At the time of making this English ecclesiastical establishment,
we did not think it necessary for its safety to destroy the former
Gallican Church settlement. In our first act we settled a government
altogether monarchical, or nearly so. In that system, the Canadian
Catholics were far from being deprived of the advantages or
distinctions, of any kind, which they enjoyed under their former
monarchy. It is true that some people, and amongst them one eminent
divine, predicted at that time that by this step we should lose our
dominions in America. He foretold that the Pope would send his
indulgences hither; that the Canadians would fall in with France, would
declare independence, and draw or force our colonies into the same
design. The independence happened according to his prediction; but in
directly the reverse order. All our English Protestant colonies
revolted. They joined themselves to France; and it so happened that
Popish Canada was the only place which preserved its fidelity, the only
place in which France got no footing, the only peopled colony which now
remains to Great Britain.
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