The Imperial Challenge This page intentionally left blank The Imperial Challenge Quebec and Britain in the Age of the American Revolution PHILIP LAWSON McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo McGill-Queen's University Press 1989 ISBN 0-7735-0698-5 (cloth) ISBN 0-7735-1205-5 (paper) Legal deposit first quarter 1990 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper First paperback edition 1994 This book was first published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Lawson, Philip The imperial challenge: Quebec and Britain in the age of the American Revolution Includes index. Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-7735-0698-5 (bound). ISBN 0-7735-1205-5 (pbk.) 1. Canada - Politics and government - 1763-1774. 2. Canada — History — Military administration, 1760— 1763. i. Title. FC2921.2.L39 1990 971.02 089-090238-0 F1032.L39 1990 For Elizabeth and Caroline This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix 1 The Conquest of Quebec and Peace-making 1759-63 3 2 Policy and Mythology 1763-64 25 3 A Troublesome Task: The First Year of Civil Government in Quebec 42 4 The True Spirit of a Lawful Sovereign: The Rockingham Ministry and Quebec 1765-66 60 5 The Lost Years 1766-70 85 6 The Quiet Revolution 1770-73 108 7 An Elastic Spirit in Our Constitution: Differing British Views on the Passage of the Quebec Act in 1774 126 8 Postscript 147 Notes 153 Bibliography 175 Index 189 This page intentionally left blank Preface The study of imperial issues in the general sweep of Hanoverian history has suffered some woeful neglect over the last generation. The impact of an expanding empire on the mother country has been marginalized, more often than not, into single chapters in texts dealing with the eighteenth century. To make matters worse, these chapters are usually dominated by a brief survey of why Britain lost the American colonies. This tunnel vision is not, however, a fair representation of how the British viewed their imperial adventures at the time. Contemporary observers and commentators fully recognized the critical domestic ramifications of an expansionist policy that resulted in the governance of alien peoples and their cultures. But somehow twentieth- century scholars have lost sight of this fact, and an imbalance in the approach to Hanoverian history has resulted. By examining the challenge posed by the conquest of Quebec to the British, it is hoped that some redress to this trend of trivializing imperial issues may be offered. The conquest of Quebec set in train a sequence of events in which historical opinion is still polarized. American historians argue over whether it can be seen as a primary cause of the War of Independence, French-Canadian scholars dispute the idea of a decapitation in New French society after 1760, and the British imperial school argues about statesmanship and first and second empires. What is missing from this schema is an explanation of the contemporary British context for the Quebec legislation of 1774. This episode in eighteenth-century history is significant not only to historians of empire but also to those concerned with domestic developments in an era of change and instability. Failure to acknowledge these themes has clouded a fuller understanding of the period in general and the political and social background to the act of 1774 in particular. The genesis of the Quebec legislation produced a lively popular and parliamentary debate that went right to the core of political and philosophical assumptions derived from the Glorious Revolu- tion some eighty-five years before. Religious toleration, the function of