PreConfederation Documents

• The Proclamation of 1763
  • A declaration that England is now in the possession of former French territories, one of which is called Quebec, which were all ceded by treaty.
  • Also a survey of those possessions.

• The Quebec Act, 1774
  • An Act of the British Parliament to protect rights of Catholics, the French civil code, French language and culture.
  • Believed by some historians to be one of the causes of the American revolution. (From the U.S. Declaration of Independence:

    "For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province [Quebec], establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies."

• The Constitutional Act, 1791
• The Act Of Union, 1840