PROCEEDINGS FOR 1895 LXXXV 
Cape Breton.” The reasons for disfavour urged by the neighbouring 
colonies against the Quebec act of 1774, sound strange in the present 
day. New England was in arms against old England for legislation 
recognizing the Roman Catholic religion, ‘a religion, they said, which 
had flooded with blood and had spread hypocrisy, persecution, murder 
and revolt into all parts of the world.” 
The American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia styled it “a bill 
for establishing popery and arbitrary power in Quebec.” 
Such declarations the colonies found it difficult to explain, when in 
1775, they tried to secure the French Canadians as their allies against 
Great Britain. 
The correspondence between Lt.-Col. By, R.E., General Gother Mann, 
R.E., and Sir Carmichael Smith, throws a flood of light on the works 
undertaken on the Rideau canal. 
1891.—The calendar and appendix of the archivist this year disclose a 
voluminous correspondence and stringent regulations of Governor Prescott 
and Governor Simcoe concerning the grants of waste lands of the Crown. 
Among applicants for large tracts in Upper Canada, appears the 
name of the double-traitor Benedict Arnold; he urges great personal 
losses incurred and services rendered to the British cause. 
He first modestly claims 20,000 acres in Upper Canada, upwards of 
thirty-one square miles, and in July, 1797, he applies to the king, by 
petition, for 50,000 for himself, his wife and seven children. 
On the 17th May, 1794, the Council records a grant of 14,000 acres 
to Wm. Berzcy, of York, Upper Canada, to settle there 2,000 settlers 
brought in by him. 
The marriage laws of Upper Canada seem to have been in an un- 
settled state. Richard Cartwright, junior, reports on them. 
We are next treated to a curious correspondence referring to the 
French Republican designs on Canada. War existed between England 
and France, in 1793 ; later on French armies were striking terror and 
reaping bloody laurels all over continental Europe. 
French emissaries, it seems, were sent to the United States, to enter 
into correspondence with the French element in Lower Canada. The 
evidence produced at the trial of Alexander McLean, supposed to be in 
league with this movement is given, and allusions made to his tragic end, 
on the gallows, at Quebec in 1797. 
1892.—Hon. Mr. Angers, Minister of Agriculture, submits this year 
the archivist’s report to the legislature, “to wit, transcripts of the state 
papers for Lower Canada to 1825, a continuation of the administration of 
General Brock, and in addition those of Sir Peregrine Maitland as acting 
governors, Lord Dalhousie as governor-in-chief, Burton as president of 
the counciland the resumption of office by Lord Dalhousie in September, 
1825.” 
