Indeed, and we are all the poorer for the Pope allowing Carroll to be ordained. Very dodgy figure.

John Carroll returned with Franklin to help out the old man, while Charles Carroll stayed for many months and took charge of some things on the US side of the St. Lawrence River.

They were trying to get the Canadians to join with the U.S. and figured those French Canadians were “natural allies.”

P.S. Thomas Jefferson was asked to encourage the French hierarchy to get an American bishop ordained and John Carroll was evnetually the first, though I doubt I need remind your readers of that last factoid.

As a beneficiary of the Quebec Act (it gave my ancestors their “freedom, religion, and laws,” in the memorable words of “The Old Orange Flute”) I am VERY happy to see this article on your site. I can add a little to it, in fact. One is that Jefferson denounced the Act in Orwellian terms in his declaration of independence, when he attacls the King for “suspending the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province.” These were, of course, the Penal Laws.

Moreover, Franklin was accompanied on his ill-fated mission to Quebec by Fr. John Carroll. It was Fr. Carroll’s refusal to attempt to convert Franklin on the road that led BF to recommend him to Pius VI as the best candidate for the first Bishop of the new country after the Revolution. In any case, Bishop Briand of Quebec, who had published the letter of the Continental Congress to the people of England attacking the French in Canada, declared that none of his priests were to receive the visitors from the south. The one who did was suspended. Bishop Briand is up for beatification, incidentally.

All of this history is the reason why — until the Revolution Tranquille deprived the French Canadians of their Faith, their mores and traditions, and their loyalty, (as als their birth-rate), they were mostly Monarchist. The foolish “nationalists” whom the author cites were precisely the folk who pushed for abortion and birth control. They got it — and French Canada is doomed, demographically speaking. Our author rightly says “It is no exaggeration to assert that, had it not been for this one Anglo-Irish aristocrat, Quebec would likely have become anglicized and, subsequently, integrated into the American empire.” Luckily, the so-called nationalists have assured that is what indeed must happen one day, unless the Quebecois regain their religion and their ability to breed.

He and his work deserve to be remembered.

This fall I’ll have the great privilege of working with one of Lawson’s students from the University of Alberta, Dr Connors, on my own Master’s research at Ottawa.

My look at the effects of the Quebec Act on Catholic Relief in Great Britain itself will draw, heavily I’m sure, on Professor Lawson’s own notes, left incomplete by his untimely death.

I won’t shake conventional historiographical orthodoxy, but I do hope to do my small bit in rehabilitating and sharing Lawson’s ideas: an effort you’ve aided greatly here.