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Essays and addresses

Who are those who wish to have us proscribed? About thirty English merchants, of whom fifteen at the most, are settled here.

" (In fact, the Quebec Merchants Petition had 21 signatures and that of the London Merchants, 25.

) "Who are the Proscribed? Ten thousand Heads of Families who feel nothing but submission to the orders of Your Majesty and of those who represent you " They ask : "What would become of the general prosperity of the Colony, if those who form the principal section thereof, be- come incapable members of it through difference of Religion? How would Justice be administered if those who understand neither our Language nor our Customs should become our Judges, through the Medium of Interpreters? Instead of the favoured subjects of your Majesty, we should become veritable slaves ; a Score of Persons whom we do not know would become the masters of our Property and of our Interests: We should have no further Redress from those equitable men (properly translated, no relief by means of those reliable men) to whom we have been accustomed to apply for the settlement of our Family Affairs and who if they abandoned us, would cause us to prefer the most barren country to the fertile land we now pos- sess": 228: French original, pp.

224, 225; Canadian Ar- chives, 8, 121.

It is to be remembered that as yet the Colony was wholly un- der the unrestrained power of the King, he not having, by giving his assent to an Act of Parliament, given it into the control of Parliament ; and, consequently, it was for the Privy Council with its Standing Committee the Lords of Trade, or "Lords of the Committee for Plantation Affairs" and not for Parliament, to deal with the situation.