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The solution first adopted was what might have been expected in a time when the right of self-determination had not even become a paper phrase. It was simply to turn New France into another New England, to swamp the old inhabitants by immigration from the colonies to the south and to make over their laws, land tenure, and religion on English models. No little progress had been made in this attempt when the shadow of the American Revolution and the sympathy of soldier governors for the old autocratic régime and for the French-Canadian people about them brought a fateful change in policy. British statesmen determined to build up on the St. Lawrence a bulwark against democracy and a base of operations against the Southern colonies in case of war, by confirming the habitant in his laws, the seigneur in his dues, the priest in his authority. To keep the colony British, the government now sought to prevent it becoming English. The Quebec Act, the "sacred charter" of French-speaking Canada, embodied this new policy. A measure of success followed. Then the unexpected result of the American Revolution in exiling to the St. Lawrence and the St. John tens of thousands of English-speaking settlers made it impossible to keep Canada wholly French, and the hatred for democracy and for all things French which developed during the wars with Napoleon made Englishmen unwilling to let French-speaking Canada rule itself.