power in their hands and to ignore nearly seventy thousand French
Canadian Roman Catholics. Happily the governor, General Murray, was not
only an able soldier, as his defence of Quebec against Lévis had
proved, but also a man of statesmanlike ideas, animated by a high sense
of duty and a sincere desire to do justice to the foreign people
committed to his care. He refused to lend himself to the designs of the
insignificant British minority, chiefly from the New England colonies,
or to be guided by their advice in carrying on his government. His
difficulties were lessened by the fact that the French had no conception
of representative institutions in the English sense, and were quite
content with any system of government that left them their language,
religion, and civil law without interference. The stipulations of the
capitulations of 1759-1760, and of the treaty of Paris, with respect to
the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, were always observed
in a spirit of great fairness: and in 1766 Monseigneur Briand was
chosen, with the governor's approval, Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec.
He was consecrated at Paris after his election by the chapter of Quebec,
and it does not appear that his recognition ever became the subject of
parliamentary discussion. This policy did much to reconcile the French
Canadians to their new rulers, and to make them believe that eventually
they would receive full consideration in other essential respects.

For ten years the government of Canada was in a very unsatisfactory
condition, while the British ministry was all the while worried with the
condition of things in the old colonies, then in a revolutionary
ferment. The Protestant minority continued to clamour for an assembly,
and a mixed system of French and English law, in case it was not
possible to establish the latter in its entirety. Attorney-General
Masères, an able lawyer and constitutional writer, was in favour of a
mixed system, but his views were notably influenced by his strong