and how to rule a rival white race which from the beginnings of colonization in North America had made that area, or part of it, its own. To these two most difficult problems was added a third, how to administer the new territory and to rule the French colonists, so as to work in harmony with the adjacent British colonies. Conquest and settlement, so to speak, overlapped. If Canada had not been a French colony, and had been inhabited by coloured men alone, or if Canada, as a French colony, had been in a different continent from the British North American colonies, the task of construction or re-construction would have been infinitely easier. It would have been easier, too, if the French Canadians had been the only inhabitants of Canada. But, as it was, one white race conquered another white race, which in its turn had secured mastery over a coloured race, and in the land of that coloured race had not merely conquered or traded, but settled and colonized; and the new conquerors were of the same kith and kin as settlers in the adjoining territories, whose traditions were all traditions not of ruling nor of conquering so much as of gradually acquiring by settlement at the expense of the coloured race.

What had British statesmen to guide them in dealing with the question, and what considerations led to the provisions which were embodied in their first measure, the Royal Proclamation of 7th October, 1763? It was evident, Geographical division between the settled districts and the hinterland. in the first place, that a line could, if it was thought advisable, be drawn between the settled parts of Canada and the Western territories, where the French had only maintained outposts and trading stations. The government of The Indian question. Quebec, therefore, which was the new colony, was, as has been seen, limited to the districts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, and did not include the regions of the lakes, or the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In the second place, past experience had proved that English dealings with the Indians had been very much less successful than French management, the characteristic features of which were personal relations with a despotic governor and his authorized agents and representatives; and that the Indians enjoyed more protection and were likely to develop greater loyalty and contentment under a central authority—the Imperial Government—represented and advised by Sir William Johnson, than if left to bargain with and to resent encroachments by the various British colonies. Consequently the proclamation reserved the western hinterland ‘under our sovereignty, protection, and dominion for the use of the said Indians’, in addition to safeguarding the existing rights and lands of the natives within the borders of the colonies. In the third place it Necessity for attracting British colonists was obviously desirable to introduce into Canada a leaven of colonists of English race, and more especially of colonists who had been trained to arms and already knew the land and the people. Hence, just as in bygone days Colbert and Talon, when colonizing Canada on a definite system, planted time-expired soldiers along the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu rivers, so the Proclamation of 1763 empowered free land grants to be given in Canada, as well as in the other American possessions of Great Britain, to officers and soldiers who had served in the late war; and it also encouraged British settlers generally by providing that, as soon as circumstances allowed, a General Assembly was to be summoned ‘in such manner and form as is used and directed in those colonies and provinces in America which are under our immediate government.’[39]

But most of all it was necessary to mete out fair and liberal treatment to the new subjects, the French Canadians, and make them contented citizens of the British Empire. This object, Englishmen naturally argued, could best be attained, first, by securing ‘the ancient inhabitants in all the titles, rights, and privileges granted to them by Treaty’[40]; and secondly, by giving the Canadians as soon as possible the laws and institutions which British subjects valued and under which they had thrived, by assimilating Canada as far as possible in these respects to the neighbouring British colonies. Accordingly the Canadians were Desire to give British privileges to Canada. from the first to enjoy the benefit of the laws of England, and courts of justice were to be established with power to determine all causes criminal and civil ‘as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England’. The question of religion was ignored in the proclamation; freedom of worship had already been guaranteed to the Roman Catholics by the 4th Article of the Peace of Paris,[41] and Murray’s instructions were that he should ‘in all things regarding the said inhabitants, conform with great exactness to the stipulations of the said treaty in this respect’. There the matter was left for the moment, though Murray’s commission provided that the persons who should be elected as members of the future Assembly were to subscribe the declaration against Popery, enacted in Charles the Second’s reign, which provision would have excluded Roman Catholics from sitting in the Assembly.

There is no question that the proclamation itself was conceived in a wise and tolerant spirit. There was every intention to safeguard the best interests alike of the French Canadians and of the Indians; to give to the latter the protection of Imperial rule, to give to the former the benefits of British laws, and as far as possible the privileges of British citizenship. The proclamation, too, was not drawn on hard and fast lines. As soon as circumstances permitted, and not before, representative institutions were to be introduced, and the laws were not to be necessarily the laws of England, but ‘as near as may be agreeable to’ the laws of England.

Murray’s commission as governor empowered him, ‘so soon as the situation and circumstances of our said province under your government will admit thereof, and when and as often as need shall require, to summon and call General Assemblies of the freeholders and planters within your government.’ But by the terms of the commission a council was joined with the governor and Assembly as the authority for making laws and ordinances, and the Royal Instructions provided that, pending the calling of a General Assembly, the governor was to act on the advice of his council in making regulations, which would have the force of law, and which were, as a matter of fact, styled ordinances, certain important subjects, such as taxation, being excluded from their scope. Thus, until representative institutions could be given to Canada, legislative and executive authority was placed in the hands of the governor acting on the advice of a nominated council. But the council, again, was constituted on liberal The Council of government. lines, as its members were to be the Lieutenant-Governors of Montreal and Three Rivers, the Chief Justice of the province of Quebec, the Surveyor-General of Customs in America for the Northern district, and ‘eight other persons to be chosen by you from amongst the most considerable of the inhabitants of, or persons of property in, our said province’. From the first, therefore, it was intended that the unofficial element in the council should outnumber the officials—evidence, if evidence were wanted, that it was desired to govern Canada in accordance with the wishes of the people.

