ead Versailles lived on for seven years
after the fall of the Bastille! And yet there is still
one citizen o Quebec whose early partners were chaperoned
by ladies who had danced the minuet with Lord and Lady
Dorchester.

The two royal visits were not without their political
significance--using the word political in its larger
meaning. But the three years between them--that is,
1788-89-90--formed the really pregnant time of
constitutional development, when the Canada Act of 1791
was taking shape in the minds of its chief authors
--Carleton and Smith in Canada, Grenville and Pitt in
England. The Loyalists and the English-speaking merchants
of Quebec and Montreal took good care to make themselves
heard at every stage of the proceedings. Most French
Canadians would have preferred to be left without the
suspected blessings of a parliament. The clergy and
seigneurs wished for a continuance of the Quebec Act,
and the habitants wanted they knew not what, provided it
would enable them to get more and give less. The
English-speaking people, on the other hand, were all for
a parliament. But they differed widely as to what kind
of parliament would suit their purpose best. As a rule
they acquiesced, with a more or less bad grace, in the
necessity of admitting French Canadians on the same terms
as themselves. If Canada, without the Maritime Provinces,
should be taken as a whole then the French Canadians
would only be in a moderate majority. If, however, two
provinces, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, were to be
erected, then the English-speaking minority in Lower
Canada would be outvoted three or four to one.

There was a third alternative: no less than the
establishment of a regular Dominion of British North
America in 1790, a step which might have saved much
trouble between that time and the Confederation of 1867.
William Smith was its strongest advocate, Carleton its
most cautious and judicious supporter. The chief justice
was in favour of federating Upper and Lower Canada with
the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland into a single
dominion. Each of the six provinces would have its own
parliament under a lieutenant-governor, while there would
also be a central parliament under a governor-general.
Carleton forwarded the suggestion to the home government;
but he nowhere committed himself to any very definite
scheme. His own preference was for keeping the existing
province of Quebec a little longer, then dividing it,
and afte