touching Lake George and Lake Champlain, which in turn led to the
St. Lawrence in Canada and thence to the sea. Canada was held by
the British; and it was clear that, if they should take the city
of New York, they might command the whole line from the mouth of
the Hudson to the St. Lawrence, and so cut off New England from
the other colonies and overcome a divided enemy. To foil this
policy Washington planned to hold New York and to capture Canada.
With Canada in line the union of the colonies would be indeed
continental, and, if the British were driven from Boston, they
would have no secure foothold in North America.

The danger from Canada had always been a source of anxiety to the
English colonies. The French had made Canada a base for attempts
to drive the English from North America. During many decades war
had raged along the Canadian frontier. With the cession of Canada
to Britain in 1763 this danger had vanished. The old habit
endured, however, of fear of Canada. When, in 1774, the British
Parliament passed the bill for the government of Canada known as
the Quebec Act, there was violent clamor. The measure was assumed
to be a calculated threat against colonial liberty. The Quebec
Act continued in Canada the French civil law and the ancient
privileges of the Roman Catholic Church. It guaranteed order in
the wild western region north of the Ohio, taken recently from
France, by placing it under the authority long exercised there of
the Governor of Quebec. Only a vivid imagination would conceive
that to allow to the French in Canada their old loved customs and
laws involved designs against the freedom under English law in
the other colonies, or that to let the Canadians retain in
respect to religion what they had always possessed meant a
sinister plot against the Protestantism of the English colonies.