Opposed to the bill were Dunning, who declared upon his conscience, that he thought it "destructive of every principle of freedom, and abounding with mischief of a most serious tendency"; Barré, who said it was "the most flagrant attack on the constitution, that had hitherto been attempted"; and Townshend, who affirmed, that it "established a despotic government." "Little did I think," continued he, "that a country as large as half of Europe, and now within the dominions of the crown of Great Britain, was going to have the Romish religion established in it as the religion of the state. Little did I think, that so many thousand men, entitled by birth to the rights of Englishmen, settling on the faith of the king's proclamation, should, contrary to that assurance, contrary to every idea of the constitution, be subjected to French Papists and French laws, in a country where, for full twelve years, nothing has prevailed but anarchy and confusion."

In defence of the bill appeared Lord North, AttorneyGeneral Thurlow, and Solicitor-General Wedderburn. They affirmed, that English laws, however much prized in England, "would be the greatest curse imaginable to the Canadians." But the minister, being sorely pressed, at last disavowed all knowledge of the paternity of the bill. "I know not," said he, "who drew it up"; all he did know about it was, "that it is a bill from the other House" but, said he, "all circumstances considered, I think the bill is the best that can at present be devised." Should we guess what these "circumstances" were, we might say, that his Lordship knew he had already quite as many Colonial assemblies to deal with as was for his comfort, or as he could well manage; and that he wished for no more to quarrel with" at present."

In America, the "Quebec Act" caused the most profound sensation. On turning to the doings of the Congress of the thirteen Colonies, we find that a committee was directed to prepare an address "to the inhabitants of the province of Quebec"; and the form which they reported, having been debated by paragraphs, was adopted, and ordered to be translated, printed, and distributed. This address embodied many of the objections which had been urged in parliament, and concluded with an eloquent appeal to the Canadians to unite with their American brethren, and thus to gain the influence of the whole people of the conti

nent in their behalf. In a petition to the king, which immediately followed, this act is enumerated among the injuries of which they complain. Of those who assented to both of these papers were Deane of Connecticut, whose political prospects closed in sorrow and dishonor, and Galloway of Pennsylvania, who abandoned the Whigs and became a most virulent and influential Loyalist. Congress followed up its protest of 1774, and, in the memorable document which declared the British empire dismembered, gave utterence to its indignation at the treatment of the Canadians in no measured words.

The form of government established by this obnoxious Quebec Act continued until the year 1791, when Mr. Pitt devised and carried through parliament, in opposition to Fox and the other British Whigs, a plan which, with some modifications, is in operation at the present time, not only in Canada, but throughout British America. The scheme provided for a House of Assembly, elected by freeholders and leaseholders, for four years; a Legislative Council, appointed by the king, for life; and an Executive or Privy Council, the members of which, as well as the lieutenantgovernor, were to be appointed by the crown; thus imitating the three estates of the British constitution. Full power was given to raise, control, and expend all taxes and duties, and to pass such laws as might be deemed expedient, and not contrary to the acts of parliament; subject, however, to the royal veto. Under this system, the practice has grown up of allowing the judges who were actually performing judicial duties to hold seats also in both the legislative and executive councils. Another object of Mr. Pitt was to divide the province into two parts, giving them the names of Upper and Lower Canada, which they retained until the late reunion. Of the wisdom of this division, and of the reasons assigned for it, we shall speak in another place.

It will be seen at a glance, that, by this system, the pow er of the crown controls the popular will as expressed in the House of Assembly, and can defeat any measure in two ways; first, by the negative of the Legislative Council, and secondly, by the royal dissent directly expressed. Still, tolerable harmony appears to have prevailed between the different branches of government for a number of years. The first dispute which our limited space will allow us to

mention occurred before the war of 1812, when the Assembly demanded that the judges should be required to vacate their seats as legislators, and to confine their attention to their judicial duties. This demand, and the offer to defray the expenses of the civil administration from means to be provided by the Colony, met with no favor, but, after a sharp contest of some duration, the governor dissolved the body which had brought up the dispute. This was the germ of the difficulties which now prevail, though the removal of Sir James Craig from the administration of affairs, the appointment of the more popular Sir George Prevost, and the rupture with the United States, hushed for a while the clamors of the discontented. At the peace, however, when Prevost relinquished the executive chair to Sir George Gordon Drummond, a second quarrel arose between the judges and a new Assembly, and two of the occupants of the bench were impeached. Drummond was succeeded, in 1816, by Sir John C. Sherbroke, under whose rule there was a period of quiet. On his retirement, his successor, the Duke of Richmond, by abandoning the practice of submitting to the Assembly an estimate in detail of the sums required to be voted for each branch of the public service, and adopting instead the plan of naming aggregates only, added another element of discord to those previously existing. The refusal of the Assembly to appropriate money in this way and "by chapters," and the passing of the supply bill in the usual form, produced an angry and protracted controversy. The Legislative Council, in this affair, as in the matter of the judges, took sides with the representative of the crown, and withheld their assent to the bill; whereupon the governor obtained the money he had applied for by drawing upon the receiver-general. After the death of the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Dalhousie was transferred from Nova Scotia to Canada, where he renewed the dispute as to appropriations, by determining the sum that would probably be wanted, and soliciting a grant of it for a term of years to come. The popular body refused to comply, and passed the bill of supplies in the usual form, specifying the precise objects to which the money voted should be applied. The Legislative Council again interposed their negative, and the Earl, like his predecessor, had recourse to the receiver-general; but going a step further, he drew for a sum larger than

