[Americana] [Canada] (Lymburner, Adam, or Francis Maseres). A Review of the Government and Grievances of the Province of Quebec, Since the Conquest of it by the British Arms...

London: Printed at the Logographic Press, and Sold by J. Stockdale, and W. Richardson, 1788. First edition. 8vo. (iv), 111, (1) pp., including half-title. Three-quarter navy blue calf over marbled paper-covered boards, decorated in gilt; top edge gilt, other edges trimmed; by Weeks & Co. Binders, London; book-plate of Brien E. Kehoe on front paste-down; scattered minor spotting to text. ESTC T65766; Sabin 70234

Scarce first edition of this polemic against the government of the Province of Quebec, published in the lead up to the passage of the Constitutional Act of 1791. Variously attributed to Adam Lymburner (1745/46-1836), a Scottish merchant, colonial agent, and politician, as well as English lawyer and attorney general of Quebec, Francis Maseres (1731-1824), both of whom lobbied for constitutional reforms in the colony.

Great Britain’s acquisition of New France following their victory in the Seven Years’ War brought together a unique mix of an English Protestant settler minority and an entrenched French-speaking Catholic majority. The Proclamation of 1763, and later the Quebec Act of 1774, attempted to put in place a government to manage this mixed population, implementing elements of both English and French law, while granting substantial rights and privileges to the French Catholics. Following the American Revolution and the large influx of American Loyalists seeking safe haven in Canada, the colony’s governing structure proved increasingly unsustainable for its new demographics, leading to calls for constitutional reforms, especially amongst the Anglo-merchant class. Here, the author calls for the repeal of the Quebec Act and for a redress of grievances faced by the Province’s population: "From a review of the government of the Province of Quebec, from the conquest of it by the British arms, it will appear that the people have had a complicated series of solid ills to encounter. The incompetent civil government, under which they have been obliged to live, and the vexatious uncertainty by which they have constantly been oppressed, with regard to their rights, and their property, furnish ample ground of substantial complaint. In the space of twenty-eight years they have been obliged to conform to three different systems of laws, each improper, and at variance with the other--Systems forced upon them in the aggregate, never defined, and of course never understood." (pp. 34-35)

In answer to some of these grievances, as well as the Revolution in France, in 1791 Parliament passed the Constitutional Act of 1791 which repealed the Quebec Act, provided Canada with its first representative constitution, and divided the colony into a primarily Anglophone Upper Canada and a primarily Francophone Lower Canada.

According to RBH, this is the first copy to be offered since 1982, and only the fourth since 1962 (all three without half-title).

[Americana] [Canada] (Lymburner, Adam, or Francis Maseres). A Review of the Government and Grievances of the Province of Quebec, Since the Conquest of it by the British Arms...