selfishness. The Quebec act authorized the crown to confer posts of honor and of business upon Catholics; and they chose rather to depend on the clemency of the king than to have an exclusively Protestant parliament, like that of Ireland. This limited political toleration left no room for the sentiment of patriotism. The French Canadians of that day could not persuade themselves that they had a country. They would have desired an assembly, to which they should be eligible; but, since that was not to be obtained, they accepted their partial enfranchisement by the king, as a boon to a conquered people. 1774. Oct. The owners of estates were further gratified by the restoration of the French system of law. The English emigrants might complain of the want of jury trials in civil processes; but the French Canadians were grateful for relief from statutes which they did not comprehend, and from the chicanery of unfamiliar courts. The nobility of New France, who were accustomed to arms, were still further conciliated by the proposal to enroll Canadian battalions, in which they could hold commissions on equal terms with English officers. Here also the inspiration of nationality was wanting; and the whole population could never crowd to the British flag as they had rallied to the lilies of France. There would remain always the sentiment that they were waging battle not for themselves, and defending a government which was not their own. The great dependence of the crown was on the clergy. The capitulation of New France had guaranteed to them freedom of public worship; but the laws for their support were held to be no longer valid. By the Quebec act they were confirmed in the possession of their ancient churches and their revenues; so that the Roman Catholic worship was as effectually established in Canada as the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. When Carleton returned to his government, bearing this great measure of conciliation, of which he was known to have been the adviser, he was welcomed by the Catholic bishop and priests of Quebec with professions of loyalty; and the memory of Thurlow and Wedderburn, who carried the act through parliament, is gratefully embalmed in Canadian history. And yet the clergy were conscious that the concession of the great privileges which they now obtained was but an act of worldly policy, mainly due to the disturbed state of the Protestant colonies. Their joy at relief was sincere; but still, for the cause of Great Britain, Catholic Canada could not uplift the banner of the King of heaven or seek the perils of martyrdom. Such was the frame of mind of the French Canadians when the American congress sent among them its appeal. The time was come for applying the new principle of the power of the people to the old divisions in Christendom between the Catholic and the Protestant world. Protestantism, in the sphere of politics, had hitherto been the representative of that increase of popular liberty which had grown out of free inquiry; while the Catholic Church, under the early influence of Roman law, had inclined to monarchical power. These relations were now to be modified. 1774. Oct. The Catholic Church asserted the unity, the universality, and the unchangeableness of truth; and this principle, however it may have been perversely made subservient to ecclesiastical organization, tyranny, or superstition, rather demanded than opposed universal emancipation and brotherhood. Yet the thirteen colonies were all Protestant; even in Maryland, the Catholics formed but an eighth, or perhaps not more than a twelfth part of the population; their presence in other provinces, except Pennsylvania, was hardly perceptible. The members of congress had not wholly purged themselves of Protestant bigotry. Something of this appeared in their resolutions of rights, and in their address to the people of British America. In the address to the people of Great Britain, it was even said that the Roman Catholic religion had "dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world." But the desire of including Canada in the confederacy compelled the Protestants of America to adopt and promulgate the principle of religious equality and freedom. In the masterly address to the inhabitants of the province of Quebec, drawn by Dickinson, all old religious jealousies were con demned as low-minded infirmities; and the Swiss cantons were cited as examples of a union composed of Catholic and Protestant states. Oct. Appeals were also made to the vanity and the pride 1774. of the French population. After a clear and precise analysis of the Quebec act, and the contrast of its provisions with English liberties, the shade of Montesquieu was evoked, as himself saying to the Canadians: "Seize the opportunity presented to you by Providence itself. You have been con quered into liberty, if you act as you ought. This work is not of man. You are a small people, compared to those who with open arms invite you into a fellowship. The injuries of Boston have roused and associated every colony from Nova Scotia to Georgia. Your province is the only link wanting to complete the bright and strong chain of union. Nature has joined your country to theirs; do you join your political interests; for their own sakes, they never will desert or betray you. The happiness of a people inevitably depends on their liberty, and their spirit to assert it. The value and extent of the advantages tendered to you are immense. Heaven grant you may not discover them to be blessings after they have bid you an eternal adieu." With such persuasions, the congress unanimously invited the Canadians to "accede to their confederation." Whether the invitation should be accepted or repelled, the old feud between the nations which adhered to the Roman Catholic Church, and the free governments which had sprung from Protestantism, was coming to an end. CHAPTER XV. THE GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA NULLIFIES THE QUEBEC ACT. OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1774. THE attempt to extend the jurisdiction of Quebec to the Ohio River had no sanction in English history, and 1774. was resisted by the older colonies, especially by Virginia. The interest of the crown officers in the adjacent provinces was also at variance with the policy of parliament. No royal governor showed more rapacity in the use of official power than Lord Dunmore. He had reluctantly left New York, where, during his short career, he had acquired fifty thousand acres of land, and, himself acting as chancellor, was preparing to decide in his own court, in his own favor, a large and unfounded claim which he had preferred against the lieutenant-governor. Upon entering on the government of Virginia, his passion for land and fees outweighing the proclamation of the king and reiterated and most positive instructions from the secretary of state, he advocated the claims of the colony to the west, and was himself a partner in two immense purchases of land from the Indians in Southern Illinois. In 1773, his agents, the Bullets, made surveys at the falls of the Ohio; and a part of Louisville, and of the towns opposite Cincinnati, are now held under his warrant. The area of the Ancient Dominion expanded with his cupidity. Pittsburg, and the country as far up the Monongahela as Redstone Old Fort, formed the rallying point for western emigration and Indian trade. It was a part of the county of Westmoreland, in Pennsylvania. Suddenly, and without proper notice to the council of that province, Dunmore extended his own jurisdiction over the tempting and well peopled region. He found a willing instrument in one John Connolly, a native of Pennsylvania, a physician, land-jobber, and subservient political intriguer, who had travelled much in the Ohio valley, both by water and land. Commissioned by Dunmore as captain-commandant for Pittsburg and its dependencies, that is to say, of all the western country, Connolly opened the year 1774 with a proclamation of his authority; and he directed a muster of the militia. The western people, especially the emigrants from Maryland and Virginia, spurned the meek tenets of the Quakers, and inclined to the usurpation. The governor and council of Pennsylvania took measures to support their indisputable right. This Dunmore passionately resented as a personal insult, and would neither listen to irrefragable arguments, nor to candid offers of settlement by joint commissioners, nor to the personal application of two of the council of Pennsylvania. Jurisdiction was opposed to jurisdiction; arrests were followed by counter arrests; the country on the Monongahela, then the great avenue to the west, became a scene of confusion. 1774. The territory north and west of the Ohio belonged by act of parliament to the province of Quebec; yet Dunmore professed to conduct the government and grant the lands on the Scioto, the Wabash, and the Illinois. South of the Ohio River, Franklin's inchoate province of Vandalia stretched from the Alleghanies to Kentucky River; the treaty at Fort Stanwix bounded Virginia by the Tennessee; the treaty at Lochaber carried its limit only to the mouth of the Great Kanawha. The king's instructions confined settlements to the east of the mountains. There was no one, therefore, having authority to give an undisputed title to any land west of the Alleghanies, or to restrain the restlessness of the American emigrants. With the love of wandering that formed a part of their nature, the hardy backwoodsman, clad in a hunting-shirt and deerskin leggins, armed with a rifle, a powder-horn, and a pouch for shot and bullets, a hatchet and a hunter's knife, descended the mountains in quest of more distant lands, which he for ever imagined to be richer and lovelier than those which he knew. Wher |