in the old
colonies. Though not, as was long believed, designed in retaliation for
the Boston disturbances, it is clear that its framers had Massachusetts
in mind when deciding on their policy for Quebec. The main purpose of
the Act, the motive which turned the scale against the old Anglicizing
policy, was to attach the leaders of French-Canadian opinion firmly
to the British Crown, and thus not only to prevent Canada itself from
becoming infected with democratic contagion or turning in a crisis
toward France, but to ensure, if the worst came to the worst, a military
base in that northland whose terrors had in old days kept the seaboard
colonies circumspectly loyal. Ministers in London had been driven by
events to accept Carleton's paradox, that to make Quebec British,
it must be prevented from becoming English. If in later years the
solidarity and aloofness of the French-Canadian people were sometimes to
prove inconvenient to British interests, it was always to be remembered
that this situation was due in great part to the deliberate action of
Great Britain in strengthening French-Canadian institutions as a means
of advancing what she considered her own interests in America. "The
views of the British Government in respect to the political uses to
which it means to make Canada subservient," Marriott had truly declared,
"must direct the spirit of any code of laws."

The Quebec Act multiplied the area of the colony sevenfold by the
restoration of all Labrador on the east and the region west as far as
the Ohio and the Mississippi and north to the Hudson's Bay Company's
territory. It restored the old French civil law but continued the milder
English criminal law already in operation. It gave to the Roman Catholic
inhabitants the free exercise of their religion, subject to a modified
oath of allegiance, and confirmed the clergy in their right "to hold,
receive and enjoy their accustomed dues and rights, with respect to such
persons only as shall confess the said religion." The promised elective
Assembly was not granted, but a Council appointed by the Crown received
a measure of legislative power.

On his return to Canada in September, 1774, Carleton reported that the
Canadians had "testified the strongest marks of Joy and Gratitude and
Fidelity to their King and to His Government for the late Arrangements
made at Home in their Favor." The "most respectable part of the
English," he continued, urged peaceful acceptance of th