Quebec Act

The Quebec Act of 1774 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (citation 14 Geo. III c. 83) setting procedures of governance in the Province of Quebec. The principal components of the Act were:

• The province's territory was expanded to take over part of the Indian Reserve, including much of what is now southern Ontario, plus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.
• The oath of allegiance was replaced with one that no longer made reference to the Protestant faith.
• It guaranteed free practice of the Catholic faith.
• It restored the use of the French civil law for private matters while maintaining the use of the English common law for public administration, including criminal prosecution.
• Restored the Catholic denomination ability to tithe.

The Act had wide-ranging effects, in Quebec itself, as well as in the Thirteen Colonies. In Quebec, English-speaking immigrants from Britain and the southern colonies objected to a variety of its provisions, which they saw as a removal of certain political freedoms. French-speaking Canadians varied in their reaction; the land-owning seigneurs and clergy were generally happy with its provisions although the populace resented their loss of liberties.

In the Thirteen Colonies, the Act, which had been passed in the same session of Parliament as a number of other Acts designed as punishment for the Boston Tea Party and other protests, was joined to those Acts as one of the Intolerable Acts. The provisions of the Quebec Act were seen by the colonists as a new model for British colonial administration, which would strip the colonies of their elected assemblies, and promote the Roman Catholic faith in preference to widely-held Protestant beliefs. It also limited opportunities for colonies to expand on their western frontiers, by granting most of the Ohio Country to the province of Quebec.