e easy recovery of
small debts; an Act to regulate the tolls to be taken in mills (not
more than a twelfth for grinding and bolting); and an Act for building
a Gaol and Court House in every district within the province, and for
altering the names of the said districts, the district of Lunenburg to
be called the Eastern District; that of Mecklenburg, the Midland
District; that of Nassau, the Home District; and that of Hesse, the
Western District.

Parliament was about a month in session, when it was prorogued by His
Excellency. On the 15th of October he gave the assent of the Crown to
the Bills passed, and in the prorogation speech, made on the same day,
he intimated his intention of taking such measures as he deemed prudent
to reserve to the Crown, for the public benefit, a seventh of all lands
granted or to be granted; and he begged the popular representatives to
explain to their constituents, that the province was singularly blest
with a constitution the very image and transcript of the British
Constitution! There being only thirty thousand inhabitants in the whole
province, small as the Parliament was, the people, if not fairly, were
at least sufficiently represented. It is somewhat doubtful,
nevertheless, that a constitution which gave only a quasi-sovereign to
Upper Canada, neither directly, nor, as the Governors of Canada now
are, indirectly responsible to the people, could have been the very
image and transcript of the British Constitution. There was a misty
resemblance to that celebrated and unwritten form of government, in the
erection of three estates--King, Lords, and Commons--and no more. But,
as it is sometimes expedient to be thankful for small favors, it may
have appeared to Governor Simcoe that the new constitution of the
colony was superior to that of England before _magna charta_.
Undoubtedly the Governor was an honest man, a good soldier, a prudent
ruler, liberally educated, and of considerable mental capacity. He
appears to have been a member of the Imperial Parliament at the time of
the passage of the Separation Act, for when the report of the Bill was
brought up in the Commons, on the 16th of May, 1791, it appears by the
debate, that a Colonel Simcoe spoke in favor of the adoption of the
report, pronounced a panegyric on the British Constitution, and wished
it to be adopted in the present instance, as far as circumstances would
admit. Aware of the advantages which such a colony as Upper Canada, if