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Adam Lymburner at the bar of the house of commons. It is no judgement based on experience that would criticize Pitt. To Dorchester information had been given that the danger in Europe necessitated the consolidation of every available interest in the Empire. Grenville made it clear that concession to the French-Canadians was an international necessity. They were to be kept quiet from possible French influences in case of a European war, by having their nationality recognized and buttressed in a province where numerical superiority would guarantee their predominating influence. That is one point of view. In due course, having fulfilled this function in international policy, this nationalism was to dissolve and fade out of a convinced and voluntary desire to possess in its entirety the whole administrative scheme of an alien race. Such sublime faith, like all sublime faiths, can only be ascribed to ignorance -ignorance of Canada, of history, of nationality. While Burke was giving way to frenzied temper and Fox was wiping eyes tear-stained over a broken friendship, Pitt was inaugurating a constitutional experiment in Canada which could never produce the results which he intended. Constitutions are not supernatural. They flourish and are successful where they reflect social development, and where the friction in the political machine is reduced to the lowest point. Pitt's Constitutional Act was charged with friction, and in time Upper Canada found the eighteenth-century British constitution an excuse for radicalism, and Lower Canada used it to increase rather than to diminish separatist tendencies.

The period in Canadian history which follows is almost the inevitable working out of failure. This failure is due not merely to the short-sightedness of Pitt's general principles, but to the functioning of institutions under the Constitutional Act. Each province must be considered separately. Upper Canada will provide illustrations differing from Lower Canada, and separate treatment will bring to light varied points of view in the inter

action of similar institutions and different social and economic and racial conditions. It will then be possible to study the failure of representative government under broad generalizations derived from the history of each province, to which Nova Scotia. New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island will add their experiences.

[AUTHORITIES.—The documents are in A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty, Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759–1791 (Ottawa, 1918); A. G. Doughty and D. A. McArthur, Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1791–1818 (Ottawa, 1914); Kennedy, Documents of the Canadian Constitution, 1759–1915 (Oxford, 1918); Egerton and Grant, Canadian Constitutional Development (Toronto, 1907). The debates are in Parliamentary Debates, 1791, and complete in R. Gourlay, Statistical Account of Upper Canada, vol. ii (London, 1822). The state papers are in State Papers, Q. 10-Q. 57. 2 (Canadian Archives). The pamphlet literature of importance includes Masères, Additional Papers concerning the Province of Quebec (London, 1776); State of the Present Form of Government of the Province of Quebec, &c. (London, 1789); Observations on a Pamphlet: State of the Present Form, &c., by a citizen of Quebec (London, 1790); Thoughts on the Canada Bill (London, 1791).]

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LORD DORCHESTER sailed for England on August 18, 1791, and the duty of inaugurating the new constitution in Lower Canada fell to Major-General Alured Clarke, a soldier inexperienced in civil government. His first delicate problem was the division of the province into electoral districts and the regulation of representation. Except for a foolish nomenclature which introduced the names of English counties into a French colony, Clarke's plan was as successful as could be expected. Four members each were assigned to Montreal and Quebec, two to Three Rivers, one to William Henry, two to each of the twentyone counties, except Orleans, Bedford, and Gaspé, which were each given one. For the moment the arrangement was equitable, but before long it failed to satisfy the growing cities and the Eastern Townships. The provincial or imperial legislature could amend the proclamation. The latter was unwilling to interfere and the former had little desire to organize a redistribution which would give greater representation to the British, and thus strengthen the hands of the executive in the assembly. When at length redistribution took place, the number of counties was increased, but the divisions in the cities and towns remained the same. The first provincial election took place in June 1792, and parliament met for business on December 17, with thirty-four French and sixteen British representatives. Historians are almost agreed in considering this first assembly the strongest during the period, including as it did some of the best men in the province.

It is a strange picture. The vast majority of the electors had

no conception of the political machine which they were called on to create. Largely illiterate and uneducated, they could not have understood the scheme even had the seigniors been willing to give them more enlightenment upon it than that it contained a menace of taxation. The gift, if such it was, came unasked and unsought, and, if reports were true from the lost colonies, with no very creditable past. The grant itself is almost doctrinaire. An apathetic, conservative, docile, and nonpolitical people were entrusted with a constitution implying knowledge and insight. No attempt had been made to instruct them in its ordinary workings, much less in those delicate, intangible conventions and indeterminate traditions which gave it force and vitality. The French-Canadians received the skeleton of an alien system in the hope that they would inevitably clothe it with profound respect, and, having done so, would seek union with Upper Canada. With them were associated British settlers who could not imagine why they had been given such strange political bed-fellows.

Unconsciously in the first assembly race clannishness appeared, to remain the fundamental problem of Lower Canadian history during the period. Jean Antoine Panet was elected speaker after a division on practically racial lines. His brother had the insight to see that the speaker ought to be bilingual and should address the governor in English as the general language of the empire.1 The British members seized on the latter idea, but failed to convince the assembly. It early became a standing rule that the speaker should read a motion in English and French if he could do so; if not, he should read it in the language most familiar to him, and the reading in the other language should be done by his clerk or deputy. There was a further difficulty over the language of enactment. A motion to make English the legal language was

1 Quebec Gazette, December 20, 1792.

2 See an important study Thomas Chapais, Les débuts du Régime parle

lost, even though supported by the plea of imperial unity and by the suggestion that a subordinate legislature could not change the language of law. A decision was finally reached in which the assembly did not insist on French as the language of enactment, but agreed that bills respecting the criminal laws of England and the protestant clergy should be introduced in English, and those relating to the laws and usages of the province in French.1 Clarke was thus saved the necessity of disagreement,2 and the British government offered no objections to the use of both languages, but insisted on English as the language of law.3

The first parliament was prorogued, after passing some miscellaneous bills and drawing up rules of procedure, in a speech announcing war with France. Clarke noticed the general line of division. The French-Canadians were practically solid and controlled the house. The quorum was fixed so that no session could be held without a French-Canadian majority. Goodwill and patience had allayed much of the jealousy, but there was a distinct racial cleavage. On the other hand, an impression was abroad that organized efforts were being made to mould the assembly and council to the wishes of the English party.5

When Dorchester returned there was little opportunity for constitutional issues. The judicial system was carefully and elaborately organized under a judicature act, which remained the basis of the system in Lower Canada till the union. Strained relations with the United States and French propaganda in Canada occupied the attention of the executive and called for abnormal measures. But Dorchester had little

mentaire La question de langue' (Le Canada Français, Sept.-Oct. 1918, pp. 11 ff., 95 ff.).

1 Doughty and McArthur, op. cit., p. 105.

2 Attorney-General Monk to Nepean, May 8, 1793, State Papers, Q. 66, p. 283 (Canadian Archives).

3 Dundas to Dorchester, October 2, 1793, ibid., Q. 65, p. 319.

4 Clarke to Dundas, July 3, 1793, ibid., Q. 63-2, p. 307.

5 Monk to Nepean, January 3, 1793, ibid., Q. 66, p. 261. Doughty and McArthur, op. cit., pp. 125 ff.

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