1901-2.] The Beginning of Municipal Government in Ontario. 411 



He took part, therefore, in framing, or at least revising the Consti- 

 tutional Act of 1791, which made possible the adoption of English laws 

 and institutions in Upper Canada. But when we come to look into that 

 act, we observe that the greater part of it is taken up with provisions for 

 establishing an hereditary political aristocracy and an episcopal state 

 church. 



It was a firm conviction with the high Tory party of the time, that 

 had the colonies been supplied with an hereditary landed aristocracy 

 and a well-endowed state church, there never would have been any 

 revolution in them.^ Hence, great care was taken by the authors of the 

 Constitutional Act, to make very special provision for these two 

 bulwarks of monarchical rule. 



Having thus briefly outlined the situation to be occupied by the early 

 settlers of Western Canada, we are in a better position to understand the 

 peculiar circumstances attending the attempts to introduce local or 

 municipal government in Upper Canada. 



It was at once natural and inevitable that those loyalists who had 

 really exercised full citizenship in the colonies, should seek to reproduce 

 here the various customs and institutions economic, religious, social and 

 political, to which they had been accustomed in the colonies before the 

 Revolution. While, therefore, the Government might look askance 

 upon these institutions as the real cause of the Revolution, the loyalists, 

 nevertheless, cherished them as the very essence of the British system 

 as they had known it. To these things they had remained loyal, for 

 these they had fought and suffered. We can imagine their feelings, 

 therefore, on being told that all these laws and institutions were illegal, 

 that to be good British subjects they must give up all that they had 

 hitherto valued as the very essence of the British system, and adopt a 

 French-Canadian system, which they had hitherto regarded as of all 

 things the most alien. To accept the laws and institutions of a 

 conqueror might indeed be hard, but must be expected as the natural 

 sequel of conquest. But how little to be expected that those who had 

 followed the British flag should lose more completely the essentials of 

 British freedom than those who had remained in the revolted colonies ? 

 The supposition could hardly be taken seriously, it was too bad to be 

 true. 



Being for some time engaged in procuring the merest necessaries of 

 life, and laying foundations for future property, interpretations of the 



I See, among other literature of the period, Knox's Extra Official State Papers, Vol. II., pp. 21, 30, 

 33, etc. 



