The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America’s War of Liberation in Canada, 1774–1776

3 | Fuel for Rebellion: The British Party and the Quebec Act of 1774

Chapter 3 Fuel for Rebellion The British Party and the Quebec Act of 1774 The King trusts that when the Provisions of [the Quebec Act] have taken place . . . prejudices which popular Clamour has excited will cease, and that His Majesty’s Subjects of every description will see and be convinced of the Equity and good Policy of the Bill. | Secretary of State Dartmouth to Governor Guy Carleton, London, 10 December 1774 Quebec’s New French heritage had an undeniable influence on Canadien views and sentiments; their basic societal structure and many core values were clear products of that earlier era.Yet by the time Congress wrote its first address to Quebec, almost an entire generation had lived with a British presence in the colony. From the 1759 arrival of Royal Navy warships on the St. Lawrence, to the British government’s Quebec Act, milestone events and sociopolitical undercurrents played a critical role in shaping the choices Canadian habitants, merchants, seigneurs, and clergy would make when the continent erupted in the 1774 Revolutionary crisis. Beyond the change of kings dictated by its outcome,the French and Indian War left indelible marks on the Canadian psyche and ushered in meaningful changes to the colony’s demographic landscape.When General James Wolfe brought his British force to the St. Lawrence in 1759, he began with a bombardment of heavily fortified Québec City.The British who occupied the city that fall found it “in a most ruinous condition.” Many buildings had been burned and most damaged by “shot or shell . . . scarcely ha[bit]able without some repairing.”1 While raining fire on the capital, Wolfe also unleashed a campaign of destruction across rural Canada.The general gave the habitants two options. He preferred that the people would “take no part in the great contest between the two crowns.”If they took up arms, however, there would be “most 32 The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony fatal consequences; their habitations destroyed, their sacred temples exposed to an exasperated soldiery, their harvest utterly ruined.” In a military policy applied for more than a year, the British laid waste to swathes of the Canadian countryside; whenever Canadian militia dared to resist, parishes were ravaged in retribution.2 Prior to Wolfe’s operations, British Nova Scotia served as another example of British ruthless wartime policy. Unsure of Acadian loyalty at the war’s outset, the government ordered the removal of the colony’s entire ethnically French population. Exiles were relocated within the empire, many to New England. Three years after the war ended, Quebec Governor James Murray offered these displaced Acadians access to Canadian land, the only requirement being an oath of allegiance to the Crown. Over the next four years, an estimated 8,000 Acadians arrived in Quebec, increasing the province’s population by more than 5 percent. Many Acadian-Canadians concentrated in the sparsely populated sections between Montreal District’s south bank and the Richelieu River, including a region eventually called L’Acadie.3 Another wartime legacy would have tremendous influence on the American Revolution in Quebec, but this one originated in France. With its mercantilist cash flow perpetually biased toward the metropolis, New France never succeeded in obtaining sufficient specie (coin currency) to meet its internal financial needs. Instead, the colony relied on various forms of paper money or “bills of exchange.”With the escalation of the French and Indian War,the situation in Canada only grew worse; the administration profligately issued more bills and ordonnances, which rapidly depreciated in market value by 60 to 70 percent.Although theoretically the paper could be redeemed for specie payment, grossly indebted France implemented serial policies to slow and eventually freeze such payment. The French government owed Canadians over 40 million livres at the time of the Conquest.While the British government tried to arrange for French repayment after the war,between merchant speculation, negotiated devaluation, and eventual default,“this huge mass of credit had become as worthless as the paper on which it was written.”Having endured such a tremendous collective financial loss through this experience, Canadiens dreaded paper money of any sort.4 When allegiances were tested by the Revolution from 1774 to 1776, individual Canadien and Acadian-Canadian responses varied widely. Although there are no substantive written records to evaluate or quantify related habitant attitudes,the French and Indian War experiences must have weighed heavily Fuel for Rebellion 33 in many of...