as the opening of any other British parliament—­the escort, guard, and band, the royal salute, the brilliant staff, the scarlet cloth of state, the few and quiet members of the Upper House, the many of the Lower, jostling each other to get a good place near Mr Speaker at the bar, the radiant ladies, the crowded galleries corniced with inquiring faces and craned necks, the Gentlemen Ushers and their quaint bows, the Speech from the Throne and the occasional lifting of His Excellency’s hat, the retiring in full state; and then the ebbing away of all the sightseers, their eddying currents of packed humanity in the halls and passages, the porch, the door, the emptying street.  But inwardly what a world of difference!  For here was the first British parliament in which legislators of foreign birth and blood and language were shaping British laws as British subjects.

In September 1793 Carleton returned from his two years’ absence and was welcomed more warmly than ever.  Quebec blazed with illuminations.  The streets swarmed with eager crowds.  The first session of the first parliament had been better than any one had dared to hope for.  There was a general tendency to give the new constitution a fair trial; and all classes looked to Carleton to make the harmony that had been attained both permanent and universal.  Dr Jacob Mountain, first Anglican bishop of Quebec, also arrived shortly afterwards and was warmly greeted by the Roman Catholic prelate, who embraced him, saying, ‘It’s time you came to shepherd your own flock.’  Mountain was statesman and churchman in one.  He had been chosen by the elder Pitt to be the younger’s tutor and then chosen by the younger to be his private secretary.  The fact that the Anglican bishop of Quebec was then and for many years afterwards a sort of Canadian chaplain-general to the Imperial troops and that most of the leading officials and leading Loyalists belonged to the Church of England made him a personage of great importance.  It was fortunate that, as in the case of Inglis down in Halifax, the choice could not have fallen on a better man or on one who knew better how to win the esteem of communions other than his own.  This same year (1793) died William Smith, full of honours.  But the next year his excellent successor arrived in the person of William Osgoode, the new chief justice, an eminent English lawyer who had served for two years as chief justice of Upper Canada and whose name is commemorated in Osgoode Hall, Toronto.  He had come out on the distinct understanding that no fees were to be attached to his office, only a definite salary.  This was a great triumph for Carleton, who certainly practised what he preached.