But most of all it was necessary to mete out fair and liberal treatment to the new subjects, the French Canadians, and make them contented citizens of the British Empire. This object, Englishmen naturally argued, could best be attained, first, by securing ‘the ancient inhabitants in all the titles, rights, and privileges granted to them by Treaty’[40]; and secondly, by giving the Canadians as soon as possible the laws and institutions which British subjects valued and under which they had thrived, by assimilating Canada as far as possible in these respects to the neighbouring British colonies. Accordingly the Canadians were from the first to enjoy the benefit of the laws of England, and courts of justice were to be established with power to determine all causes criminal and civil ‘as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England’. The question of religion was ignored in the proclamation; freedom of worship had already been guaranteed to the Roman Catholics by the 4th Article of the Peace of Paris,[41] and Murray’s instructions were that he should ‘in all things regarding the said inhabitants, conform with great exactness to the stipulations of the said treaty in this respect’. There the matter was left for the moment, though Murray’s commission provided that the persons who should be elected as members of the future Assembly were to subscribe the declaration against Popery, enacted in Charles the Second’s reign, which provision would have excluded Roman Catholics from sitting in the Assembly. [Sidenote: Liberal intention of the Proclamation of 1763.] There is no question that the proclamation itself was conceived in a wise and tolerant spirit. There was every intention to safeguard the best interests alike of the French Canadians and of the Indians; to give to the latter the protection of Imperial rule, to give to the former the benefits of British laws, and as far as possible the privileges of British citizenship. The proclamation, too, was not drawn on hard and fast lines. As soon as circumstances permitted, and not before, representative institutions were to be introduced, and the laws were not to be necessarily the laws of England, but ‘as near as may be agreeable to’ the laws of England. [Sidenote: Murray’s Commission.] [Sidenote: The Council of government.]