class="pindent">Never again can we see Quebec as we saw it then; yet added knowledge of its place in the story of the Empire and of Canada does not lessen its interest; and there is no spot more suitable for the telling of the reasons why it came to pass that Canada is a British land than that beneath the shadow of Cape Diamond. I am sure that the question is of interest to many a newcomer, who has preferred to emigrate to Canada, just because it is British, rather than to the United States. If, however, he has already given his attention to the subject, it will be easy to pass over this brief sketch of one phase of Canada’s very interesting history to the chapters dealing more particularly with the Canada of to-day.

The name Canada, which now stands for half a continent, once belonged only to a small region, on the St. Lawrence; and at first the Canadians in general were of French race and language. A little over three hundred years ago Samuel Champlain founded Quebec, which for one hundred and fifty years was the capital of New France. Meanwhile the English colonies, which afterwards leagued themselves together to form the United States, were also growing gradually stronger through this century and a half; and almost from the beginning there was great rivalry between the French and English for the control of the eastern part of North America.

The English, neglected by their home government, and having to depend on themselves, proved the better colonizers; advancing gradually, step by step into the wilderness, and generally holding what they gained. The French, on the other hand, though excellent explorers and traders and fighters, pushed far afield, and the population of New France grew slowly compared to that of the English colonies. There was endless fighting between the representatives of the two races, both of which at times sought help from the Indians. The result was a peculiarly merciless warfare, in which women and children were murdered, prisoners tortured, and the little unprotected settlements on the frontiers constantly exposed to dreadful night attacks and the burning of their buildings and crops. The mother countries of both French and English colonists joined frequently in the struggles, and at last (as every British schoolboy knows) Quebec was taken and Canada was conquered.

But it is not so well-known by those who have made no special study of its history that the French in Canada had for years suffered sad misgovernment, many of the officials sent out from France being bent only on making money by fair means or foul. In contrast to these men, the British officers, whose duty it became, on the conquest, to govern the Canadians, seemed eminently fair and just; and the lower classes at least felt that the change was for the better. Many of the gentlemen left the country, but others remained, and the early British governors took great pains to conciliate them and the Roman Catholic priests. By the Quebec Act, which came into effect in 1775, the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion was secured to the French Canadians as well as the retention of their old system of civil law; but in criminal cases English law was to be followed.

The Act was passed when the “Thirteen Colonies” to the south of Canada and Nova Scotia (which had become a British colony early in the eighteenth century) were on the eve of revolt, and before many months had gone by the United Colonies sent an invading army to try to force Canada to make common cause with them. But the leaders of the Canadian people proved loyal, and the invaders, though they kept up the siege of Quebec through the whole of one winter, were driven out of the country.

At that time the British inhabitants of Canada were very few, but the Revolutionary War was to do a great deal to make it strongly and positively British. Many of the people of the Thirteen Colonies were much averse from the breaking of the ties with England; and numbers of them took up arms on the royal side. When the fortunes of war went against them, many of these United Empire Loyalists were eager to leave a land which had thus cast off the old allegiance that they held dear; and the triumphant revolutionists, partly in fear of their strength, partly in hate born of the long and bitter warfare—in which both sides had been betrayed into many cruel and unjustifiable deeds—were just as eager to thrust them out.

The British government paid vast sums in compensating the Loyalists in some measure for their losses, and in settling them in new homes. Some of them went to England; but thousands made their way to Canada and Nova Scotia, and their coming forms the best answer to the question—“Why is Canada British?”

It is British because its older English-speaking colonies were founded on the idea of “Loyalty” as some of the New England colonies were founded on a demand for religious liberty. The two colonies of New Brunswick and Upper Canada (as Ontario was named at first) owe their existence as separate provinces to the influx of Loyalists towards the close of the eighteenth century; and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island all received large additions to their population. The number of settlers who thus came in from the former British colonies has been estimated at about 45,000.

It should not be forgotten, however, that these people, who had suffered so grievously for their adherence to their old allegiance, were not in the main blind and servile upholders of the throne for its own sake (as many of the royalists of the Stuart times had been), though unquestionably the severance of the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain had been due in part to the efforts of George III. to become an autocratic monarch. The title bestowed on these Americans who settled in Canada—which is still a matter of pride to their descendants—was that of “United Empire Loyalists;” and always in their minds loyalty to country and empire and their ancient political institutions was associated with their loyalty to the throne.

Not a few of the leaders of the Loyalists had been men of great influence in the older colonies, and it is not surprising that almost from their arrival in what is now the Dominion of Canada, they began to agitate for representative government, and for the British institutions to which they had been accustomed. They were a liberty-loving people; and those who had settled on the St. Lawrence stoutly objected to being obliged to live under the French civil laws, which gave such satisfaction to their Gallic neighbours. They besieged the British government with petitions for a division of the Province, and for the benefit of British law; so in 1791 the old French Province was divided into Upper and Lower Canada. The newcomers thus gained the opportunity to build up a new province on British lines in the almost uninhabited western wilderness; and, having the opportunity, I think they did wonders with it.

In a hundred ways, besides the determination not to accept any limitation of their political liberty, they showed their force and energy of character. The task that faced Canada’s first British pioneers was more strenuous than that which has faced any pioneers since, though the opening and subduing of a new land to the uses of civilized man is always a task that tests to the utmost the manhood and womanhood of those who essay it.

The land was thickly covered with huge trees, and in many places the soil, which the sun’s rays could scarcely ever reach through the shadowy verdure of the woods, was cold and wet and swampy. When the Loyalists came, there were no roads