Quebec Act
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The Quebec Act of 1774 was an act by the British Parliament setting out procedures of governance in the area of Quebec.
After the Seven Years' War, a victorious Great Britain achieved a peace agreement through the Treaty of Paris (1763). Under the terms of the treaty, the Kingdom of France chose to keep the islands of Guadeloupe for its valuable sugar crops instead of the strip of land France controlled along North America's St. Lawrence River known as Canada. After the conquest, the British had renamed this province Quebec, after its capital.
With unrest growing in the colonies to the south, which would one day grow into the American Revolution, the British were worried that the French Canadians might also support the growing rebellion. In order to secure the allegiance of the approximately 70,000 French Canadians to the British crown, first Governor James Murray and later Governor Guy Carleton promoted the need for action. There was a need to compromise between the conflicting demands of the new subjects and that of the newly arrived British subjects. This eventually resulted in the Quebec Act of 1774.
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Effects on the Province of Quebec
The Quebec Act restored the former French civil tradition for private law, which had been ended in 1763 and allowed for the Roman Catholic faith to be practiced. It replaced the oath to Elizabeth I and her heirs with one to George III which had no reference to the Protestant faith. This allowed for the majority of the population of Canada to participate in the public affairs of the colony. In other words, for the first time since becoming a colony, Canadians were able to participate in the affairs of the colonial government. As a result of this Act, the American revolutionaries failed to gain the support of the Canadians during the American Revolution. The act also changed the boundaries of Quebec to include the Ohio and Illinois, from the south to the Ohio River and west to the Mississippi River.
Effect on the Thirteen Colonies
While it is clear that the Quebec Act did much to secure the allegiance of the Canadians to Britain it had other unforeseen consequences. Its application in Thirteen Colonies led to it being termed one of the Intolerable Acts by the American colonists, contributing to the open revolt (American Revolution) to follow.
There were several American colonist concerns with the provisions of the act. For one, it guaranteed that residents of the Ohio Country were free to profess the religion of the Roman Catholic church. Settlers from Virginia and other colonies were already entering that area. Land development companies had already been formed to drive out the Indians and exploit the territory. Many of the leaders of the American Revolution, such as George Washington and Daniel Boone, were wealthy land speculators who had much to gain by establishing a new government that would not be bound by British treaties with the Indians, such as the Proclamation of 1763, that recognized Indian rights to these lands (www.wvculture.org/hiStory/indland.html.) Further, the colonies were still engaged in or had just finished their own struggles with an established church, and now, from their point of view, they had to deal with another, one of their most feared. The lack of understanding between the two groups would later lead to a virulent hatred of Catholics and the burning of numerous Catholic churches in the region by the colonists.
The act confirmed the Indian territory to the west of the Appalachians that had been established by the Royal Proclamation of 1763. This showed American colonists that Parliament still sought to cut off their plans for western expansion.