Canadians, said the former, “seem to have been strictly entitled by the jus gentium to their property, as they possessed it upon the capitulation and treaty of peace, together with all its qualities and incidents by tenure or otherwise.”  It seemed a necessary consequence that all those laws by which that property was created, defined, and secured, must be continued to them.  The Advocate-General Marriott, in 1773, also made a number of valuable suggestions in the same spirit, and at the same time expressed the opinion that under the existent conditions of the country it was not possible or expedient to call an assembly.  Before the imperial government came to a positive conclusion on the vexed questions before it, they had the advantage of the wise experience of Sir Guy Carleton, who visited England and remained there for some time.  The result of the deliberation of years was the passage through the British parliament of the measure known as “The Quebec Act,” which has always been considered the charter of the special privileges which the French Canadians have enjoyed ever since, and which, in the course of a century, made their province one of the most influential sections of British North America.

The preamble of the Quebec Act fixed new territorial limits for the province.  It comprised not only the country affected by the proclamation of 1763, but also all the eastern territory which had been previously annexed to Newfoundland.  In the west and south-west the province was extended to the Ohio and the Mississippi, and in fact embraced all the lands beyond the Alleghanies coveted and claimed by the old English colonies, now hemmed in between the Atlantic and the Appalachian range.  It was now expressly enacted that the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Canada should thenceforth “enjoy the free exercise” of their religion, “subject to the king’s supremacy declared and established” by law, and on condition of taking an oath of allegiance, set forth in the act.  The Roman Catholic clergy were allowed “to hold, receive, and enjoy their accustomed dues and rights, with respect to such persons only as shall confess the said religion”—­that is, one twenty-sixth part of the produce of the land, Protestants being specially exempted.  The French Canadians were allowed to enjoy all their property, together with all customs and usages incident thereto, “in as large, ample and beneficial manner,” as if the proclamation or other acts of the crown “had not been made”, but the religious orders and communities were excepted in accordance with the terms of the capitulation of Montreal—­the effect of which exception I have already briefly stated.  In “all matters of controversy relative to property and civil rights,” resort was to be had to the old civil law of French Canada “as the rule for the decision of the same”, but the criminal law of England was extended to the province on the indisputable ground that its “certainty and lenity” were already “sensibly felt by the inhabitants