HOUSE OF LORDS.

WEDNESDAY, May 17, 1775.

Lord Camden presented to the House the following Petition:

To the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament assembled:

The Petition of Ms Majesty's loyal and dutiful subjects, settled in the Province of QUEBEC, humbly sheweth:

That since the commencement of Civil Government in this Province, your Lordships' humble Petitioners, under the protection of English laws, granted us by his sacred Majesty's Royal Proclamation, bearing date the 7th day of October, which was in the year of our Lord 1763, have been encouraged to adventure their properties in Trade, Estates, and Agriculture, to a very considerable amount, thereby rendering the Province a valuable acquisition to Great Britain: that, to their inexpressible grief, they find, by an Act of Parliament, entituled "An Act for making more effectual provision: for the government of the Province of Quebec, in North America," they are deprived of the Habeas Corpus Act and Trial by Juries, are subjected to arbitrary fines and imprisonment, and liable to be tried, both in civil cases and matters of a criminal nature, not by known and permanent laws, but by Ordinances and Edicts which the Governour and Council are empowered to make void at their will and pleasure, which must render our person and properties insecure, and has already deeply wounded the credit of the country, and confined our views, in trade, to very narrow limits. In this cruel state of apprehension and uncertainty, we humbly implore your Lordships' favourable interposition, as the hereditary guardians of the rights of the people, that the said Act may be repealed or amended, and that your humble Petitioners may enjoy their constitutional rights, privileges, and franchises, heretofore granted to all his Majesty's dutiful subjects. And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Quebec, November 12, 1774.

Before the Clerk read the Petition,

Earl Gower said, he should be glad to be informed through what channel the Petition came into the noble Lord's hands, as he understood that such a Petition had been in Town for some months; but not coming in a manner in which his Majesty's Ministers could take the desired notice of it, he did not see how the House could entertain it, without it came accompanied with the necessary forms. He heard, he said, that a gentleman, no way connected with the Province, had such a Petition in his possession; but how the House could be satisfied that the Petition, now presented, was the Petition of the persons to whom it was attributed, was not in his power to determine.

Lord Camden replied, it mattered very little how the Petition came into his hands; this, however, he would venture to assure the House, that it was genuine; and if their Lordships conceived any suspicion that it was unfairly or surreptitiously obtained, the Agent of the Colony (Mr. Maseres) would give them the fullest satisfaction on that head.

The Petition was then read by the Clerk.

Ordered, That the said Petition do lie on the table.

Then it was moved, "That the Bill, entituled 'An Act for making more effectual provision for the government of the Province of Quebec, in North America,'" might be now read.

The same was accordingly read by the Clerk:

Which done,

Lord Camden acquainted the House, that the Petition haying been, previously, offered to every Peer in Administration, had, at last, been delivered to himself to present to that House; a task which he had undertaken, not having those reasons that might have influenced the Lords in Office to decline it; because he had, uniformly, from principle and conviction, opposed the Act which they had planned, and by their persuasive powers carried through the House.

His Lordship then observed, that after the fullest examination of the Act in question, he found it so thoroughly impolitick, pernicious, and incompatible with the Religion and Constitution of our country, that no amendment, nor any thing short of a total repeal of it would be sufficient. He remarked on the provisions of the Act as being wholly inconsistent with the reasons recited in it; and he concluded that they were not the true reasons on which it was founded; that there must be other secret motives and designs which had produced the measure, and which could be best discovered by attending to the purposes the Act was calculated to answer, which, from the provisions made therein, appeared to be no other than to prevent the farther progress of freedom and the Protestant Religion in America, and to secure a Popish Canadian Army to subdue and oppress the Protestant British Colonies of America. His Lordship arranged his objections to the Act under the three following heads:—First, The extension of the limits of Quebec. Second, The establishment of Popery there; and Third, The civil despotism in which the inhabitants of that immensely extended Province are to be perpetually bound, by being deprived of all share in the Legislative power, and subjected, in life, freedom, and property, to the arbitrary Ordinances of a Governour and Council, appointed by, and dependent on, the Crown.

Under the first of these heads his Lordship proved, that there could be no good reason for so extending the limits of Quebec, as to make them comprehend a vast extent of country, two thousand miles in length from North to South, and bounded on the West only by the South Sea. That this enlargement could only be intended to extend the shackles of arbitrary power and of Popery over all the future settlements and Colonies of America. That by drawing the limits of that Province close along the interiour settlements of all the old English Colonies, so as to prevent their further progress, an eternal barrier was intended to be placed, like the Chinese wall, against the further extension of civil liberty and the Protestant religion. His Lordship then animadverted particularly on the instructions lately transmitted to General Carleton, whereby the regulation of all the Indian trade of North America is put into the hands of the Governour and Council of Quebec, and the other Colonies are obliged, in their intercourse with the Indians, to submit to the laws, not of the British Parliament, but of a despotick unconstitutional Legislature in Canada; a measure calculated to produce endless contentions and animosities.

Under the second head his Lordship proved, that the Popish religion, though not in express terms, is, in effect, really and fully established in the Province of Quebec. By confirming not only the Laity, in a free exercise of their religion, but the Romish Clergy, in the enjoyment of all their former tythes and ecclesiastical dues, rights, Sic, and the Bishop, (the Pope's representative,) in the exercise of all his spiritual powers and functions, and in the disposal of one hundred and eighty ecclesiastical benefices; and also by dispensing with the Oath of Supremacy, whereby every officer of Government in that Province, both civil and military, even the Governour himself, may be of the Romish religion. And here his Lordship particularly referred to the Act of the first Elizabeth, which forever excludes the Pope from all jurisdictions within the Kingdom of England, and the Dominions thereunto belonging, or which may, at any future time, be acquired; and prescribes an Oath of Supremacy to be taken through this Kingdom and all its Dominions. This Act his Lordship represented as the great support and barrier of the Protestant religion; and as being, in its nature, as sacred and fundamental as the Act of Settlement, or even as Magna Charta itself;—and yet, said his Lordship, this has been unnecessarily and wantonly violated by the Quebec Act, whereby the oath which it prescribes is wholly dispensed with in that Province. His Lordship observed, that the capitulation with Sir Jeffery Amherst promised the people of Canada only a toleration in the exercise of their religion, and that, by the Definite Treaty of Peace, they were only to be allowed to "profess the worship of their religion, according to the rights of the Romish Church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit;" that the utmost which the inhabitants of Canada had expected, in consequence of this, was a religious toleration, such as is allowed to Protestant dissenters in England, whose Clergy not only receive no tythes, but are exposed to a tram of penalties from which they have in