Volume 3, Chapter 59, The Quebec Act
A fifth act passed concurrently in the same session was regarded by the colonists and
by the Rockingham Whigs as part of the coercive series.
The Quebec Act was introduced in early May and passed and approved by the King at the
end of June over the vigorous opposition of Barré, Fox, Burke and Chatham.
The bulk of present-day historians have chided Whigs and Americans for their opposition and
fantasies about the bill, and have praised the Quebec Act as a wise and statesman-like
measure. The Quebec Act had two basic parts, fastening a permanent frame of government
on the people of Quebec, and aggressively expanding the province's borders. The latter
Their provision arbitrarily but provisionally extended the domain of Quebec to the French
communities in the Ohio Valley and Illinois country.
Although such extension threatened to interfere with speculative claims to the Western lands,
the Act's rather vague clause occasioned little protest because the land involved was a virtually
The really intense opposition to the Quebec Act, in both England and America, centered on its domestic provisions, its permanent frame of government for the hapless French, who had been conquered in the French and Indian War, and governed only in tentative,
The root premise of this supposedly statesman-like measure was the ingrained English view that
the French Canadians were an inferior race, unfit for self-government and fit only to
be governed by an English ruling class. There was at this time only a handful of English
in Canada, mainly merchants and royal bureaucrats.
The Quebec Act deprived Quebec completely of any elected assembly, even the previously
existing assembly for the handful of English there, and of any right to trial by jury in
civil cases. Full legislative authority was vested in a royally appointed council, but
even the acts of this creature of the Crown were subject to royal veto. Moreover, the
The power to levy all but purely local taxes upon the Canadians was vested in Parliament itself.
Executive power was to accrue to a royally appointed military governor.
Furthermore, a supplementary act levied duties on imports into Quebec to pay the salaries of the royally appointed officials.
The chill that this schema sent up the American colonists' spine can well be imagined, for
in this there seemed to be a model of the ultimate aim of Great Britain, to reduce all
the American colonies to abject creatures totally ruled by instruments of Parliament
and the Crown.
English or natural liberties such as trial by jury, no taxation without consent by representation,
and assembly control over executive salaries were arrogantly swept away, and there was
in the Quebec Act not even a hint of any future self-government for Canada.
The Quebec Act, to be sure, disestablished the Anglican Church and removed the grievous
Religious Disabilities under which the French Catholics had suffered since the British Conquest.
But instead of allowing simple religious liberty, the Quebec Act reimposed the Roman Catholic
Church as the established religious communion, thus restoring the feudal political privileges
to the seniors and the church against which the poor habitants had been struggling for
many years.
The compulsory re-establishment of the Catholic Church was no service either to the people
of Quebec or to the Church itself. For us, in so many cases in history, the quid pro
quo exacted for special privilege was special control. Under the Act, the Catholic Church
and its revenues were placed under Crown control, and the Catholic Church of Quebec was to be
As Lord North promised, no bishop will be there under papal authority, because Great Britain will not permit any papal authority, whatever in the country.
Current historians attribute the English and American horror at these provisions to simple anti-Catholic prejudice.
Although this certainly played an ample role, the Whigs, the leading English opponents of the Quebec Act, were long-time champions of religious liberty for Quebec as well as Britain.
They had fought valiantly for absolute toleration of the Catholic Church in religious matters, including even permission for a resident bishop.
Their objection to the religious provisions of the Quebec Act was the re-imposition of
an established church and of corollary feudalism.
They realized that the North Ministry was seeking to gain the political support of the
Quebec clergy by granting them special political privileges.
The Whigs also denounced the Quebec Act's limitation on rights of jury trial and its
It's replacing an elected assembly with a royally appointed council.
And their main protest at the extension of Quebec to the Western lands was the consequent
extension of these evil and despotic principles to the vast areas of the West.
Edmund Burke did yeoman work in alerting New York to the nature and implications of the
Quebec Act, as well as to its threat to New York's own Western land claims, a service
that helped greatly in radicalizing opinion in that often conservative province.
One of the fruits, in fact, of Burke's opposition to all the coercive acts was his election
to Parliament in the autumn from Bristol, the second-greatest port of England and the
The Metropolis of West England and the Home of Leading Merchants in the American Trade.
Bristol bitterly opposed the coercive measures, and Wilkite radicalism grew rapidly there.
In fact, the other newly elected representative from Bristol was the prominent New York merchant
and ardent radical Henry Kruger Jr.
Aside from Bristol, however, the fall election was a triumph for the government and a defeat
for the Whigs.
No check on British power would emanate from that quarter.