The Quebec Act of 1774—­the Magna Charta of the French-Canadian race—­finally passed the House of Lords on the 18th of June.  The general idea of the Act was to reverse the unsuccessful policy of ultimate assimilation with the other American colonies by making Canada a distinctly French-Canadian province.  The Maritime Provinces, with a population of some thirty thousand, were to be as English as they chose.  But a greatly enlarged Quebec, with a population of ninety thousand, and stretching far into the unsettled West, was to remain equally French-Canadian; though the rights of what it was then thought would be a perpetual English-speaking minority were to be safeguarded in every reasonable way.  The whole country between the American colonies and the domains of the Hudson’s Bay Company was included in this new Quebec, which comprised the southern half of what is now the Newfoundland Labrador, practically the whole of the modern provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and all the western lands between the Ohio and the Great Lakes as far as the Mississippi, that is, the modern American states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Act gave Canada the English criminal code.  It recognized most of the French civil law, including the seigneurial tenure of land.  Roman Catholics were given ’the free Exercise’ of their religion, ’subject to the King’s Supremacy’ as defined ’by an Act made in the First Year of Queen Elizabeth,’ which Act, with a magnificently prophetic outlook on the future British Empire, was to apply to ’all the Dominions and Countries which then did, or thereafter should, belong to the Imperial Crown.’  The Roman Catholic clergy were authorized to collect ’their accustomed Dues and Rights’ from members of their own communion.  The new oath of allegiance to the Crown was silent about differences of religion, so that Roman Catholics might take it without question.  The clergy and seigneurs were thus restored to an acknowledged leadership in church and state.  Those who wanted a parliament were distinctly told that ’It is at present inexpedient to call an Assembly,’ and that a Council of from seventeen to twenty-three members, all appointed by the Crown, would attend to local government and have power to levy taxes for roads and public buildings only.  Lands held ‘in free and common socage’ were to be dealt with by the laws of England, as was all property which could be freely willed away.  A possible establishment of the Church of England was provided for but never put in operation.

In some ways the Act did, in other ways it did not, fulfil the objects of its framers.  It was undoubtedly a generous concession to the leading French Canadians.  It did help to keep Canada both British and Canadian.  And it did open the way for what ought to have been a crushing attack on the American revolutionary forces.  But it was not, and neither it nor any other Act could possibly have been, at that late hour, completely