Jesuit Estates Act

The Jesuit Estates Act was an Act of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec that compensated the Society of Jesus for land confiscated in Canada by the British Crown after the suppression of the Society in 1774. When the revived Society returned to Canada in 1842, they began to campaign for the repossession of their allegedly confiscated estates. The premier of Quebec, Honoré Mercier, proposed the Jesuit Estates Act, which offered the Roman Catholic Church a financial settlement in return for incorporating the estates into Quebec's Crown lands. This measure provoked much controversy among Orangemen and Protestants, but it was not overturned.

Following the Suppression of the Jesuits by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, their lands in the Province of Quebec were seized by the British Crown in 1791, but possession was not taken until 1800, after all of their priests had either died or left Canada. The lands were subsequently transferred to the Province of Lower Canada in 1831, and the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada passed legislation in 1832 providing for all income arising from the estates to be segregated from other Crown property and dedicated for educational purposes. After the Order was restored by Pope Pius VII in 1814 by virtue of the papal bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, it was re-established in Canada in the 1840s, and in the following years it campaigned for compensation in order to establish a new Catholic university in Montreal. The province's archbishop, Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau, instead proposed that the estates be sold off and the money divided among existing Catholic schools.

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