fur regions of the West and North-West.) The articles of capitulation
did not give any guarantees or pledges for the continuance of the civil
law under which French Canada had been governed for over a century, but
while that was one of the questions dependent on the ultimate fate of
Canada, the British military rulers took every possible care during the
continuance of the military régime to respect so far as possible the old
customs and laws by which the people had been previously governed.
French writers of those days admit the generosity and justice of the
administration of affairs during this military régime.

The treaty of Paris, signed on the 10th February, 1763, formally ceded
to England Canada as well as Acadia, with all their dependencies. The
French Canadians were allowed full liberty "to profess the worship of
their religion according to the rites of the Romish Church, as far as
the laws of Great Britain permit." The people had permission to retire
from Canada with all their effects within eighteen months from the date
of the ratification of the treaty. All the evidence before us goes to
show that only a few officials and seigniors ever availed themselves of
this permission to leave the country. At this time there was not a
single French settlement beyond Vaudreuil until the traveller reached
the banks of the Detroit between Lakes Erie and Huron. A chain of forts
and posts connected Montreal with the basin of the great lakes and the
country watered by the Ohio, Illinois, and other tributaries of the
Mississippi. The forts on the Niagara, at Detroit, at Michillimackinac,
at Great Bay, on the Maumee and Wabash, at Presqu' isle, at the junction
of French Creek with the Alleghany, at the forks of the Ohio, and at
less important localities in the West and South-West, were held by small
English garrisons, while the French still occupied Vincennes on the
Wabash and Chartres on the Mississippi, in the vicinity of the French
settlements at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and the present site of St. Louis.