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‘The Irishman's Prize’: Views of Canada from the British Press, 1760–1774

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Philip Lawson
Philip Lawson
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Extract

This was how the Public Advertiser greeted the passage of the Quebec Act through parliament in June 1774. It was a remarkable transformation from the ecstasy evident in newspaper reports that greeted the fall of New France in 1760. As early as November 1759 the city of Nottingham singled out the North American campaign as the glorious core of British strategy. Its loyal address congratulated the king ‘particularly upon the defeat of the French army in Canada, and the taking of Quebec; an acquisition not less honourable to your majesty's forces, than destructive of the trade and commerce and power of France in North America’. What occurred in those fourteen years to produce such a stark revision of views on the conquest of New France? The answer can be found partly by surveying the English press for this period. During these years, treatment of Canadian issues in the press displayed quite distinct characteristics that revealed a whole range of attitudes and opinions on the place Canada held in the future of the North American empire. No consensus on this issue ever existed. Debate on Canada mirrored a wider discussion on the future of the polyglot empire acquired at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763. In ranged from the enthusiasm of officials at Westminster to spokesmen of a strain in English thinking that challenged the whole thrust of imperial policy to date.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 575 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 London Gazette, 24–27 November 1759.

2 Lawson, P., George Grenville: a political life (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar, ch. II.

3 Reports from the committees of the House of Commons 1715–1800, not inserted in the Commons journals, II.

4 The Gentleman's Magazine (bound volumes), XXIX (10 1759), 453Google Scholar.

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6 For the originators of the myth see Beer, G. L., British colonial policy, 1754–1765 (New York, 1907), pp. 152–9Google Scholar and Alvord, C. W., The Mississippi Valley in British politics (2 vols., Cleveland, 1917), 1, 52–62Google Scholar. For the revisionists see Namier, L. B., England in the age of the American Revolution (2nd edn, 1961), pp. 273–82Google Scholar; Sosin, J., Whitehall and the wilderness (Lincoln, Neb., 1961) ch. IGoogle Scholar; and Labaree, L. W.. The papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1966), IX, 47–100Google Scholar. A recent popular history stating the original view is Callwood, June, Portrait of Canada (Toronto, 1983)Google Scholar.

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10 A letter to the people ofEngland…, p. 47.

11 Some account of remarks on the letter addressed to two great men.

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18 Ibid. p. 31.

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22 A report in the Public Advertiser on 8 April 1774 ran: ‘Lord North's slip about Salem and Marblehead is compared to a similar one in the last reign by mistake to have related to Cape Breton; whereas the real truth was that upon first settling of Nova Scotia the late Duke of Newcastle unluckily called it a very fine island’.

23 Perhaps one pamphlet that comes nearest to their view is An answer to the letter to two great men (1760).

24 Humphrey, R. A. and Scott, S. Morley, ‘Lord Northington and the laws of Canada’, Canadian Historical Review, XIV (03 1933), 42–61Google Scholar; and Marshall, P., ‘The incorporation of Quebec in the British Empire, 1763–1774’, in Platt, V. B. and Skaggs, D. C., eds., Of mother country and plantations (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1971), pp. 43–62Google Scholar.

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26 26 August 1763.

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32 7 December 1763.

33 28–30 May 1767.

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36 26–28 February 1767.

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46 The Commons Journals, XXXII, 971– 2.

47 24 July 1770.

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49 5–7 April 1774.

50 Middlesex Journal, 14–16 June 1774.

51 15 October 1774.

52 From the text printed in the Public Advertiser, 18 October 1774.

53 Middlesex Journal, 4–7 June 1774 and Public Advertiser, 9 June 1774.

54 London Evening Post, 24–26 May 1774 and 14–16 June 1774.

55 XXXXIV, 247–8 (June 1774).

56 The London Magazine, August 1774, p. 398.

57 XXXXIV, 311–12. All the quotes that follow are taken from here.

58 16–18June 1774.

59 From the text of the speech printed in the Public Advertiser, 23 June 1774.