Quebec Act - Effect On The Thirteen Colonies

Effect On The Thirteen Colonies

The Quebec Act angered the Americans and was termed one of the Intolerable Acts by the Patriots, and contributed to the coming of the American Revolution.

Frontiersmen from Virginia and other colonies were already entering that area. Land development companies such as the Ohio Company had already been formed to acquire ownership of large tracts and sell land to settlers and trade with the Indians. Americans denounced the Act for promoting the growth of "Papism" (Catholicism) and cutting back on their freedom and traditional rights. In particular, the colonial governments of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia were angered by the unilateral assignment of the Ohio lands to Quebec, which had been granted them in their royal charters.

Langston (2006) looked at press reaction in New England. Some colonial editors explained their views on how it reorganized Canadian governance, explaining how they felt it established direct rule by the Crown and limiting the reach of English law to criminal jurisprudence. Isaiah Thomas of the Massachusetts Spy drew links between the Quebec Act and legislation circumscribing American liberties, such as the Tea Act and the Coercive Acts. Editors shaped public opinion by writing editorials and reprinting opposition letters from both sides of the Atlantic. The First Continental Congress, which met from 5 September to 26 October 1774, addressed the inhabitants of Quebec, warning them of the perils of the increasingly arbitrary, tyrannical, and oppressive nature of British government.

The Act was never enforced outside the traditional boundaries of Quebec. Its main significance in the Thirteen Colonies was that it angered the Patriots, and dismayed the Loyalists who supported the Crown, and helped to accelerate the confrontation that became the American Revolution (Miller 1943). The Act is listed as one of the rebels’ grievances in the Declaration of Independence as one of the “Acts of pretended Legislation ...

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies”

The First Continental Congress petitioned Parliament to repeal the Intolerable Acts, which Parliament declined to do. Instead, in February 1775 Parliament passed the Conciliatory Resolution in an attempt to curry favor with the angry colonists. This was too little, too late, as the war broke out before news of its passage could reach the colonies.

In Quebec the Act was effectively superseded by the Constitutional Act of 1791, which partitioned Quebec into two new provinces, Upper and Lower Canada.