region with a considerable Acadian population and the advantage of having preserved the military centre of Halifax during a hundred and fifty years, was largely affected. In the Eastern Townships of Quebec the Loyalists found local conditions more distasteful than distant hardships and, disliking the absence of constitutional rule, many migrated again into Upper Canada and joined their brethren in the great Lake country.

To all the Provinces these American refugees carried their views of government; intense feelings of loyalty which had been bred into their very bones by persecution and exile; strong belief in monarchy as the best and truest form of government; a love of country which grew with the hardships endured so patiently; a feeling that they had the right to control and guide, in days to come, the destinies, the affairs, the policy of the Provinces they were founding and maintaining through stress and storm. Out of this natural sentiment came many complications in the future and much political turmoil. But that is another story.

THE

CHAPTER VIII

Early Constitutional Development

HE form of government in New France was at once autocratic and bureaucratic and ecclesiastical. The King interfered when he pleased and changed or adjusted matters as he saw fit. The Governors were usually soldiers and, in the face of constant danger from Iroquois or English, naturally ruled in an arbitrary manner, though often without that precision of plan and action which would have marked the able military administrator. Champlain and Frontenac, Denonville and Vaudreuil, constituted at times, however, the whole government of the Colony in their own persons.

SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT IN FRENCH CANADA

With the Governor-General was an Intendant who guided, more or less, the finances of the country and the matters of administrative detail. When the Intendant was a strong man and the Governor a weak one the former for good or ill controlled the State. Jean Talon, who filled the position in 1665-68 and for five years following 1670, was the creator of the constitution of New France-such as it was. A strong organizer, an honest administrator, he did as much good to the infant state as the last Intendant, the corrupt and crafty Francois Bigot, did harm. Intimately associated with these officials was the Bishop. At times he was the greatest of the three, and the most influential. Laval, St. Vallier and Pontbriand wielded in their day a combined ecclesiastical and civil power in French Canada which was not dissimilar to the place held by the Princes of their Church in mediæval Europe.

In 1663, Louis XIV. created what was at first called a Sovereign Council, and afterwards the Supreme Council, as the governing

body of his American possessions. It was composed of the Governor-General, who had charge of all military matters, the Bishop, who was supreme in all ecclesiastical concerns-and many which would now be termed civil ones-and the Intendant, who was President of the Council, with a casting vote and with complete control over police, trade, justice, and other departments of civil administration. With these practically supreme officials were associated six, and afterwards twelve Councillors, who were chosen from amongst the leading residents. Under this system, and up to the conquest, the Government of the colony fluctuated and merged into differing degrees of military administration, class supremacy, ecclesiastical control, and financial manipulation.

ESTABLISHMENT OF FRENCH MILITARY RULE

Its leading objects were the establishment of French military rule over as wide a space as possible between Hudson's Bay and the regions of the Ohio Valley and the Mississippi; the development of the fur trade, with profitable returns to the numerous French interests in that connection, the extension of religion to the Indians and the expansion of the power of the Church; the eventual hemming in of the English settlements upon the Atlantic by a background of French forts and military stations down through the heart of the continent. Constitutional machinery, in a popular sense, was not required for such objects, and in fact proved far from beneficial in this respect, and in even a restricted form, to the English Thirteen Colonies. The scattered local centres of the latter were governed in those days in a detached and hap-hazard way and with a democratic freedom which was not conducive to united military action or concentrated policy.

Under early British administration the change in New France, or Quebec as it was now termed, was very slight. From 1764 to 1774 the military influence was practically supreme, and the power possessed by

Lord Amherst, General Murray and Sir Guy Carleton was almost autocratic. In the latter year came the Quebec Act, and a general adjustment of the government to conditions which had developed amongst the French of the Lower Province and the new Loyalist settlers of the Upper Province as a result of the decade of British rule. THE QUEBEC ACT

The origin of this important legislation was in the relations between the French majority in Quebec and the English minority; its evolution was in the mind and policy of Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester; its immediate result was the saving of British America to the Crown during the American Revolution; its ultimate consequence was the French Province of modern times with full liberty of laws, language and religion. At the Conquest, and by the Treaty of Paris, these rights had been formally guaranteed in a religious sense to the 65,000 inhabitants of Quebec (who by 1774 had increased to 150,000) in the declaration that "the worship of their religion, according to the rites of the Romish Church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit" was to be allowed. In practice, also, the various religious Orders had been given full freedom of action and exemption from taxation. This generosity, however, was not altogether palatable to the small English population, while, on the other hand, the habitants did not understand the English Civil law though willing enough to accept English Criminal law. The result of a not very aggressive effort to substitute the laws of the conqueror for those of the conquered had been dissatisfaction and a great deal of confusion.

As the years passed on, too, the menacing storm-cloud of trouble in the Thirteen Colonies grew dark, and it became eminently desirable to conciliate the French-Canadians and correct every possible grievance. The territory which was administered at this time under the general designation of Quebec was considerably different from that of later days and was greatly restricted in extent-although it

became enlarged beyond recognition by the Quebec Act itself. By the King's Proclamation of 1763, Governor Murray had been authorized to "summon and call general Assemblies of the free-holders and planters" as soon as the "situation and circumstances" of the new Province would permit. Naturally and properly he was in no hurry to introduce the apple of political discord and the difficulties of an elective system amongst people imbued with French autocratic habits of government and utterly ignorant of British ideas and principles. He was also occupied with the more immediately important work of arranging the judicial and administrative functions of the new Gov

ernment.

With the coming of Carleton, in 1768, a new constitutional stage in affairs was developed and conditions already indicated demanded the attention of a man who is one of the heroic characters of Canadian history. His policy during this period included the enlargement of the area of Quebec so as to bring within its bounds as much as possible of the regions once claimed by its French rulers; the centralization of government in its various phases under the control of the Crown or, in other words, in his own hands; the obtaining of Roman Catholic sympathy and the powerful support of the Church for British connection and government in the inevitable troubles which he saw to be coming from the New England and Atlantic Colonies; the amelioration of local conditions so as to make the French settlers satisfied with local laws; the avoidance of unnecessary or unpopular taxation. Fortunately for Great Britain and the Canada of the future he was given a tolerably free hand and would have held a still stronger position and a greater place in the history of the Continent if it had not been for the fatuous littleness of Lord George Germaine. In 1769, after a close study of the situation, he returned to England bent upon obtaining the legislation afterwards expressed in the Quebec Act. In the persistent work of the next few years he received