Canada - Sir John George Bourinot (thriller novels to read .txt) 📗

thought themselves safe from any attack of their white enemy. His unexpected appearance on the banks of the Muskingkum awed the Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mingoes, who gladly agreed to terms of peace, especially as they knew that Colonel Bradstreet was in their rear on the banks of Lake Erie. The prisoners, whom the Indians had taken during their raids on the frontier settlements of Virginia and {274} Pennsylvania, were restored to their friends and relatives who had, in the majority of cases, never hoped to see them again. The annals of those days tell us strange stories of the infatuation which some young women felt for the savage warriors whom they had wedded in Indian fashion. Some children had forgotten their mothers, and Parkman relates in his graphic narrative of those memorable times that one girl only recalled her childhood when she heard her distracted mother sing a song with which she had often lulled her daughter to sleep in happier days.

Peace again reigned in the West. Detroit, after repulsing Pontiac so successfully, was at last relieved, and the red cross of England floated above the forts of Chartres and Vincennes, which were given up by the French.

By the end of the autumn of 1765 France possessed only a few acres of rock, constantly enveloped in fog, on the southern coast of Newfoundland, of all the great dominion she once claimed in North America. Pontiac now disappears from history, and is believed to have been killed by an Indian warrior of the Illinois nation, after a drunken bout at the village of Cahokia--an ignominious ending to the career of a great chief whose name was for so many months a menace to English authority in that wilderness region, which was declared in later years by an imperial statute, the Quebec Act, to be a part of Canada's illimitable domain.

While this Indian war was going on, George III., in the autumn of 1763, issued a proclamation establishing four new governments in North America; {275} Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada. The governors were empowered to summon general assemblies, and to make laws and ordinances for good government with the consent of the councils. and the representatives of the people, and to establish courts of justice. Members elected to the proposed assemblies had to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and the declaration against transubstantiation. No assembly, however, ever met, as the French Canadian population were unwilling to take the test oath, and the government of the province was carried on solely by the Governor-General--General Murray--with the assistance of an executive council, composed of certain officials and leading residents in the colony. From 1763 to 1774 the province remained in a very unsettled state, chiefly on account of the uncertainty that prevailed as to the laws actually in force. The "new subjects," or French Canadians, contended that justice, so far as they were concerned, should be administered in accordance with their ancient customs and usages. On the other hand, "the old," or English subjects, argued from the proclamation of 1763, that it was His Majesty's intention at once to abolish the old jurisprudence of the country, and to establish English law in its place.

Not the least important part of the proclamation of 1763 was that relating to the Indians, who were not to be disturbed in the possession of their hunting grounds. Lands could be alienated by the Indians only at some public meeting or assembly called for that special purpose by the Governor or {276} commander-in-chief where such lands were situated. This was the commencement of that just and honest policy towards the Indians which has ever since been followed by the government of Canada. One hundred and ten years later, an interesting spectacle was witnessed in the great Northwest Territory of Canada. The lieutenant-governor of the new province of Manitoba, constituted in 1870 out of the prairie lands of that rich region, met in council the representatives of the Indian tribes, and solemnly entered into treaties with them for the transfer to Canada of immense tracts of prairie lands where we now see wide stretches of fields of nodding grain.

Governor Murray conducted his government on principles of justice and forbearance towards the French Canadians, and refused to listen to the unwise and arbitrary counsel of the four or five hundred "old subjects," who wished to rule the province. He succeeded in inspiring the old inhabitants of the province, or "new subjects," with confidence in his intentions. The majority of the "old subjects," who were desirous of ruling Canada, are described by the Governor in a letter to Lord Shelburne, as "men of mean education, traders, mechanics, publicans, followers of the army,"--a somewhat prejudiced statement. As a rule, however, the judges, magistrates, and officials at that time were men of little or no knowledge.

In 1774, Parliament intervened for the first time in Canadian affairs, and passed the Quebec Act, which greatly extended the boundaries of the province of Quebec, as defined by the proclamation of {277} 1763. On one side, the province now extended to the frontiers of New England, Pennsylvania, New York province, the Ohio, and the left bank of the Mississippi; on the other, to the Hudson's Bay Territory. Labrador, Anticosti, and the Magdalen islands, annexed to Newfoundland by the proclamation of 1763, were made part of the province of Quebec.

