4th of July Post

To further the reputation of this blog of having unique commentary around national holidays, I will offer the Declaration of Independence.

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, 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

This was cited as one of the offenses against the colonists. What this refers to is the Quebec Act. This act did several things. It expanded to the Quebec territory to Ohio and settlements in present day Indiana and Illinois. It recognized the Roman Catholic Church and the rights of the people in Quebec to worship in the Catholic Church. For civil, as opposed to criminal cases, it allowed for the French Civil Code to be used. The Act also allowed papists to hold office.

Catholics weren’t all that popular. “‘The Catholics, always directed by the Jesuits in the country, have been ill-disposed to the Revolution, they are not better disposed toward us.'(Bancroft, History of the Constitution, I.)” As the American Congress put it in 1774, “Nor can we suppress our astonishment, that a British Parliament can ever consent to establish in that country a religion that has deluged your island in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world. This being a true state of facts, let us beseech you to consider what end they lead.” This statement was signed by George Washington among others. (Reference)

In fact, anti-Catholicism was one thing that brought unity to the colonies in opposition to the British.

The Quebec Act led to a short revival in the colonies of the English celebration of Guy Fawkes Day, renamed Pope Day in the colonies, on 5 November each year. Involving the lower-class practice of burning an effigy of the pope, the celebration quickly spread from its home in New England to all the colonies in 1774. As far south as South Carolina, the pope was burned in a bonfire of English tea.

The Act specifically abrogated the following:

• Catholics could not vote
• Catholics were excluded from all professions and public offices
• Catholics were not allowed a university education
• Catholics could not teach children
• Catholics could not be the guardian of a child
• Catholic men could not marry Protestant women. Catholic women could marry Protestant men because children were brought up in the faith of their father: any children from this sort of mixed marriage would be brought up as Protestants
• Catholics could not buy land
• Catholics could not own a horse worth more than £5
• Catholics could not be given, be sold, or be bequeathed land by Protestants
• All land owned by a Catholic had to be equally divided among his sons on his death, unless one son was a Protestant, in which case he got it all. The law of primogeniture was suspended for Catholics
• All priests had to be registered. All Bishops were exiled.
  Catholic Churches could have neither bells nor steeples
• Pilgrimages were forbidden

(Source)