he had mentioned in his estimate. This occurred in 1820, in which year we may place the origin of well marked party organizations for and against the colonial administration.

We next find the Assembly contesting with Dalhousie the right of servants of the crown to designate in any manner the purposes to which the revenue should be applied, and bitterly complaining of its alleged unlawful and inexpedient expenditure. As Sir John Caldwell, the officer who had paid the drafts of the two governors in the cases mentioned, had become insolvent and could not restore a large sum of the public money, the Liberals gained a considerable accession to their party. In 1825, Dalhousie was absent from the Colony, and Sir Francis Burton, who was called ad interim to administer its affairs, made such large concessions to the popular demands, as to induce the Assembly to claim the disposal of all revenues, from whatever sources derived, and to determine that the executive branch should have no future control over them. The dispute hitherto had related to such portions of the public funds as were raised by taxation, and to the manner of expending what Mr. Huskisson called the "permanent " revenue, obtained by duties levied in place of those imposed under the French rule, and uniformly applied to the payment of the judiciary and the expenses of the civil list. It had not embraced another part, called the "casual" revenue, accruing from fines, penalties, and forfeitures, and from the sales of land and timber. Consequently, this bold push for the whole fiscal power excited an interest in Canadian politics never before manifested, and attracted the serious attention of the ministry. Down to this period, so far as we understand this vexed and intricate question, the crown had never sought to control the disbursement of Colonial taxes, nor to divert the "permanent revenue from the objects for which it was first set apart; but it did claim entire control over the "casual" receipts, as "lord paramount." In respect to the permanent income, the crown, indeed, so far from desiring to divert it from its proper uses, seems to have wished to retain the right of designating the heads of its expenditure, mainly, if not entirely, in order to insure its being appropriated to these uses; and to have resisted the claims of the Assembly, from the apprehension, that the salaries of the judges, and of the other officers de

pendent upon it, would neither be adequate nor permanent, if these claims were granted.

Passing over intermediate events, we come to the transactions of the year 1827, when the offer was made by the home government to surrender to the Colonists the required management of the disputed revenue, on provision being made for a stipulated civil list. That this long contested matter would have been adjusted at this juncture and on these terms appears quite probable, but for the act of Lord Dalhousie in disapproving of the election of Mr. Papineau to the speaker's chair of the Assembly. The popularity of this gentleman was unbounded, and the Liberals, enraged beyond what such a circumstance warranted, gave vent to their feelings in the most exciting appeals to the multitude. Lord Dalhousie's administration closed without the usual session of the two legislative bodies, and amid the denunciations of many to whom his general conduct had been very obnoxious.

His successor, Sir James Kempt, who assumed the direction of Canadian affairs in 1828, desirous of hushing the storm, invited Papineau, as well as Neilson, another leader of the Liberals, to take seats in his Executive Council, and, pursuant to his instructions, gave assurances that the graver points of difference should be satisfactorily disposed of on the meeting of parliament. This promise was not fulfilled during Sir James's stay, in consequence of the decease of the king, George the Fourth; but Lord Aylmer, on taking his place, renewed the pledge, and, as the Liberals suppose or affirm, without conditions. But when he came to make known precisely the concessions of the ministry, and to require the settlement of a plan for the payment of the civil officers before the revenue in dispute was released, and to state, moreover, that the crown still proposed to retain the "casual" branch of the Colonial receipts, the quarrel, which had apparently come to a termination, was opened anew ; and the Assembly, so far from evincing a disposition to concede any thing for the sake of restoring harmony, emphatically declared, that "under no circumstances, and upon no consideration whatever, would they abandon or compromise their claim to control the whole public revenue." Not long after, in 1831, the home government gave way. A bill which conceded the great points at issue passed both houses