O’Connell called “the golden link of the Crown.” The whole population of the country then ceded was under 70,000. The population of the British colonies in America was at least twenty times as numerous. The American Colonists were at last gratified by a conquest which relieved them from a dangerous neighbour, who was backed by the power of France, and which opened to their enterprise not only the lakes and rivers of Canada, but Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, the St. Lawrence, and all the valuable fisheries of the seaboard. It was unfortunate that no attempt was made to define the exact boundary line between the Colonies and the new territory, although the Proclamation of 1763 no doubt was supposed at the time to be sufficiently accurate; but we shall see hereafter that the neglect proved very damaging to the interests of Canada. The Americans, perhaps, would have resented any attempt to define very nicely the frontier between the new conquest of England and the territories of the colonists who had contributed to some extent in effecting it; and there were not many who foresaw the rupture which divided the mother-country and her dependencies for ever. For fifteen years Canada, content with the preservation of her ecclesiastical establishments, of freedom of religion, and of the “Custom of Paris,” seemed perfectly indifferent to the transfer of her allegiance from one king to another, the change, perhaps, being more in the language of her rulers, and the blazon of her standard, than in the mode of government. In fact the British military governors were singularly like the French military governors; but it was felt at home, as soon as the difficulties with the colonies began, that Canada could not continue to be like a mere military division of a conquered country. In 1774, the Quebec Act was passed, which created a council to aid in the administration of the province, guaranteed the freedom of the Roman Catholic Church, and abrogated the Royal Proclamation of 1763. In lieu of the administration of a military pro-consulate, there was established a settled government, with some show of a representative basis. The American colonists were then upon the verge of the great rebellion, and as a proof of the spirit in which they acted, it may be remarked that the Continental Congress made a most violent remonstrance against the toleration of Roman Catholicism in Canada, guaranteed by the Quebec Act. The very next year the rebellious colonists captured Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and Montreal; and had their enterprise against Quebec succeeded, Canada might have become included in the territory which eventually became portion of the United States. So bent were the colonists on including Canada in the scope of their great design, that in 1776, immediately after their unsuccessful invasion, Franklin, who was one of the main movers of Wolfe’s expedition, and two gentlemen, were sent by Congress to offer the Canadians a free press and