1774 Quebec Act

1774 Quebec Act passed by the British Parliament to institute a permanent administration in Canada replacing the temporary government created at the time of the Proclamation of 1763. It gave the French Canadians complete religious freedom and restored the French form of civil law. The Thirteen Colonies considered this law one of the Intolerable Acts , for it nullified many of the Western claims of the coast colonies by extending the boundaries of the province of Quebec to the Ohio River on the south and to the Mississippi River on the west. The concessions in favor of Roman Catholicism also roused much resentment among Protestants in the Thirteen Colonies. Although it thus helped to bring on the American Revolution, the act, for which Sir Guy Carleton was largely responsible, was very influential in keeping Canada loyal to the crown during the Revolution. It was replaced by the Constitutional Act of 1791.

Bibliography: See studies by R. Coupland (1925) and H. B. Neatby (1972).

Quebec Act, 1774. This followed but was not part of the Intolerable Acts. It settled matters relating to the British acquisition of French Canada by recognizing the catholic church, allowing the exercise of French law, denying Quebec an elected assembly, and extending its boundaries to the Ohio. It was fervently condemned in the thirteen colonies, as an attack on protestant and constitutional liberties and on their territorial expansion and as confirmation of the malign intentions of Lord North's ministry towards America.

Quebec Act an act passed in 1774 by the British Parliament to establish French civil law and allow the practice of the Roman Catholic religion in the province of Quebec. It extended Quebec's boundaries and gave the province control of the territory and fur trade between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Protestants in the American colonies protested the act and named it and the Coercive Acts as the Intolerable Acts.