It would have been wonderful indeed, if, a century ago, when our statute book was written in blood, when our fellow-subjects at home were under the ban of religious disability, and beaten to the earth beneath the weight of penal enactments, any traces of wisdom had been exhibited in the management of a distant dependency. Keeping alive the feelings of a distinct nationality by the powerful machinery of different national laws and customs, the conquerors ruled the province by military law for more than ten long years; but the tempest which agitated the American colonies was already felt in the air. The ministry, anxious only to drain money from their distant dependencies, were engaged in devising taxes, whilst the colonists prepared to vindicate, by force of arms, their great principle, that representation was the basis of taxation. The two Acts of 1774 were passed to enable the government to raise revenues for the maintenance of the local government, and for the appointment of a council of government, nominated by the Crown. By the capitulation of Quebec, the free exercise of their religion was accorded to the Canadians. By the Act of 1774, the Roman Catholic Church was recognised as established, and the “Coutume de Paris” accepted as the foundation of civil and equity administration. Is it not strange that Great Britain should have accorded such concessions to Roman Catholics and colonists, when the penal system was most rigorously enforced in Ireland? But is it not stranger still, that the people of the American colonies, who were about to set themselves up as the children and the champions of freedom of faith and conscience, should have taken bitter umbrage at those very concessions! The Americans of the North bore an exceeding animosity to the French Canadians. They remonstrated in fierce, intolerant, and injurious language with the people of Great Britain, for the cession of these privileges to the Canadians, and the Continental Congress did not hesitate to say that they thought “Parliament was not authorised by the constitution to establish a religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets.” In a strain of sublime impudence, considering the work they were ready for, the same Congress also expressed their astonishment that Parliament should have consented to permit in Canada, “a religion that has deluged your island with blood, and dispersed impiety, _bigotry_, persecution, murder, and _rebellion_ through the world.”