CHAPTER V.

THE NORTHWEST CONQUERED FOR THE

AMERICAN UNION.

WHEN France surrendered Canada to Great Britain the population of the English colonies in America exceeded that of several countries in Europe which in former times had won lasting renown in defending their liberties and independence against the assaults of more powerful neighbors. Two millions of people accustomed to a share of liberty which was altogether uncommon at that period, and schooled by hard necessity to independence of action and the use of arms, must at any time and in any part of the world be a formidable power, and entitled, in all matters which concerned their relations to government, to a respectful hearing. This must be especially the case when their numbers are increasing with great rapidity, and when their distance from the seat of authority is so considerable that their government as a discontented people must necessarily be exceedingly difficult and enormously expensive. But these obvious truths were either overlooked or haughtily disregarded, and a course of treat

ment for the American colonies at once unjust in its essentials and offensive in its methods was deliberately entered upon. The Stamp Act as a measure of internal taxation, the attempt to collect a revenue from importations of tea, the closing of the port of Boston, the abrogation of the charter of Massachusetts Bay, and the proposal to send persons charged with crimes in America to Great Britain for trial in certain cases, and to quarter troops upon the colonists, were each and all indications of settled despotic purpose, and resistance to them went on from step to step, until delegates were chosen to a Continental Congress, which, when other measures failed to secure redress, was to declare the colonies free and independent states.

But while the British colonies were preparing, with an earnestness that admitted of no doubt or question, for an appeal to arms, Canada neither participated in the excitement nor cared for the causes of it. The Canadians shared in common with the people of the other colonies in no traditions of liberty; they knew nothing of Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights, and they had justly been praised by their last French governor-general for their docility and "perfect submissiveness." These were not the men to resist government because denied the right of self-taxation; king and church had their implicit obedience; and having little in common with the sentiments from which

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sprang the American Revolution, and quite as little with the men who led it, they were not likely to see attractions in martyrdom for political liberty. The coureurs de bois and voyageurs about Detroit, French in their gayety and buoyancy of spirits, and Indian in their unthrift, their grossness of life, and their alternations of excess and privation; the little farmers in their whitewashed and vineclad cottages, living a life of easy and thoughtless cheerfulness upon what they produced, were none of them likely to concern themselves with theories of political equality, or with questions of popular enfranchisement. A certain lot in the order of Providence had fallen to them, which they found abundant means of making a cheerful if not a happy one. The traders indeed were not now exclusively French, as they had been a few years before; a few Irishmen and Englishmen had come in, and more Scotchmen; but these seem in coming into the wilderness to have found the habits and methods of those who had preceded them congenial, and they soon displayed in their own ways the characteristics of their French neighbors. They had their seasons of devotion to business, and their seasons of social hilarity and profuse expenditure in the enjoyments of the table; their hospitality was unbounded, and they delighted equally in the rough athletic sports of the day and in the dance and other enjoyments of social life. Nothing could be more agreeable

than the picture handed down to us of the best society of the day, and nothing as we look back upon it would be impressed more distinctly upon the mind than that these agreeable and social people were not the men to evolve from the intellectual warfare of troublous times the foundation principles upon which may be builded great

states.

But the people of Canada had grievances peculiar to themselves, which they felt at all times, and in which people of both sexes and all conditions participated. One of these concerned their church; they had been promised the unrestricted enjoyment of their religion, but the church complained that its property rights had not always been respected, and this, while not a breach of the letter of the promise, was felt to be in disregard of its spirit. But a second and more palpable grievance was that of being deprived of their ancient laws. If the complaints they made of these grievances were more subdued in tone and deferential than the complaints by the English colonies of attempted imperial taxation, they were not the less sincere or persistent, and they were more universally concurred in by the people.

Accordingly, we find measures for the conciliation of Canada proceeding hand in hand with measures for the punishment of the other colonies. The act for the regulation of the affairs of the province of Quebec was a measure of conciliation

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from which very much was anticipated. The act sanctioned in Canada the free exercise of the religion of Rome, and confirmed to the clergy their accustomed dues and rights, including tithes established by the edict of Louis XIV. In all civil matters it restored to the people the benefit of their ancient laws, it relieved them from the operation of the English test acts, and it gave to the colony a governing council with powers of legislation subject to the king's negative. The selection of the members was to be made by the king, but a part of the number were to be Catholics, and this was a step in the direction of political liberty which was peculiarly agreeable to the people because of its recognition of their church, — a church not tolerated in England, and abhorred in the other colonies. The act extended the boundaries of the province of Quebec so as to include within it all the British possessions from the Ohio to the Hudson Bay Territory.

The Quebec Act had for one purpose to prevent the disloyalty of the other colonies from extending to Canada; and the bigoted king, who by it made concessions to the Catholics which he would peril his crown rather than make in England and Ireland, declared when he signed it that it was founded on the plainest principles of justice and humanity, and that he anticipated from it the best effects in calming the inquietudes and promoting the well-being of his Canadian subjects.