Quebec Act

QUEBEC ACT. 20 May 1774. Although projected before the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor that provoked the imperial government to crack down on Massachusetts, the Quebec Act alarmed the colonies as much as did the so-called Intolerable Acts. By extending Canada's boundaries to the Ohio River, it removed from control of the established colonies some of the western territories claimed by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia. By granting the French Canadians full enjoyment of their religion, it in effect established the Roman Catholic Church in Canada. By recognizing the mechanisms of land tenure that had been used under the French regime, it calmed Canadian nerves about the security of their property. By making the members of the royal council that governed the colony serve at the whim of the king, it strengthened the hand of the royal governor in dealing with the colony's legislature. All of these provisions were rooted in sound governmental reform for a conquered colony that had been under what amounted to military government since 1763. But in the context of the imperial crisis, each provision exacerbated an existing cause of controversy between the established colonies and the mother country. For most Canadians, the reestablishment of familiar customs and traditions made them less resentful of British rule, but because the act also favored the traditional sources of power in Canadian society, Canadians were not actively loyal to Britain so much as neutral when the American rebels invaded in the summer of 1775.

SEE ALSO Canada in the Revolution; Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Knollenberg, Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution, 1766–1775. Edited by Bernard W. Sheehan. Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 2002.

                             revised by Harold E. Selesky

Quebec Act, 1774. This followed but was not part of the Intolerable Acts. It settled matters relating to the British acquisition of French Canada by recognizing the catholic church, allowing the exercise of French law, denying Quebec an elected assembly, and extending its boundaries to the Ohio. Opposed by only a few parliamentarians and by virulent British anti-catholics, it was fervently condemned in the thirteen colonies, as an attack on protestant and constitutional liberties and on their territorial expansion and as confirmation of the malign intentions of Lord North's ministry and of the British crown and Parliament towards America.

Richard C. Simmons

Québec Act (1774) Act of British Parliament creating a government for Québec. It set up a council to assist the governor and recognized the Roman Catholic Church and the French legal and landholding systems in the former French colony. Québec's boundary pushed south to the Ohio River, a cause of resentment among the 13 North American colonies.