less, the Act was a just and generous measure, and, when Carleton returned to Canada in September, 1774, his reception by the leading French Canadians showed that they appreciated it. Because, when war came, the Canadians as a whole stood aloof in a quarrel which was no concern of theirs, and some of them joined the revolting colonies, it was argued in the English Parliament that the Act had not conciliated them, and therefore stood condemned; but history has proved that this view was not true. No one measure or series of measures can at once obliterate differences of race, language, and creed; but, passed as it was at a time of failures, recrimination, and bitterness, the Quebec Act stood and will to all times stand to the credit of English good sense, in dealing with the actual facts of a difficult position, and the feelings and prejudices of an alien people. FOOTNOTES: [16] _Travels into North America_, by Peter Kalm, Eng. Transl.; 1770, vol. i, pp. 264-5. [17] Montcalm’s letters, however, to which reference is here made, are held to have been forged by a Jesuit or ex-Jesuit named Roubaud. See Mr. Brymner’s _Report on Canadian Archives_ for the year 1885, p. xiii, &c., and Note E, p. cxxxviii. See also Parkman’s _Montcalm and Wolfe_, 1884 ed., vol. ii, pp. 325-6, Note. [18] _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, 1882 ed., vol. iii, chap. xii, p. 272. [19] From the anonymous _Lettre d’un habitant de Louisbourg_, edited and translated by Professor Wrong, Toronto, 1897, p. 58. [20] As to the authenticity of Montcalm’s letters, see above, note to p. 31. [21] Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, in the _Essay on the Government of Dependencies_, chap. vi, writes that the North American colonies ‘had not been required at any time since their foundation to contribute anything to the expenses of the Supreme Government, and there is scarcely any habit which it is so difficult for a government to overcome in a people as a habit of not paying’. [22] _Wealth of Nations_: chapter on the ‘Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies’. [23] _Wealth of Nations_: chapters on the ‘Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies’, and on the ‘Advantages which Europe has derived from the Discovery of America and from that of a Passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope’. [24] The Greek colonies will be remembered to the contrary. Some of them speedily outgrew the mother cities in wealth and population, but then they were wholly independent. [25] _The American Revolution_, 1899 ed., Part I, chap. ii, p. 101. [26] See above, p. 38. [27] Chapter on ‘Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies’.