The Early Days of Law Teaching at McGill

When the British acquired Canada in 1763, there were immediate schemes for the rapid anglicization of the Province. The map was redrawn to impose English county names on the French countryside, schemes for universal education were drafted to teach English to francophone youth, the new-burgeoning commerce was conducted in association with English firms employing English terminology and in accordance with accepted English practices. A Legislative Assembly was promised and Canada was to become as English as New England: even more so, for the Church of England was to be established as the National Church as in England, Wales and Ireland. But within a short while, the Colonial Administration began to have second thoughts. It quickly found itself at odds with the new traders who had come in from New York, Albany and across the Atlantic, and the British authorities found it politic to make friends with the French Canadian seigneurs, and with the authorities of the Roman Church and if possible to win the allegiance of the French-speaking peasantry