Talk:Quebec Act
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[edit] HELP DESPERATELY NEEDED!!
I have to debate on the Quebec Act, but I am on the American side! Does anyone have any helpful key facts or topics I can debate with with someone on the British side?? I have not been able to find much information about the American position and how to go about debating it.
[edit] Clarification requested
This article seems to have a major contradiction -- or at least it needs elaboration on a point. The article states (correctly, I think) that "the majority of the Canadian population chose to remain neutral" in the American Revolution, but it also asserts that "it is clear that the Quebec Act did much to secure the allegiance of the Canadians to the British."
Isn't that a contradiction? Were the Canadiens both neutral and allegiant? --Kevin Myers 14:55, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] More precision is indeed required
This is indeed a contradiction. The assertion that "the Quebec Act did much to secure the allegiance of the Canadians to the British" is not entirely false however. It is pretty clear that the Catholic clergy, the business people involved in the fur trade and the land owners were mostly pleased with it at first. I think it would be more accurate to assert that "some elements of the Quebec Act secured the allegiance of the Catholic clergy and a great portion of the elite." The habitants had no clue what was going on in the country at the time and according to Louis-Joseph Papineau, it is only later that the educated Canadiens came to understand what the American Revolution was all about and how it would help them.
Here is what Papineau tells us in 1867 at the age of 81 years old (in a bad translation from French to English) :
"But our fathers did not think that way. All the Canadian nobility and the pupils of our colleges gathered around governor Carleton, determined to make the greatest of efforts with him for the defense of the country, and all of the clergy decided to make sermons of circumstance, to get the people of the country to take arm for the same reasons. This people had the good idea of saying: "Our purpose is to grow wheat and sell it for a good price." It succeeded surprisingly well and repaired, from '75 to '83, the distress of '59 to '63.
Of the thousand or twelve hundred English that there were in all of Canada, the nine-tenth of those who were in Quebec City had the good idea of leaving the day before the siege to go fetch some goods in England, sure that they would resell them for an enormous profit. The majority, and with perfect reason, were saying: "The metropolis is doing an impious war to its children. They (the Americains) have for themselves the forests of their country, where, the (opposing) armies will be encircled, famished and captured. The justice of the good cause will end up prevailing.". Fortunately, the prophecy was accomplished.
Not long after the fight, the marvelously fast progress of the new United States rendered them the object of astonishment and received the benevolence of all the great writers of the European continent.
Later, when in Canada some began to learn English, they became impassioned precisely for the sublime speeches of Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke in favour of the just American cause.
Those in this country who had best fought for England must then have started to doubt that they had done good by fighting for a caste, against a people.
When I asked them "even if the English had done better than in 1774, back then you knew them only for the injustices and the insults they poured on you by torrents. Colonial Englishmen explained you the wrongs of the metropolis and stayed with their arms crossed. Why did you not do the same?" - one answered me: "the older ones among us had taken part in the battle of Monongahela (invariably known as Malengueulée), of Chouaguen (Oswego), of Carillon, of Québec, and a lot of others."
To take the arms back reminded them of the beautiful days of their youth. They had enjoyed the plenitude of an adventurous life, voyages, and camps. It had been followed by fifteen years of lethargic numbness. The nearest and first side ready to draft them was sure to have them.
To fight, such was the life of a gentleman - it is all there.
For the young people of the colleges, the king was everything. There were still only French theology and philosophy tutors and precepts. These ones adored George III, with more reason than they had had when, taking their French doctor bonnets, they had had the naivety of believing in a fiction such as the virtues of Louis XV and of the holy ampoule, brought from heaven, oil and flask, to ensure the perpetuity of the monarchy. A sovereignty separated with any other authority than that of the king, was for them a monstrosity. It was this new and impious sovereignty, that was setting fire and spilling blood in the country of our unfortunate neighbors.
"How the king of England is good, were they saying! He comes to restore the payment of the tithe. Fight for him noble schoolboys! By doing it you are sure not to sin. By not doing it, we are sure that you would sin." -- Mathieugp 17:20, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Title
Shouldn't it be Québec Act instead of Quebec Act? Fredil Yupigo's IP (69.158.65.32) on 00:55, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
- It depends on whether the accent was used in the official title of the Act. Road Wizard 07:18, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
- Wikipedia's Quebec article is not accented, and the discussion at Talk:Quebec#Why not Québec? suggests Quebec is English for Québec. Kurando | ^_^ 08:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