Immediately after civil government had taken the place of military rule, an ordinance was, in September, 1764, promulgated, constituting courts of justice, the law to Courts of justice established. be administered being in the main the law of England, and trial by jury being introduced without any religious qualification for jurymen. One provision in the ordinance, it may be noticed in passing, abolished the district of Three Rivers, which had hitherto been, like Montreal, in charge of a Lieutenant-Governor. Thus Canada was started on its course as a British colony, with the best intentions, the prospect of such self-government as other American colonies enjoyed, British law and justice, and above all a governor who was in sympathy with the Causes of the difficulties which arose. people, and earnestly worked for their good; but difficulties arose almost immediately, and the causes of them are not far to seek.

It was the honest desire of the British Government to give liberty to Canada, to treat it, not as a conquered country, but as a British colony. Liberty, as the English understand it, has connoted three things, representative institutions, British law and justice, including especially trial by jury and the Habeas Corpus Act, and freedom of conscience. But in past times to Protestants freedom of conscience meant practical exclusion from the political sphere of those, like Roman Catholics, whose creed was in principle an exclusive creed; and therefore, in a Roman Catholic country under Protestant supremacy, like Ireland or Canada in the eighteenth century, representative institutions from the strong Protestant point of view meant institutions which did not represent the bulk of the population. In this matter, as in others, in the case of Canada, English statesmen and English governors, though not at once prepared to dispense with religious tests, were more liberally inclined towards the ‘new subjects’, the French Canadians, than were the English colonists in America; and the soldier Murray had far more breadth of mind than the local lawyers and politicians who prated of liberties which they had no intention of granting to others.

Shortly after his return to England, in 1766, Murray expressed his views as to the small Protestant minority in Canada in plain outspoken terms. In a letter addressed to Lord Shelburne on the 20th of August in that year, His opinion of the Protestant minority in Canada. he wrote, ‘most of them were followers of the army, of mean education, or soldiers disbanded at the reduction of the troops. All have their fortunes to make, and I fear few of them are solicitous about the means when the end can be obtained. I report them to be in general the most immoral collection of men I ever knew, of course little calculated to make the new subjects enamoured with our laws, religion, and customs, far less adapted to enforce these laws and to govern.’ As the Canadian peasantry, he continued, ‘have been taught to respect their superiors and not get intoxicated with the abuse of liberty, they are shocked at the insults which their noblesse and the King’s officers have received from the English traders and lawyers, since the civil government took place.... Magistrates were to be made and juries to be composed from four hundred and fifty contemptible sutlers and traders ... the Canadian noblesse were hated because their birth and behaviour entitled them to respect, and the peasants were abhorred because they were saved from the oppression they were threatened with.’ Equally severe was his judgement on ‘the improper choice and the number of the civil officers sent out from England’, ignorant of the law and language, rapacious, and lowering the dignity of government. In short his letter[42] was a wholesale condemnation of the representatives of the party which claimed to represent British civic life in a newly-acquired possession.

These men had bitterly attacked Murray, and no doubt Murray was bitter in turn; but his strictures were largely justified. He had lived for some years among the Canadians; he had commanded the King’s troops; himself a man of high principle and good breeding, he resented the mischief wrought by a low class of domineering interlopers who, in the name of freedom, meant to oppress, and painted as tyranny the policy which prevented oppression. A continuance of military rule, which the Canadians understood, would have been infinitely preferable to representative institutions in which the overwhelming majority of the population would have had no share.

Carleton’s view was much the same as Murray’s. His sympathies too were with Canada and the Canadians, and yet the forces and the instincts on the other side are at least intelligible. It was natural that, when war was over, in the train of the conquering army there should drift into the conquered country a certain number of adventurers, eager for official and professional gain, exploiting the land and the people, indifferent to higher objects, for they had not known them. They were an inevitable evil, such as must be reckoned with in similar circumstances at all times and in all places. It was natural too that Protestantism, when ascendant, should be aggressive; Character of American Protestantism. and Protestantism in Canada was borrowed from the New England States; it was the Puritanism of past days, hardened by memories of the evil wrought by Roman Catholic teaching among the natives of North America, the fruits of which had been, times without number, a series of savage crusades against the border villages of the British colonies. But the British Government, with all its kindly intentions, was at fault too; and the fault was the same evil which was poisoning political life at home. Unfit men were being sent out from home, Unfit men sent out from England. and the subordinate instruments for carrying out a new policy, and making a new régime congenial to those who were to live under it, were not well chosen. Men were wanted at first rather than institutions. The soldier governors were good, but the same could not be said of the civilians and lawyers.