QUEBEC ACT OF 1774

The Quebec Act was passed by the British Parliament on June 22, 1774, on the eve of the American Revolution (1775–1783). The legislation extended the province of Quebec south and west to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, ignoring the western land claims of colonial Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia. It also guaranteed that French civil law would be used in the enlarged Quebec, then a British colony that had been largely settled by the French. English criminal law would apply in the enlarged province. It also stipulated that the French could practice Roman Catholicism and that the Roman Catholic Church could collect taxes from its members. Historians believe the legislation was largely damage control on the part of the British, who faced the imminent revolt of their thirteen American colonies to the south. By passing the Quebec Act Britain intended to prevent the French colonists from joining the struggle of the American patriots and also to possibly gain their support should fighting break out. The Quebec Act was one of the five so-called Intolerable Acts (also called the Coercive Acts). British Parliament passed these acts the same year in an effort to assert its authority in the Massachusetts colony following the rebellion of the Boston Tea Party (December, 1773). These laws were severely resented by the American colonists and in many ways they precipitated the revolution. Shortly after fighting began in 1775, American colonists invaded Quebec but they were turned back. The province and its settlers, which included many loyalists who had fled the American colonies, remained neutral during the American Revolution.

See also: American Revolution, Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Connecticut, Intolerable Acts, Massachusetts, Virginia