The Constitutional act of 1791 established in each province a legislative council and assembly, with powers to make laws.  The legislative council was to be appointed by the king for life, in Upper Canada it was to consist of not less than seven, and in Lower Canada of not less than fifteen members.  The sovereign might, if he thought proper, annex hereditary titles of honour to the right of being summoned to the legislative council in either province—­a provision which was never brought into operation.  The whole number of members in the assembly of Upper Canada was not to be less than sixteen; in Lower Canada not less than fifty—­to be chosen by a majority of votes in either case.  The British parliament reserved to itself the right of levying and collecting customs-duties, for the regulation of navigation and commerce to be carried on between the two provinces, or between either of them and any other part of the British dominions or any foreign country.  Parliament also reserved the power of directing the payment of these duties, but at the same time left the exclusive apportionment of all moneys levied in this way to the legislature, which could apply them to such public uses as it might deem expedient.  The free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion was guaranteed permanently.  The king was to have the right to set apart, for the use of the Protestant clergy in the colony, a seventh part of all uncleared crown lands.  The governor might also be empowered to erect parsonages and endow them, and to present incumbents or ministers of the Church of England.  The English criminal law was to obtain in both provinces.

In the absence of Lord Dorchester in England, the duty devolved on Major-General Alured Clarke, as lieutenant-governor, to bring the Lower Canadian constitution into force by a proclamation on the 18th February, 1791.  On the 7th May, in the following year, the new province of Lower Canada was divided into fifty electoral districts, composed of twenty-one counties, the towns of Montreal and Quebec, and the boroughs of Three Rivers and William Henry (now Sorel).  The elections to the assembly took place in June, and a legislative council of fifteen influential Canadians was appointed.  The new legislature was convoked “for the despatch of business” on the 17th December, in the same year, in an old stone building known as the Bishop’s Palace, which stood on a rocky eminence in the upper town of the old capital.

Chief Justice Smith took the chair of the legislative council under appointment by the crown, and the assembly elected as its speaker Mr. Joseph Antome Panet, an eminent advocate, who was able to speak the two languages.  In the house there were only sixteen members of British origin—­and in later parliaments there was even a still smaller representation—­while the council was nearly divided between the two nationalities.  When the house proceeded to business, one of its first acts was to order that all motions, bills and other