where was the common sense of the legislative Union? Would it
have been possible to design a system better calculated to embitter,
impoverish, and demoralize a valuable portion of the Empire?

Let us now turn our eyes across the Atlantic, and observe the effects of
an Imperial policy founded on the same root idea.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] "Principles of Political Economy," vol. ii., p. 392.

CHAPTER V

CANADA AND IRELAND

In comparing the history of Canada with the closely allied history of
Ireland, we must bear in mind that in the last half of the eighteenth
century the present British North America consisted of three distinct
portions: Acadia, or the Maritime Provinces, which we now know as
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island,
colonized originally by a few Frenchmen and later by Scotch and Irish;
Lower Canada, extensively colonized by the French, which we now know as
the Province of Quebec; and Upper Canada, which we now know as Ontario,
colonized last of all by Americans under circumstances to be described.

In 1763, before the repeal of any part of the Penal Code against Irish
Roman Catholics, the French Catholic Colony of Lower Canada, with a
population of about seventy thousand souls and the two small towns of
Quebec and Montreal, passed definitely into British possession under the
Treaty of Paris, which brought to a conclusion the Seven Years' War.
Fortunately, there was no question, as in Ireland, of expropriating the
owners of the soil in favour of State-aided British planters, and hence
no question of a Penal Code, even on the moderate scale current in Great
Britain at the same period. On the contrary, it became a matter of
urgent practical expediency to conciliate the conquered Province in view
of the growing disaffection of the American Colonies bordering it on the
South. This disaffection, assuming ominous proportions on the enactment
of the Stamp Act in 1765, was itself an indirect result of the conquest
of Canada a few years before; for the claim to tax the Americans for
Imperial purposes arose from the enormous expense of the war of conquest
and of the subsequent charges for defence and upkeep. It was forgotten
that American volunteers had captured Louisburg in 1745, and had borne
a distinguished part in later operations, and that to lay a compulsory
tax upon them would banish glorious memories common to America and
Britain. Henceforward, conquered French Canada was