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Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791
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Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791
[In opposition to the Quebec Act of 1774, English merchants at Montreal petitioned British Parliament to exclude Catholics from a newly formed legislative council.]
And we beg leave further to represent, that if it be thought inexpedient on the one hand to constitute a house of assembly, consisting of protestants only, agreeably to the directions of his majesty’s commissions before-mentioned, on account of the great superiority of the numbers of the Roman Catholics in the said province, who would thereby be excluded from sitting in such assembly; and, on the other hand, it be thought dangerous to summon a general assembly into which Roman Catholics should be admitted indiscriminately with the protestants; and, on account of this twofold difficulty, it be judged necessary to have recourse to the new method of government above-mentioned, by investing a council of persons nominated, and removeable at, the pleasure of the crown, with a certain degree of legislative authority; we humbly hope that the same reasons which make it be judged dangerous to admit the Roman Catholic inhabitants of the said province into a share of the legislative authority by means of an open assembly of the same, will be thought sufficient to exclude them from obtaining a share of the same authority by an admission into this new legislative council; which, being a single body invested with the power of making laws for the province, will be of more weight and consequence in the same, than an assembly of the freeholders would be, if the plan of government promised by his majesty’s proclamation and commissions above-mentioned, by a governor, council and assembly, had been pursued.
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Chicago: Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, ed., "Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791," Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791 in Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada , 1759-1791 (Ottawa: J. de L. Tache, 1918), Original Sources, accessed December 9, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=8QKC92SBFSMX3UG.
MLA: . "Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791." Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791, edited by Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, in Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada , 1759-1791, Ottawa, J. de L. Tache, 1918, Original Sources. 9 Dec. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=8QKC92SBFSMX3UG.
Harvard: (ed.), 'Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791' in Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791. cited in 1918, Request of English Merchants for a Protestant Elective Assembly or Legislative Council, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada , 1759-1791, J. de L. Tache, Ottawa. Original Sources, retrieved 9 December 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=8QKC92SBFSMX3UG.
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