56 JOHN GEORGE BOURINOT ON 
French Canada up to the necessity of establishing a liberal system of municipal institu- 
tions. As we shall see, before the close of this paper, it was not until after the Union of 
1840 that the French Canadians could be brought to acknowledge the benefits of local 
taxation imposed by their own local representatives. In this respect, they made less 
progress than the people of Upper Canada, to whose history we shall now proceed to 
refer. 
IV.—Upper CANADA, 1792—1840. 
As I have already stated, Upper Canada was settled by United Empire Loyalists, who 
came into the country after the War of Independence. The majority of these people settled 
on the shores of Lake Ontario, in the vicinity of Kingston and the Bay of Quinté, in the 
Niagara district, and in other favoured localities by Lakes Ontario and Erie.’ On the 24th 
of July, 1788, the governor-general issued a proclamation ? constituting the following 
districts in Western or Upper Canada, viz., Luneburg, Mecklenburg, Nassau, Hesse. 
Luneburg comprised the towns or tracts known by the names of Lancaster, Char- 
lottenburg, Cornwall, Osnabruck, Williamsburg, Matilda, Edwardsburg, Augusta and 
Elizabethtown. Mecklenburg comprised Pittsburg, Kingston, Ernestown, Fredericksburg, 
Adolphustown, Marysburg, Sophiasburg, Ameliasburg, Sydney, Thurlow, Richmond, and 
Camden. Nassau comprised the extensive district which extends from Trent to Long 
Point on Lake Erie, and Hesse, the rest of the western part of Canada to Lake St. Clair. 
To each of these districts were appointed a judge and a sheriff, and justice was administered 
in courts of common pleas. The justices were taken from the best men the country offered 
in the absence of persons of legal attainments. The judges in those primitive times seem 
to have possessed almost absolute power. 
The first local divisions of Upper Canada appear to have been the townships. The 
British Government was extremely liberal in its grants of land to the Loyalists and the 
officers and soldiers who settled in Upper Canada and the other provinces. The grants were 
made free of expense on the following scale: to a field officer, 5,000 acres; to a captain, 3,000 ; 
to a subaltern, 2,000; to a private, 200. Surveys were first made of the lands extending 
from Lake St. Francis, on the St. Lawrence, to beyond the Bay of Quinté. Townships were 
laid out and divided into concessions and lots of 200 acres. Each township generally 
extended nine miles in front and twelve in the rear, and varied from 80,000 to 40,000 acres. 
The townships were not named for many years, but were numbered in two divisions.’ One 

! Ryerson’s Loyalists in America, ii. 189. 
* See Proclamation in Collection of Acts and Ordinances relating to Upper Canada, York, 1818. Luneburg is 
correctly spelt in the Proclamation, but in course of time it became, for some unexplained reason, “ Lunenburg.” 
The name still survives in the changed form in Nova Scotia. 
* Canniff’s History of the Settlement of Upper Canada, p. 62; also foregoing Proclamation. 
* Judge Duncan of Luneburg was a storekeeper and a captain in the militia; he dealt out law, dry goods and 
groceries alternately. Zbid., p. 506. 
* Canniff; Ryerson, ii. 224-5. Dr. Scadding, Toronto of Old, p. 362, gives an amusing account of the frivolous 
way in which many of the old Townships of Upper Canada were named in the course of years. Flos, Tay and Tiny, 
which are namés of three now populous townships in the Penetanguishene district, are a commemoration of three 
of Lady Sarah Maitland’s lapdogs. Some one wrote Jus et Norma, as a joke, across a plan of anewly surveyed region, 
and three townships were consequently known as “Jus”, “Et”, and “Norma” for years until they were changed 
to Barrie, Palmerston and Clarendon respectively. “Aye,” “ Yea,” and “ No” were also designations of local divisions. 
