Apush Definition Quebec Act of 1774

The Quebec Act of 1774, an Act passed by the British Parliament that affected the Canadian province of Quebec, contained several provisions on freedom of religion. The coercive laws (called by the settlers the “Intolerable Acts”) contained a new Quartering Act that included provisions for the accommodation of British troops in American homes. It revived the anger the settlers had felt about the old Quartering Act (1765), which was allowed to expire in 1770. The new Quartering Act, passed by Parliament on 2 June 1774, gave colonial governors the right to requisition uninhabited buildings to house British troops. It applied to all of British America. In 1774, the Legislature punished the people of Massachusetts for their actions in the Boston Tea Party. Parliament passed laws known as intolerable laws, which restricted the rights of settlers. The laws restricted municipal assemblies and required that officials who killed settlers in the line of duty be sent to Britain for trial (where they were to be acquitted of their charges). Another law was the Boston Port Act. He closed the Boston Harbor until the damages were paid and the order could be secured. In 1774, the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to address colonial grievances about intolerable acts. 12 of the 13 colonies (excluding Georgia) sent 55 men to the convention.

(The First Continental Congress was not a legislative body; it was an advisory body. It was more of a convention than a convention.) As Boston had been the center of resistance to British rule in the winter of 1773-74, it was at the center of the four intolerable laws passed by Parliament in 1774 to restore its authority in America. The Boston Port Bill closed Boston Harbor until the tea destroyed during the Boston Tea Party (1773) was repaired. The Massachusetts Government Act replaced the colony`s elected local government with an appointed and expanded military governor. Britain`s implementation of the Quebec Act in 1774 is often seen as a source of heightened American resentment against British rule in North America. Along with other British laws, such as the Tea Act (1773) and the Coercive Acts (1774), the Quebec Act helped push American settlers to independence. Traditionally, colonial resentment of the Quebec Act has been attributed to the growing British control of religion, land distribution, and colonial government in North America granted by law. While these fears were justified, only one led the American settlers to believe that the actions taken by the British in Canada posed a significant threat to their freedom. It was the fear of parliamentary domination that turned the Quebec Act into a lightning rod of colonial anger.

The Quebec Act proved to the American colonists what they already believed: the British were not afraid to restrict colonial governments to secure their property in North America. As a result, the impact of the Quebec Act extended far beyond British Canada. It had a global impact – especially in the thirteen American colonies. The Intolerable Acts represented an attempt to restore strict British control over the American colonies, but after 10 years of procrastination, the decision to be firm had come too late. Instead of intimidating Massachusetts and separating it from the other colonies, repressive measures became the justification for convening the First Continental Congress later in 1774. Coercive laws, dubbed the intolerable laws by American settlers, were passed by Parliament in 1774 in response to colonial resistance to British rule. The four laws were (1) the Boston Port Bill, which closed Boston Harbor; (2) the Massachusetts Government Act, which replaced the elected local government with a government of appointment and expanded the powers of the military governor; (3) the Administration of Justice Act, which allowed British officials accused of crimes punishable by death to be tried in another colony or in England; and (4) the Quartering Act, which allowed for the confiscation of unoccupied buildings to house British troops. The Quebec Act was also passed in 1774, but was not separate from the Intolerable Acts. He gave religious freedom to Franco-Canadian Catholics and restored the French form of civil law.

American settlers rejected this law for a variety of reasons: it angered anti-Catholics; it has expanded the size of Quebec. Province of Quebec in 1774, based on a 1923 map. (public domain) The cumulative effect of colonial resistance to British rule during the winter of 1773-74 was to make Parliament more determined than ever to assert its authority in America. The main force of their actions fell on Boston, which seemed to be the center of colonial hostility. First, the British government, angered by the Boston Tea Party (1773), passed the Boston Port Bill, which closed the port of that city until the destroyed tea was compensated. Second, the Massachusetts Government Act repealed the Colonial Charter of 1691, reduced it to the status of a Crown colony, replaced the elected city council with an appointee, expanded the powers of the military governor, General Thomas Gage, and prohibited town hall meetings without permission. Third, the Administration of Justice Act was intended to protect British officials accused of capital crimes during prosecution by allowing them to travel to England or another colony for trial. The intolerable fourth act included new provisions for the placement of British troops in occupied American homes, reviving outrage over the old Quartering Act, which was allowed to expire in 1770. The new Quartering Act, passed on 2 June 1774, applied to all of British America and gave colonial governors the right to requisition uninhabited buildings to house British troops.

In Massachusetts, however, British troops were forced to camp on Boston Common until the following November because the Boston Patriots refused to allow workers to repair vacant buildings that General Feee had received for their quarters. Intolerable Acts, also called Coercive Acts, (1774), in the colonial history of the United States, four punitive measures adopted by the British Parliament in retaliation for acts of colonial defiance, as well as the Quebec Act, which established a new administration for the territory ceded to Great Britain after the French and Indian War (1754-63). A few years later, Parliament passed the Quebec Act of 1774, which granted emancipation to the French Catholic settlers of the province. The law revoked the oath of allegiance and reinstated French civil law in combination with British criminal law. The Quebec Act of 1774 was an act passed by Parliament to replace the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and to prevent the French in the province of Quebec from uniting with the American colonies to oppose British policy. “The Quebec Act established the structure of a new Canadian provincial government. Between 1763 and 1774, Britain made few attempts to structure the civilian government of its new colonial possessions. With the Quebec Act, however, Parliament presented a plan for a rather autocratic government. By law, the head of the Canadian government was to be appointed by the British Crown, and there was no provision for an elected legislative assembly representing the Canadian people. In fact, the Quebec Act did not change the political structure of Quebec, nor was there a “Canadian government” since the name of the province was Quebec and not Canada. (It was only with the Constitutional Act of 1791 and the division of the province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada that one could rightly speak of a “Canadian government.”) However, they suggest that the Quebec Act changed the way the governor was appointed, which is not true. And although the royal proclamation at one point promised the establishment of a legislative assembly, as long as French Catholics were second-class citizens who constituted something on the order of 98% of quebec`s population, without the right to be part of the government (or even to work as lawyers or notaries), then of course such a meeting was impossible.

And since French Catholics in Quebec had no history of representative government, since they were autocratically governed by a sovereign council appointed by the King of France from 1663 to 1760, they did not want much of a meeting anyway.