thwith,
dividing the province into four administrative districts on an
English pattern, and preparing for the English government a careful
report on the social, political, and judicial conditions of his
province, to facilitate remedial legislation.

[Footnote 38: Now the City of Kingston, Ontario.]

[Illustration: Admiral Viscount Nelson]

In the spring of 1791 the younger Pitt introduced into the British
House of Commons a Bill providing for the political needs of Canada.
It proposed the division of the country into two provinces, the
special character of each being preserved through the medium of an
elective assembly. This naturally raised strenuous opposition among
the English minority whom this division would still leave in the
province of Lower Canada. It was all very well, they declared, for the
English of Upper Canada to be accorded representative government, but
for themselves this measure would mean a further decrease of influence
in Quebec. On behalf of the English section of the population, Adam
Lymburner, an influential merchant of the city, proceeded to England,
and was heard at the bar of the House of Commons. The debate was keen
and fierce. Pitt supported the Bill in its original form, contending
that the territorial separation would put an end to the strife between
the old French inhabitants and the new settlers from Britain and the
New England colonies. Edmund Burke, whose speech related mainly to the
French Revolution, was of opinion that "to attempt to amalgamate
two populations composed of races of men diverse in language, laws,
and customs, was a complete absurdity." Fox, opposing the division of
the province, accused Burke of irrelevancy in his address, and made a
speech which provoked a memorable quarrel and brought to an end the
friendship of the two greatest Parliamentary orators of the century.

At last, however, the Bill became law under the title of the
Constitutional Act; and on the 17th of December, 1792, the first
legislature of Lower Canada assembled in the chapel of the Bishop's
Palace, which had been fitted up as a council chamber. From the
seventeenth century this hoary structure of stone had overlooked the
Grand Battery from the top of Mountain Hill, commanding a view of the
basin and the attenuated Cote de Beaupre, of which from the time of
Laval it had been the seigneurial manor-house. In appropriating the
episcopal palace for legislative purposes, the Imperial government
recom