ands 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 successful. It conciliated
the seigneurs and the parochial clergy. But it did not,
and it could not, also conciliate the lesser townsfolk
and the habitants. For the last fourteen years the
habitants had been gradually drifting away from their
former habits of obedience and former obligations towards
their leaders in church and state. The leaders had lost
their old followers. The followers had found no new
leaders of their own.

Naturally enough, there was great satisfaction among the
seigneurs and the clergy, with a general feeling among
government supporters, both in England and Canada, that
the best solution of a very refractory problem had been
found at last. On the other hand, the Opposition in
England, nearly every one in the American colonies, and
the great majority of English-speaking people in
Newfoundland, the Maritime Provinces, and Canada itself
were dead against the Act; while the habitants, resenting
the privileges already reaffirmed in favour of the
seigneurs and clergy, and suspicious of further changes
in the same unwelcome direction, were neutral at the best
and hostile at the worst.

The American colonists would have been angered in any
case. But when they saw Canada proper made as unlike a
'fourteenth colony' as could be, and when they also saw
the gates of the coveted western lands closed against
them by the same detested Act--the last of the 'five
intolerable acts' to which they most objected--their fury
knew no bounds. They cursed the king, the pope, and the
French Canadians with as much violence as any temporal
or spiritual rulers had ever cursed heretics and rebels.
The 'infamous and tyrannical ministry' in England was
accused of 'contemptible subservience' to the 'bloodthirsty,
idolatrous, and hypocritical creed' of the French Canadia