The Canadian people had now entered on one of the most important periods of their history. Their country was invaded, and for a time seemed on the point of passing under the control of the congress of the old Thirteen Colonies, now in rebellion against England. The genius of an able English governor-general, however, saved the valley of the St. Lawrence for the English Crown, and the close of the war for American independence led to radical changes in the governments of British North America. A large population, imbued with the loftiest principles of patriotism and self-sacrifice, came in and founded new provinces, and laid the basis of the present Dominion of Canada. During the revolution emphatic appeals were made to the Canadian French to join the English colonies in their rebellion against England. With a curious ignorance of the conditions of a people, {281} who could not read and rarely saw a printed book, and never owned a printing-press[1] during the French regime, references were made by the congress that assembled at Philadelphia in September in 1774, to the writings of Beccaria and the spirit of the "immortal Montesquieu." The delegates attacked the Quebec Act as an exhibition of Roman Catholic tyranny at the very time they were asking the aid and sympathy of French Canadians in the struggle for independence. A few weeks later the same congress ignored the ill-advised address and appealed to the Canadians to join them on the broad grounds of continental freedom. The time, however, was too short to convince the clergy and leading men of the province that there was a change in the feeling of the majority in the congress with respect to the Roman Catholic religion. The mass of the French Canadians, especially in the rural districts, no doubt looked with great indifference on the progress of the conflict between the King of England and his former subjects, but in Quebec and Montreal, principally in the latter town, there were found English, as well as French-speaking persons quite ready to welcome and assist the forces of congress when they invaded Canada. On the other hand, the influences of the Quebec Act and of the judicious administrations of Murray and Carleton were obvious from the outset, and the bishop, Monseigneur Briand--who had been chosen with the silent acquiescence of the English Government--the {282} clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, and the leading seigniors combined to maintain Canada under the dominion of a generous Power which had already given such undoubted guaranties for the preservation of the civil and religious rights of the "new subjects." In fact, the enemies of England were to be found chiefly among the "old subjects," who had attempted to obtain an assembly in which the French Canadians would be ignored, and had been, and were still bitterly antagonistic to the Quebec Act, with its concessions to the French Canadian majority. Many of these disaffected persons were