The Quebec Act created much debate in the House of Commons. The Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, described it as "a most cruel, and odious measure." The opposition in the province was among the British inhabitants, who sent over a petition for its repeal or amendment. Their principal grievance was that it substituted the laws and usages of Canada for English law. The Act of 1774 was exceedingly unpopular in the English-speaking colonies, then at the commencement of the revolution on account of the extension of the limits of the province so as to include the country long known as the old Northwest in American history, and the consequent confinement of the Thirteen Colonies between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghany Mountains, beyond which the hardy and bold frontiersmen of Virginia and Pennsylvania were already passing into the great valley of the Ohio. Parliament, however, appears to have been influenced by a desire to adjust the government of the province so as to conciliate the majority of the Canadian people at this critical time.

The advice of Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, who succeeded General Murray as {278} Governor-General, had much to do with the liberality of the Quebec Act towards the French Canadians. After a careful study of the country he came to the conclusion that the French civil law ought to be retained, although he was met by the earnest advice to the contrary of two able lawyers, Chief-Justice Hay and Attorney-General Maseres, who believed a code adopted from English and French principles was preferable. Maseres, who was of Huguenot descent and much prejudiced against Roman Catholics, was also an advocate of a legislative assembly to be exclusively Protestant--in other words, of giving all power practically into the hands of a small British minority. When the subject of a new Canadian Constitution came to be discussed in England, Carleton crossed the Atlantic in 1769 and remained absent from Canada for four years. He returned to carry out the Quebec Act, which was the foundation of the large political and religious liberties which French Canada has ever since enjoyed.

The new constitution came into force in October, 1774. It provided that Roman Catholics should be no longer obliged to take the test oath, but only the oath of allegiance. The government of the province was entrusted to a governor and a legislative council, appointed by the Crown, inasmuch as it was "inexpedient to call an assembly." This council had the power, with the consent of the Governor, to make ordinances for the good government of the province. In all matters of controversy, relative to property and civil rights, recourse should be had to the French civil procedure, whilst the law of {279} England should obtain in criminal cases. Roman Catholics were permitted to observe their religion with perfect freedom, and their clergy were to enjoy their "accustomed dues and rights," with respect to such persons as professed that creed.

Sir Guy Carleton nominated a legislative council of twenty-three members, of whom eight were Roman Catholics. This body sat, as a rule, with closed doors; both languages were employed in the debates, and the ordinances agreed to were drawn up in English and French. In 1776 the Governor-General called to his assistance an advisory privy council of five members.

When Canada came under the operation of the Quebec Act, the Thirteen Colonies were on the eve of that revolution which ended in the establishment of a federal republic, and had also most important influence on the fortunes of the country through which the St. Lawrence flows.



[1] The siege of Detroit by Pontiac inspired one of the best historic novels ever written by a Canadian--_Wacousta, or the Prophecy_, by Major Richardson, who was the author of several other books.



XX.


THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION--INVASION OF CANADA--DEATH OF MONTGOMERY--PEACE.

(1774-1783.)

The Canadian people had now entered on one of the most important periods of their history. Their country was invaded, and for a time seemed on the point of passing under the control of the congress of the old Thirteen Colonies, now in rebellion against England. The genius of an able English governor-general, however, saved the valley of the St. Lawrence for the English Crown, and the close of the war for American independence led to radical changes in the governments of British North America. A large population, imbued with the loftiest principles of patriotism and self-sacrifice, came in and founded new provinces, and laid the basis of the present Dominion of Canada.

During the revolution emphatic appeals were made to the Canadian French to join the English colonies in their rebellion against England. With a curious ignorance of the conditions of a people, {281} who could not read and rarely saw a printed book, and never owned a printing-press[1] during the French regime, references were made by the congress that assembled at Philadelphia in September in 1774, to the writings of Beccaria and the spirit of the "immortal Montesquieu." The delegates attacked the Quebec Act as an exhibition of Roman Catholic tyranny at the very time they were asking the aid and sympathy of French Canadians in the struggle for independence. A few weeks later the same congress ignored the ill-advised address and appealed to the Canadians to join them on the broad grounds of continental freedom. The time, however, was too short to convince the clergy and leading men of the province that there was a change in the feeling of the majority in the congress with respect to the Roman Catholic religion. The mass of the French Canadians, especially in the rural districts, no doubt looked with great indifference on the progress of the conflict between the King of England and his former subjects, but in Quebec and Montreal, principally in the latter town, there were found English, as well as French-speaking persons quite ready to welcome and assist the forces of congress when they invaded Canada. On the other hand, the influences of the Quebec Act and of the judicious administrations of Murray and Carleton were obvious from the outset, and the bishop, Monseigneur Briand--who had been chosen with the silent acquiescence of the English Government--the {282} clergy