420 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [V^ol. VII. 



a very strong interest in introducing and maintaining the self-governing 

 institutions of the former colonies. Yet some of the first and nearly all 

 of the later arrivals, being largely farmers and civilians, such as those 

 settled in Fredericksburg, Adolphustown and the Prince Edward 

 peninsula, at once attempted to reproduce in Canada their familiar 

 institutions. Thus, while in the townships in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of Kingston, there appears to have been little anxiety with 

 reference to town meetings, yet in the townships named, town meetings 

 were established before there was any legal warrant for them, as, for 

 instance, the record of Adolphustown will show.^ 



But we must turn now to that change in the fortune of the western 

 settlements which came with the passing of the Constitutional Act of 

 1791. By it the western districts were formed into an independent 

 province, with a representative assembly and an opportunity to introduce 

 English laws and institutions. 



To preside over the formative peri-id of this new Government, 

 General John Graves Simcoe arrived in Upper Canada. Simcoe was a 

 man whose life had been spent in the profession of arms. He was, from 

 all accounts, a most efficient officer, saturated with the military spirit. 

 A man of simple, straightforward ideas, devoted to military methods, 

 when in authority he was accustomed to give his commands to go and 

 come and find them obeyed without question. Almost incapable, by 

 temper and experience, of recognizing any other form of administration, 

 he sought to organize his Government as nearly as possible on a 

 military basis. Self-government by the people at large he fervently and 

 frankly abhorred. Aristocratic military and ecclesiastical rule he con- 

 sidered to be the only possible form of stable government for a decent 

 and respectful people and a well-meaning ruler. As governor of Upper 

 Canada he felt that the whole responsibility for the successful adminis- 

 tration of the colony rested upon his shoulders. His sense of responsi- 

 bility, however, was felt not towards the colonists, but towards the 

 Home Government, hence his extreme unwillingness to share with the 

 colonists the administration of the country which they occupied. 

 Canada did not belong to the colonists, but to Great Britain ; the 

 governor was not appointed by the colonists, or in any way responsible 

 to them. He was sent out to administer a British colony in the 

 interests and for the glory of the country which sent him. True, those 

 interests and that glory were to be expressed in a happy and prosperous 

 condition of the colony, but the proper methods and means for accom- 



I Early Municipal Records of the MidlaiiJ District, in Appendix to the Report of the Ontario Bureau 

 of Industries, 1897. 



