illustration of the text.

G.W. PROTHERO.




PREFACE.

I devote the first chapter of this short history to a brief review of
the colonisation of the valley of the St. Lawrence by the French, and of
their political and social conditions at the Conquest, so that a reader
may be able to compare their weak and impoverished state under the
repressive dominion of France with the prosperous and influential
position they eventually attained under the liberal methods of British
rule. In the succeeding chapters I have dwelt on those important events
which have had the largest influence on the political development of the
several provinces as British possessions.

We have, first, the Quebec Act, which gave permanent guarantees for the
establishment of the Church of Rome and the maintenance of the language
and civil law of France in her old colony. Next, we read of the coming
of the United Empire Loyalists, and the consequent establishment of
British institutions on a stable basis of loyal devotion to the parent
state. Then ensued the war of 1812, to bind the provinces more closely
to Great Britain, and create that national spirit which is the natural
outcome of patriotic endeavour and individual self-sacrifice. Then
followed for several decades a persistent popular struggle for larger
political liberty, which was not successful until British statesmen
awoke at last from their indifference, on the outbreak of a rebellion in