ing
as far as the Mississippi and south to the Ohio, was included with
Canada in what was called the Province of Quebec. This vast territory
was to be governed despotically from Quebec; the Roman Catholic church
was given its old privileges in Canada; and the French civil law was
established permanently side by side with the English criminal law. The
act linked the land-owning class in Canada and the church by ties of
self-interest to the British cause. The _habitant_, placed again under
their authority, had less reason to be content.

In 1775 began the American Revolution. Its leaders tried to make the
revolt continental, and invaded Canada, hoping that the French would
join them. They took Montreal and besieged Quebec during the winter of
1775-1776; but the prudent leadership of Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards
Lord Dorchester, saved Quebec and in 1776 the revolutionary army
withdrew unsuccessful from Canada. Since that time any prospect of
Canada's union to the United States has been very remote.

But the American Revolution profoundly influenced the life of Canada.
The country became the refuge of thousands of American loyalists who
would not desert Great Britain. To Nova Scotia, to what are now New
Brunswick (q.v.) and Ontario (q.v.) they fled in numbers not easily
estimated, but probably reaching about 40,000. Until this time the
present New Brunswick and Ontario had contained few European settlers;
now they developed, largely under the influence of the loyalists of the
Revolution. This meant that the American type of colonial life would be
reproduced in Canada; but it meant also bitter hostility on the part of
these colonists to the United States, which refused in any way to
compensate the loyalists for their confiscated property. Great Britain
did something; the loyalists received liberal grants of land and cash
compensation amounting to nearly L4,000,000.

A prevailingly French type of government was now no longer adequate in
Canada, and in 1791 was passed by the British parliament the
Constitutional Act, separating Canada at the Ottawa river into two
parts, each with its own government; Lower Canada, chiefly French,
retaining the old system of laws, with representative institutions now
added, and Upper Canada, on the purely British model. (For the history
of Lower and Upper Canada, now Quebec and Ontario, the separate articles
must be consulted.) Each province had special problems; the French in
Lower Canada ai