The Little Known Fifth Terrible Act
Most U.S. history books cover the four Terrible Acts passed by the U.K.’s Parliament in 1774, which poured gasoline on the embers of a revolutionary fire. What gets lost in the noise in our texts is the Quebec Act passed in the same session.
In 1763, after being defeated in the Seven Years’ War (we call the French and Indian War), France ceded Canada to England with the exception of St. Pierre and Miquelon, two small islands off Newfoundland . The Quebec Act was an attempt to solve governmental issues facing the British now that they had control of Canada.
Under French rule, the legal system was based on canon law. Now that Canada was now part of England’s North American Colonies, English law was in effect. Lawyers will tell you that in the 1770s, canon and English law was and still is fundamentally different.
Problem two for the Brits was that French Canada was predominantly Catholic, while England was Protestant, mostly Anglican. In this period of English history, Catholics could live and practice their religion in England but were not citizens and therefore could not vote. Nor could they hold public office until the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 was passed. Oddly enough, due to their support of the government during the 1745 Jacobin Rebellion, Jews were allowed to become citizens but could not run for Parliament via the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1754.
By 1774, Parliament decided to address some of the major issues England faced trying to govern this ill-defined piece of land called Canada. In the Quebec Act, the British Parliament defined the boundaries of Canada to include what is now Southern Ontario, the land along the St. Lawrence River to Nova Scotia and what is now Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and much of Minnesota.
Note that most of the land on the map accompanying this post had not been surveyed. Nonetheless, as politicians who ruled the British Empire, they drew lines on a map without understanding the realities on the ground.
The Quebec Act allowed Catholics to practice their faith only in Canada if they swore allegiance to King George III. The oath of allegiance in England had morphed from the days of Queen Elizabeth I, when one also swore allegiance to the Anglican Church, to one in which no religion was mentioned.
Through the Quebec Act, the King or Queen of England could appoint a Royal Governor of Canada to rule the colony with the assistance of a legislature. However, the act did not provide any guidelines on who could run for said legislature, nor what its powers would be.
Next, Parliament decided to restore canon law for issues of property and civil rights. Everything else would be governed by English law. Thus, attorneys then and now could make a fortune from legal matters involving civil and criminal law, as well as contracts between the locales and the colony.
Last, Parliament addressed the issue of land ownership, land purchases, and land transfers by restoring the way land was allocated when Canada was a French Colony. Under canon law, land was allocated to nobles or friends of the crown in the feudal seigneurial system,, in which the landholder (the noble) is granted the land and ruling monarch, i.e., the Royal Governor acting on the authority of King George III. Thus, the recipient of the land grant owns it, and has workers producing crops who are paid at the whim of the noble. Plus, the land could be transferred only in toto to the owner’s heirs, defined as the oldest son. It could not be sold, either in whole or in part, without the approval of the king, or, in this case, the Royal Governor.
It is fair to ask why this is relevant to the American Revolution? One reason was that Patriots, wanting independence as well as many English-speaking Canadians, thought the Quebec Act was another example of Parliament making laws without the consent of the governed.
Another reason was that in 1775, many residents of the Thirteen Colonies were already moving west into what is now upstate and Western New York, Ohio, and Western Virginia, and they felt their claims to legally acquired property were in jeopardy.
Provisions of the Quebec Act influenced the 27 grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence. Later, the religious tolerance espoused in the Quebec Act of 1774 was known to Alexander Hamilton when he wrote the first 15 words of the First Amendment – Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…
Royal Geographer William Faden’s 1777 map of the British colonies in North America.