tion of certain
customs duties "towards defraying the charges of the administration of
justice and the support of the civil government of the province." All
deficiencies in the revenues derived from these and other sources had to
be supplied by the imperial treasury. During the passage of the act
through parliament, it evoked the bitter hostility of Lord Chatham, who
was then the self-constituted champion of the old colonies, who found
the act most objectionable, not only because it established the Roman
Catholic religion, but placed under the government of Quebec the rich
territory west of the Alleghanies. Similar views were expressed by the
Mayor and Council of London, but they had no effect. The king, in giving
his assent, declared that the measure "was founded on the clearest
principles of justice and humanity, and would have the best effect in
quieting the minds and promoting the happiness of our Canadian
subjects." In French Canada the act was received without any popular
demonstration by the French Canadians, but the men to whom the great
body of that people always looked for advice and guidance--the priests,
cures, and seigniors--naturally regarded these concessions to their
nationality as giving most unquestionable evidence of the considerate
and liberal spirit in which the British government was determined to
rule the province. They had had ever since the conquest satisfactory
proof that their religion was secure from all interference, 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 t