Page:Public School History of England and Canada (1892).djvu/229

 condition at this time. The people had been taken from their usual occupations to defend the country, and their farms had gone untilled, except by the women and the feeble men and boys who were unfit to carry a musket. Bigot, the last Intendant, and a host of greedy followers had plundered the people of the little they had, and the colony was flooded with a worthless paper money. Not many more than sixty thousand inhabitants were scattered along the line of the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec. Peace brought Canada a measure of prosperity. Farms could now be tilled without fear of interruption from enemies, English or Indian. Many of the principal inhabitants returned to France, some of them like Bigot, to answer for their misdeeds to the French King, and to receive merited punishment. Gradually the colony settled down to steady industry, and the mild rule of Murray and his brother officers lessened any feeling of soreness arising from passing under the government of their old-time enemies.

4. The Quebec Act.—After the Peace of Paris, King George III. proclaimed Canada a British province, and promised the French inhabitants the right of free worship, and the “free exercise” of their religion. They were also left in undisturbed possession of their property, and were given in every way the same rights and privileges as the King’s subjects of British birth, except that they were excluded from holding public office, because the laws of Great Britain at that time did not allow a Roman Catholic to hold offices in the gift of the State. An effort was made to induce British people to settle in Canada by offering them land grants, and the protection of British laws. A promise, also, made was of British parliamentary institutions as soon as the circumstances of the country would permit; that is, the people of Canada would be allowed to have their own Parliaments, and make most of their own laws. In the meantime the country was governed by a Governor and Council the latter composed entirely of men of British birth, many of them military officers. The British settlers for many years were few in number, yet they had all the power, and the French had no voice in managing the affairs of the colony. Again, English law was introduced into the courts, and the English language used. Trial by jury was unknown to the French, and they did not like the system. They