Y

worthy of attention, some of which were already under consideration. The introduction of any religious test was burdensome and inadmissible. As to officers on service acting as they represented, there was only one such case.

The presentment awoke opposition in another quarter. The six French Canadians whose names were attached to the first fifteen clauses, asked for a translation of the paper they had signed. On learning its contents, they repudiated all connection with it, as having appended their names under misrepresentation. Some articles they were opposed to, some they had misunderstood; the meaning of others had not been explained; and in two cases they affirmed that the matter had not been deliberated, but only partially considered in a conversational way. The twelfth article they had conceived to be a recommendation that French Canadian advocates should be allowed to plead, for there was not an English lawyer who understood French. The document concluded with a general protest against the exclusion of Canadians from any office on the ground of their being Roman catholics.

On the 29th October the dissentient members forwarded a petition to the king formally complaining of the presentment; they asked that the courts established by the governor should be confirmed; that they should be allowed to sit as jurors; that notaries and advocates should be permitted to act in accordance with ancient usage; and that the laws should be published in French.

Murray did not remain idle during this attack upon his administration; he sent lists to England of the persons, who, as protestants, had arrogated to themselves the government of the country. They were a few in excess of two hundred who thus desired to control some eighty thousand French Canadians. In Quebec the number was one hundred and forty-four; in Montreal fifty-six, and there were not ten protestant free-holders in the province. As might have been expected the grand jury was greatly blamed by the "king in council" for assuming the authority of a house of representatives, against the order of the crown, and for supporting their

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presentment by the names of French Canadian inhabitants, who had declared that they were fraudulently induced to sign. it. The governor was instructed to signify his majesty's highest disapprobation of such proceedings, further "that his majesty will give the utmost attention and consideration to proper representations from his Canadian subjects, and will cause to be removed every grievance, of which they may have reason justly to complain."

*

From what has been said, it may be conceived that Murray commenced his government threatened by many elements of discord. There was no system of law, no true public opinion throwing light on the establishment of a constitution, not forbearance on the part of the small population who, as old subjects, were supposed to be ranged on the side of authority. Every new principle had to be conceived, described in intelligible language, and perfected. The very position of the governor was not defined. The governorship of a colony. had been regarded as a political prize, attainable by past services; or given as the purchase of silence to a troublesome opponent of the government. The profits were regarded as a sinecure. Amherst was governor of Virginia on these conditions. The position of the governor of Canada had been offered to Chatham, with £5,000 a year and the pledge that a special act would be introduced, which would enable him to retain his seat in parliament. The position at one time had been an aspiration of Wilkes. To have enforced the necessity of residence would, in the view of a political adventurer, have been the creation of an office of little estimation, beyond the emoluments which accompanied it; and they barely satisfied the expenditure exacted. It would have been regarded as banishment by an ambitious politician, had he been removed from the house of commons. Nevertheless, few more noble appeals to patriotism and the desire to be useful could be found, than that of worthily establishing British rule in the newly conquered province. The difficulty, however, of governing in America was well known and the

Conway to Murray, 8th Nov., 1763. Can. Arch., Q., 2, p. 465.

Hark

personal advantages of the office were not looked upon as commensurate with its risks and demands. It is not impossible, that the hesitation which can be traced in Murray's appointment may, to some extent, have arisen from the coquetting of prominent public men, about the acceptance of the office. Even bearing in mind the ministerial complications of this date, it is difficult otherwise to assign a satisfactory explanation for the delay between the signature of the treaty and Murray's nomination.

