'Child of inordinate power': Religion and politics in Britain after the Quebec Act

The Quebec Act has long been treated by Canadian and American historians as an area of inquiry limited to national interests. Recent historians of the American War for Independence and of British popular culture of the eighteenth century have established that the colonies and the mother country experienced a trans-Atlantic relationship, particularly as policy, ideas and culture were exchanged across the ocean. Unlike historians, who have not adequately considered the consequences of granting the Catholics of Quebec a toleration of their religion in a Protestant empire, this thesis confirms that the Act seen in its British context had a wider impact on British politics than is admitted in traditional accounts. The toleration of Catholicism abroad offered new possibilities for Catholics at home, and with this precedent having been set, the Catholic Relief Act passed in both Houses of Parliament without a division in 1778.;An examination of the print culture, contemporary memoirs and correspondences reveal that the concerns of parliamentarians about the religious clauses of the Quebec Act did not disappear with Royal Assent. Instead, the Act became the subject of both political and theological discourse where the issues of religion and the responsibilities of government frequently surfaced in Parliament and in the press throughout the 1770's. This study explores this relationship between Church and State as it was discussed by contemporaries who supported toleration for nonconformists. Great emphasis has been placed on the evolving meaning of toleration as a political and social concept. Politicians struggled with their understanding of religious conscience and their notion of parliamentary jurisdiction in matters of the faith during the Quebec Act and Catholic Relief Act debates in the years 1774 to 1780. The purpose of this study has also been to show that parliamentarians formulated imperial and domestic policies which challenged traditional views because of the philosophical attitudes of the age. In essence, this study develops the idea that the Quebec Act was a formative influence in the development of a polyglot, multi-religious empire.