A COLLECTION O F SEVERAL COMMISSIONS, AND OTHER PUBLIC INSTRUMENTS, Proceeding from his Majesty's Royal Authority, RELATING TO THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. A COLLECTION O F SEVERAL COMMISSIONS, AND OTHER PUBLIC INSTRUMENTS, AND OTHER PAPERS, Relating to the STATE of the PROVINCE in QUEBEC in NORTH COLLECTED BY FRANCIS MASER ES, ESQUIRE, LONDON: PRINTED BY W. AND J. RICHARDSON, SALISBURY COURT, FLEET STREET. M DCC LXXII. PREFACE. T HE following papers have been collected together, and printed in one volume, with a view to facilitate and expedite the settlement of the province of Quebec, which has been for fome years past, and is still under the confideration of his Majesty's privy council. This fettlement, it is conceived, cannot properly be made without a careful perufal and examination of the several inftruments of government that have already been paffed under his Majesty's authority, or that of his royal predeceffors, concerning the faid province. These are, first, the articles of capitulation granted to the French governour of Canada by general Amherst upon the intire furrender of it in 1760;fecondly, the fourth article of the definitive treaty of peace, in February, 1763, containing the full ceffion of the faid country by the French king to the crown of Great-Britain, and the ftipulation of his present Majefty the King of Great-Britain, in favour of a toleration of the Roman Catholick religion in the fame, as far as the laws of Great-Britain will permit ;-thirdly, the King's proclamation in October, 1763, for erecting four new governments in the ceded countries in America, whereby his Majefty promises to fuch of his fubjects as fhall refort to, and fettle in, the faid governments, that as foon as the circumftances of thofe new governments will respectively permit, they shall be governed in the fame manner as the fubjects of his Majefty's other colonies in America, |