Canada under British Rule 1760-1900. John George Bourinot
and now the British parliament itself came forward with legal guarantees, not only for the free exercise of that religion, with all its incidents and tithes, but also for the permanent establishment of the civil law to which they attached so much importance. The fact that no provision was made for a popular assembly could not possibly offend a people to whom local self-government in any form was entirely unknown. It was impossible to constitute an assembly from the few hundred Protestants who were living in Montreal and Quebec, and it was equally impossible, in view of the religious prejudices dominant in England and the English colonies, to give eighty thousand French Canadian Roman Catholics privileges which their co-religionists did not enjoy in Great Britain and to allow them to sit in an elected assembly. Lord North seemed to voice the general opinion of the British parliament on this difficult subject, when he closed the debate with an expression of "the earnest hope that the Canadians will, in the course of time, enjoy as much of our laws and as much of our constitution as may be beneficial to that country and safe for this", but "that time," he concluded, "had not yet come." It does not appear from the evidence before us that the British had any other motive in passing the Quebec Act than to do justice to the French Canadian people, now subjects of the crown of England. It was not a measure primarily intended to check the growth of popular institutions, but solely framed to meet the actual conditions of a people entirely unaccustomed to the working of representative or popular institutions. It was a preliminary step in the development of self-government.
On the other hand the act was received with loud expressions of dissatisfaction by the small English minority who had hoped to see themselves paramount in the government of the province. In Montreal, the headquarters of the disaffected, an attempt was made to set fire to the town, and the king's bust was set up in one of the public squares, daubed with black, and decorated with a necklace made of potatoes, and bearing the inscription Voilà le pape du Canada & le sot Anglais. The author of this outrage was never discovered, and all the influential French Canadian inhabitants of the community were deeply incensed that their language should have been used to insult a king whose only offence was his assent to a measure of justice to themselves.
Sir Guy Carleton, who had been absent in England for four years, returned to Canada on the 18th September, 1774, and was well received in Quebec. The first legislative council under the Quebec Act was not appointed until the beginning of August, 1775. Of the twenty-two members who composed it, eight were influential French Canadians bearing historic names. The council met on the 17th August, but was forced to adjourn on the 7th September, on account of the invasion of Canada by the troops of the Continental Congress, composed of representatives of the rebellious element of the Thirteen Colonies. In a later chapter I shall very shortly review the effects of the American revolution upon the people of Canada; but before I proceed to do so it is necessary to take my readers first to Nova Scotia on the eastern seaboard of British North America and give a brief summary of its political development from the beginning of British rule.
SECTION 2.—The foundation of Nova Scotia (1749—1783).
The foundation of Halifax practically put an end to the Acadian period of Nova Scotian settlement. Until that time the English occupation of the country was merely nominal. Owing largely to the representations of Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts—a statesman of considerable ability, who distinguished himself in American affairs during a most critical period of colonial history—the British government decided at last on a vigorous policy in the province, which seemed more than once on the point of passing out of their hands. Halifax was founded by the Honourable Edward Cornwallis on the slope of a hill, whose woods then dipped their branches into the very waters of the noble harbour long known as Chebuctou, and renamed in honour of a distinguished member of the Montague family, who had in those days full control of the administration of colonial affairs.
Colonel Cornwallis, a son of the Baron of that name—a man of firmness and discretion—entered the harbour, on the 21st of June, old style, or 2nd July present style, and soon afterwards assumed his, duties as governor of the province. The members of his first council were sworn in on board one of the transports in the harbour. Between 2000 and 3000 persons were brought at this time to settle the town and country. These people were chiefly made up of retired military and naval officers, soldiers and sailors, gentlemen, mechanics, farmers—far too few—and some Swiss, who were extremely industrious and useful. On the whole, they were not the best colonists to build up a prosperous industrial community. The government gave the settlers large inducements in the shape of free grants of land, and practically supported them for the first two or three years. It was not until the Acadian population were removed, and their lands were available, that the foundation of the agricultural prosperity of the peninsula was really laid. In the summer of 1753 a considerable number of Germans were placed in the present county of Lunenburg, where their descendants still prosper, and take a most active part in all the occupations of life.
With the disappearance of the French Acadian settlers Nova Scotia became a British colony in the full sense of the phrase. The settlement of 1749 was supplemented in 1760, and subsequent years, by a valuable and large addition of people who were induced to leave Massachusetts and other colonies of New England and settle in townships of the present counties of Annapolis, King's, Hants, Queen's, Yarmouth, Cumberland, and Colchester, especially in the beautiful townships of Cornwallis and Horton, where the Acadian meadows were the richest. A small number also settled at Maugerville and other places on the St. John River.
During the few years that had elapsed since the Acadians were driven from their lands, the sea had once more found its way through the ruined dykes, which had no longer the skilful attention of their old builders. The new owners of the Acadian lands had none of the special knowledge that the French had acquired, and were unable for years to keep back the ever-encroaching tides. Still there were some rich uplands and low-lying meadows, raised above the sea, which richly rewarded the industrious cultivator. The historian, Haliburton, describes the melancholy scene that met the eyes of the new settlers when they reached, in 1760, the old homes of the Acadians at Mines. They came across a few straggling families of Acadians who "had eaten no bread for years, and had subsisted on vegetables, fish, and the more hardy part of the cattle that had survived the severity of the first winter of their abandonment." They saw everywhere "ruins of the houses that had been burned by the Provincials, small gardens encircled by cherry-trees and currant-bushes, and clumps of apple-trees." In all parts of the country, where the new colonists established themselves, the Indians were unfriendly for years, and it was necessary to erect stockaded houses for the protection of the settlements.
No better class probably could have been selected to settle Nova Scotia than these American immigrants. The majority were descendants of the Puritans who settled in New England, and some were actually sprung from men and women who had landed from "The Mayflower" in 1620. Governor Lawrence recognized the necessity of having a sturdy class of settlers, accustomed to the climatic conditions and to agricultural labour in America, and it was through his strenuous efforts that these immigrants were brought into the province. They had, indeed, the choice of the best land of the province, and everything was made as pleasant as possible for them by a paternal government, only anxious to establish British authority on a sound basis of industrial development.
In 1767, according to an official return in the archives of Nova Scotia, the total population of what are now the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, reached 13,374 souls; of whom 6913 are given as Americans, 912 as English, 2165 as Irish, 1946 as Germans, and 1265 as Acadian French, the latter being probably a low estimate. Some of these Irish emigrated directly from the north of Ireland, and were Presbyterians. They were brought out by one Alexander McNutt, who did much for the work of early colonization; others came from New Hampshire, where they had been settled for some years. The name of Londonderry in New Hampshire is a memorial of this important class, just as the same name recalls them in the present county of Colchester, in Nova Scotia.
The Scottish immigration, which has exercised such an important influence on the eastern counties of Nova Scotia—and I include Cape Breton—commenced in 1772, when about thirty families arrived from Scotland and settled in the present county of Pictou, where a very few American colonists from Philadelphia had preceded them. In later years a steady tide of Scotch population flowed into eastern Nova Scotia