THE DEFINITIVE TREATY OF PEACE--SECTION RELATING TO CANADA--CATHOLIC DISABILITIES AND THE PHRASE “AS FAR AS THE LAWS OF GREAT BRITAIN PERMIT”--THE TREATY RECEIVED WITH DELIGHT BY THE “OLD” SUBJECTS BUT WITH DISAPPOINTMENT BY THE “NEW”--THE INEVITABLE STRUGGLES BEGIN, TO CULMINATE IN THE QUEBEC ACT OF 1774--OPPOSITION AT MONTREAL, THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE SEIGNEURS--THE NEW CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN ACTION--CIVIL COURTS AND JUSTICES OF THE PEACE ESTABLISHED--MURRAY’S ACTION IN ALLOWING “ALL SUBJECTS OF THE COLONY” TO BE CALLED UPON TO ACT AS JURORS VIOLENTLY OPPOSED BY THE BRITISH PARTY AS UNCONSTITUTIONAL--THE PROTEST OF THE QUEBEC GRAND JURY--SUBSEQUENT MODIFICATIONS IN 1766 TO SUIT ALL PARTIES--GOVERNOR MURRAY’S COMMENT ON MONTREAL, “EVERY INTRIGUE TO OUR DISADVANTAGE WILL BE HATCHED THERE”--MURRAY AND THE MONTREAL MERCHANTS--A TIME OF MISUNDERSTANDING. NOTE: LIST OF SUBSEQUENT GOVERNORS.
Before proceeding further it will be well to set before the reader some special portions of “_The definitive treaty of peace and friendship between His Britannic Majesty, the Most Christian King, and the king of Spain, concluded at Paris the 10th day of February, 1763, to which the king of Portugal acceded on the same day_.”
Section IV relating to Canada was as follows:
“His Most Christian Majesty renounces all pretensions which he has heretofore formed or might have formed to Nova Scotia or Acadia in all its parts, and guarantees the whole of it and with all its dependencies to the King of Great Britain. Moreover his most Christian Majesty accedes and guarantees to his said Britannic Majesty in full right, Canada with all its dependencies as well as the island of Cape Breton and all the other islands and coasts in the Gulph and river of St. Lawrence and in general everything that depends on the said countries, lands, islands and coasts with the sovereignty, property, possessions and all rights acquired by treaty or otherwise, which the Most Christian King and the crown of France have had till now over the said countries, lands, islands, places, coasts and their inhabitants, so that the Most Christian King cedes and makes over the whole to the said King and to the Crown of Great Britain and that in the most ample manner and form, without restriction and without any liberty to depart from the said cession and guarantee under any pretense, or to disturb Great Britain in the possessions above mentioned.