3. The Canadians will choose their own government; they will themselves name the members of the legislative body and the executive power.
5. All persons who have obtained the right of citizenship in Canada can be named for all offices.
7. Commerce will enjoy a more extensive liberty.
8. There will be no longer any privileged company for the fur trade. The new government will encourage this trade.
9. The seigneurial _droits_ will be abolished. The _lods et ventes_, the millrights, the tolls, the lumber reservations, work for the service of the seigneur, etc., will be equally abolished.
10. Hereditary titles will be also abolished. There will be no lords, seigneurs or nobles.
11. All cults will be free. Catholic priests named by the people as in the primitive church will enjoy a treatment analogous to their ability.
12. Schools will be established in the parishes and towns; there will be printing offices; institutions for the high sciences; medicine and mathematics. Interpreters will be trained who, known for their good morals, will be encouraged to civilize the savage nations and by this means to extend the trade with them.
In spite of these inflammatory circulars, and outside those immediately disaffected, the majority of the Canadians were in good disposition with the government. They would have resisted an American invasion without hesitation. When their own people tampered with them and offered to regain Canada to the French it is only natural that many should have been unsettled. But it must clearly be understood that the reports of the French emissaries being in the country were not the dreams of visionaries. It was expected in many quarters that Napoleon, the First Consul, would have redemanded Canada at the general treaty of peace. Canada was desired for the French “as an outlet for French products and for the means of speculation to an infinite number of Frenchmen who have no resources in their own country.” The last quotation occurs in a letter dated January 12, 1803, from France by an ex-Canadian, Mr. Imbert, to a brother of Judge Panet.
Yet a panegyric on the occasion of the death of Bishop Briand in 1794 reveals a change of opinion undergoing at this period with regard to the relations of the English and the French. “Ah!” cried the preacher, “how the perspective of our future formerly spread out bitterness in all Christian families! Each one mourned his unhappy plight and was afflicted not to be able to leave a country where the kingdom of God seemed about to be forever destroyed. No one could be persuaded that our conquerors, strangers to our soil, to our language, our law, our customs, our worship, could ever be able to give back to Canada what it had just lost in the change of masters. Generous nation! which has made us see with so much evidence how this prejudgment was false; industrious nation! which has made riches sprout forth which the bosom of this land enclosed; beneficent nation! which daily gives to Canada new proofs of your liberality; No! no! you are not our enemies, nor those of our properties which your laws protect, nor those of our religion, which you respect. Pardon this first mistrust in a people which had not yet the honour of knowing you.”