islative Council, every member of which was to be nominated by the
crown. But the working of this act had from the first proved very
unsatisfactory, and had become more so as the population increased by
the influx of fresh settlers from Great Britain, and also from the
United States, here many of those who in the recent civil war had
adhered the connection with the mother country had been exposed to
constant malice and ill-treatment, and had preferred crossing the border
and obtaining lands in Canada to returning to England. Pitt recognized
the evil, and undertook to remedy it and in 1791 he introduced a bill to
establish a constitution for Canada, which a recent historian describes
as "remarkable, as recognizing for the first time the wise and generous
principle of independent colonial institutions, which has since been
fully developed in every dependency of the British crown capable of
local self-government."[112] One peculiar difficulty in framing such a
constitution arose from the circumstance of the old French colonists,
who greatly outnumbered the settlers of British blood, being attached to
the Roman Catholic religion; while the British settlers were nearly, or
perhaps all, Protestant, though of different denominations. The
difficulty was, indeed, lessened by the circumstance that the French
dwelt in Quebec and the district between that city and the mouth of the
St. Lawrence, and that the English had for the most part betaken
themselves to the more inland region. And this local separation of the
two races the minister now took for his guide in the arrangement which
he devised. The most important feature in it was the division of the
province into two parts, as Upper and Lower Canada, and the
establishment of a distinct local Legislature for each division, a House
of Assembly being created in each, and a Council, so as, in Pitt's
words, "to give both divisions the full advantages of the British
constitution." The Assemblies were to have the power of taxation (so
that there was no room left for such perverse legislation by a British
Parliament as had lately cost its sovereign the United States). The act
of _habeas corpus_ was extended to the province (a privilege which no
one of French blood had ever enjoyed before); the tenure of land was to
be the socage[113] tenure so long and happily established in England.
Complete religious toleration was established, and a certain proportion
of land was allotted in Upper Canad