Based on four years of research in the French-Canadian press of the 1840s and the private papers of the main French-Canadian politicians, British officials, and Roman Catholic religious leaders, this book describes in rich and lively detail the conflict of French Canada's priests and politicians around the central issue of their people's relation to the British Crown during that period. Confederation in 1867, modern Canada, and the current tempest in French Canada cannot adequately be understood without constant reference to these men of the 1840s and the political and religious ideologies they represented. Indeed, it was in their enmities, in their friendships and loyalties that were laid the strongbi-national foundations of what Etienne Parent foresaw as 'une grande nationalité canadienne assez forte pour se protéger elle-même et vivre de sa propre vie.'