Abstract
When it was passed in 1774, the Quebec Act became the first parliamentary legislation to address the government of a specific British colony, as well as the first statute to tackle the question of privileges owed to the province’s predominantly French Catholic subjects.¹ Among other things, the Quebec Act granted Catholics the free exercise of their religion, subject to the king’s supremacy, and the right to assume offices of trust by taking an oath designed for those purposes rather than subscribing to the Test.² Perhaps most significantly, the act determined that “His Majesty’s Canadian Subjects ... may also hold and