Читать книгу The Loyalist - James Francis Barrett - Страница 24

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Canada had been surrendered to England by France in a clause of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, with a stipulation, however, that the people of the territory in question would be permitted the free use of the French language, the prescriptions of the French code of laws, and the practice of the Catholic religion.

South of this region and west of the English colonies between the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, stretched a vast expanse of territory known as the Northwest Territory, where dwelt a large population without laws, with no organized form of government save the mere caprices of petty military tyrants, placed over them by the various seaboard colonies who severally laid claim to the district. At the request of the people of Canada it was voted by the English Parliament to reannex the territory northwest of the Ohio to Canada and to permit the settlers to share in the rights and privileges of the Canadian province. This was effected by the Quebec Act in 1774.

It was truly a remarkable concession. The inhabitants of this vast stretch of territory were freed for all time from the tyranny of military despots, their lands and churches secured to them and their priests given a legal title to their tithes. It was the freest exercise of the Catholic religion under the laws of the English Government.

But what a storm of abuse and protestation was raised by the fanatical portion of the Protestant population! The newspapers of the day abounded with articles, with songs and squibs against the King and His Parliament. The mother country witnessed no less virulent a campaign than the colonies themselves. "We may live to see our churches," writes one writer to the Pennsylvania Packet, "converted into mass-houses, and our lands plundered of tithes for the support of a Popish clergy. The Inquisition may erect her standard in Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia may yet experience the carnage of St. Bartholomew's day." Processions were formed about the country and in some places the bust of George III, adorned with miter, beads and a pectoral cross, was carried in triumphal march.

The forms of protest found their way ultimately into the halls of the First American Congress which convened in Philadelphia in 1774. The recent legislation was enumerated among the wrongs done the colonies by the mother country. Feeling became so bitter that an address was issued by the Congress on the fifth of September, 1774, "to the people of Great Britain" saying: "We think the Legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the Constitution to establish a religion, fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets, or to erect an arbitrary form of government in any quarter of the globe." "By another act the Dominion of Canada is to be extended, modeled and governed, as that being disunited from us, detached from our interests by civil as well as religious prejudices, that by their numbers daily swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe, and by their devotion to administration so friendly to their religion, they might become formidable to us, and on occasion be fit instruments in the hands of power to reduce the ancient free Protestant colonies to the same state of slavery with themselves." Little did they think that the breach they were attempting to heal was widened by their procedure. The author of the address was John Jay, a lawyer from New York, with whom Papaphobia was a mania.

Nor did the failure of this method of diplomacy become apparent until several years later. The measure of appreciation and the expression of sentiment of the Canadian people in regard to this ill-timed and unchristian address, conceived in a fit of passion and by no means representative of the sentiments of the saner portion of the population, took expression at a more critical time. When, in 1776, the members of the same Congress, viewing with alarm the magnitude of the struggle upon which they had entered and to whose success they had pledged their honor, their fortunes and their lives, sought to enlist the resources of their neighbors in Canada, they met with a sudden and calamitous disappointment. To effect an alliance with the border brethren, three commissioners were appointed—Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Father John Carroll, a Jesuit priest, was invited by the Congress to accompany the party.

Arriving in Canada, it soon became evident to the committee, that their mission was to be unproductive of results. The government did not take kindly to them, nor would the Bishop of Quebec and his clergy trust the vague expressions of the United Colonies, whose statute books, they pointed out, still bore the most bitter and unchristian sentiments against all priests and adherents of the ancient church. Bigotry had apparently defeated their purpose. How it had done this was still quite obscure, until it was discovered that the British Government had taken John Jay's address, translated it into French and spread it broadcast throughout Canada. "Behold the spirit of the Colonists," it went on to remind the people, "and if you join forces with them, they will turn on you and extirpate your religion, in the same manner as they did in the Catholic colony of Maryland."

The effect is historical. The commissioners were compelled to return; the brave Montgomery was killed before the walls of the city; Canada was lost to the Colonies and forever forfeited as an integral part of the United States; all of which was due to the narrowness and intolerance of those who in the supreme hour could not refrain from the fanaticism of bigotry.

It must be said, however, out of justice to the colonists that they did not persist in their spirit of antagonism towards the Catholics. The commencement of the struggle against the common foe, together with the sympathetic and magnanimous concurrence of the Catholics with the patriots in all things, soon changed their prejudice in favor of a more united and vigorous effort in behalf of their joint claims. The despised Papists now became ardent and impetuous patriots. The leaders in the great struggle soon began to reflect an added luster to the nation that gave them birth and to the Church which taught them devotion to their land. The rank and file began to swarm with men of the Catholic faith, so many, indeed, that their great Archbishop, John Carroll, could write of them that "their blood flowed as freely (in proportion to their numbers) to cement the fabric of independence, as that of any of their fellow citizens. They concurred with perhaps greater unanimity than any other body of men in recommending and promoting that government from whose influence America anticipates all the blessings of justice, peace, plenty, good order, and civil and religious liberty."

Only among the few was the spirit of intolerance still rampant, and among these might be numbered Colonel Forrest.