From Murray's letters it is plain that the few protestants who were in the country looked forward to rule it, utterly ignoring the bulk of the French Canadian population. In 1764 they numbered two hundred, on Murray's recall in 1766 they had increased to four hundred and fifty. If Murray's description of them can be accepted, they were generally men of mean education, bent upon unscrupulously making money, without morality,* and contemptible in character; either young beginners, or if old traders, they were those who had failed in other countries. On the other hand, Murray had lived much among the French Canadians of Quebec since Wolfe's victory of September, 1759, a period of five years, and he had formed. a high opinion of them as a body, frequently expressed in his letters, and he would in no way be a party to their being treated with injustice and wrong by those whom he described as "licentious fanatics." Murray well understood that the only government to be successful was one which declined to pander to faction; and that eighty thousand souls could not be told, that their laws and customs which had prevailed for a century and a half were to be arbitrarily set aside, at the demand of a minority of some score of new comers, many of whom had been in Canada for a few months only. However seriously Murray regarded the responsibility of his position, he was powerless to apply a remedy to the confusion. He was fettered by his instructions. Accordingly, in October 1764, he despatched Cramahé to London to submit the history of the difficulty, and to obtain the intervention of the home Murray to Lords of Trade, 3rd March, 1765. Can. Arch., Q., 2., p. 378.

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government by which peace and order could be secured. There was no embarrassment to be looked for on the part of the new subjects. With a few privileges they would become the most faithful subjects in the American empire, but nothing would satisfy the pretensions of the new comers into the province but the expulsion of the Roman catholics. The English speaking portion of the inhabitants likewise engaged an agent in London to sustain the policy they were advocating, making any immediate settlement more complicated and less feasible. The republican sentiment which had grown to full strength in many parts of New England since the provinces had been freed from the terror of French invasion, joined to an increasing impatience of the restrictions imposed on American commerce, together with the unsatisfied ambition of many needy young lawyers, the number of whom had greatly increased in the northern provinces, and had extended even to Virginia, had acted upon political life, and had its reflex in Canada. Theories of government, undefined and impracticable, were prevalent among the small English speaking population brought into prominence by their greater commercial activity. The presentment of the Quebec grand jury is proof of the fact, that those professing these opinions acted in disregard of every interest but that represented by themselves; and it may also be added, with an indifference to any evil consequence that their intolerance might create. It was an impulse giving strength to the bad feeling which had arisen between the civilians in Montreal and the garrison. The British soldier in New York and Boston was looked upon in the most unfriendly spirit. He was the representative of imperial authority; and the feeling had been transplanted to Canada, that he might prove an impediment in the establishment of the power the extreme party desired to attain. This sentiment had obtained much strength in Montreal; things had grown from bad to worse. Bitter animosity had arisen. between the officers and the British merchants, which had been increased by the latter acting as magistrates and administering the law. The French Canadians had their own causes

of dissatisfaction as a body: many prominent men were opposed to the introduction of English law, as much from prejudice and distrust, as from the weight of any actual grievance. The higher classes were directly affected by the change of nationality, for they suffered by being excluded from those positions of dignity and profit, which, under French rule, they had enjoyed as a matter of right. The ecclesiastics were unassured as to the policy, that in the future would be observed towards them: there had been no definition of the toleration guaranteed by the articles of capitulation. Disquietude was felt in all directions, traceable more to the unsettled feeling of what the future would bring forth, than to dissatisfaction with what had been done. The province was passing through one of those crises, when more weight is attached to the pertinacity and determination with which a claim is asserted, than to the justice upon which it is founded. There was forbearance in no quarter. The general endeavour was to obtain the prevalence of the opinions which each section of the divided population desired to see enforced; and the complicated interests involved suggested that only difficulty would arise, whatever form the policy followed might take. The character of the government was regarded as being but temporary. The proclamation by which it was established, was considered more as an assertion of authority, than as the deliberate affirmation of the form of rule. This view led to the greater effort that it should be modified and adapted, to meet the various theories which prevailed; and they were so contradictory and discordant, that it was scarcely possible to suggest a compromise, by which they could be reconciled. In this chaos of opinion, the only solution which presented itself to those in authority was that the proclamation should be acted upon to the letter, and the best government attainable in accordance with its provisions established.