The Jesuits' Estate Question, 1760-1888

More than a hundred years of trouble followed the land grant of half a million acres along the St. Lawrence River to the Jesuits. The history of this land is a turbulent one that involved every area of colonial settlement and finally threatened Confederation. In 1888 the Quebec legislature passed an "Act Respecting the Settlement of the Jesuits' Estates": the result was a storm of protest that came close to shattering the union of the provinces. At the time of this Act there was no balanced historical account of the Jesuits' estates. nor until this one has there been any subsequent study that has ever begun to explore their tangled history. Professor Dalton provides a badly needed investigation into this area of Canadian history: his work is unbiased and thorough and offers new material for a reappraisal of this century of our past. (Canadian Studies in History and Government, No. 11.)