" By which act,
not only is French despotism, or arbitrary power, settled as the form of
civil government, but, which is still worse, Popery, the _Religion of
Antichrist_, with all its idolatries and blasphemies, has such security
and establishment granted it, as to be taken immediately under the legal
protection of the supreme civil authority of these nations in that vast
and extensive region of _Canada_, lately added to the British dominions
in North America--a province so large and fertile, that it is said to be
capable of containing, if fully peopled, not less than thirty millions
of souls. This infamous and injurious bill, before it passed into a law,
was publicly reprobated and declaimed against by sundry members of both
houses. It has been petitioned and remonstrated against by the most
respectable civil body corporated in Britain, or its dominions, the city
of London; by all the provinces of North America south of Quebec; and
even by the inhabitants of the city of Quebec itself. It has been, in
the most public manner, in open parliament, declared to be "a most
cruel, oppressive, and odious measure--a child of inordinate power," &c.
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