1889-90.1 FIRST LEGISLATIVE WORK OF UPPER CANADA. 77 



THE LEGISLATIVE WORK OF THE FIRST PARLIAMENT 

 OF UPPER CANADA (1792-95). 



By William Houston, M.A. 



(Read 3rd July, 1890.) 



The work of the first Upper Canadian Parliament cannot be clearly 

 understood without a preliminary survey of the events which led to the es- 

 tablishment of the Province of Upper Canada in 1791. A vast but 

 indefinite extent of territory was surrendered by the French Governor to 

 General Amherst at the capitulation of Montreal in 1760, and this surrender 

 was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The boundaries of tlie sur- 

 rendered territory were not defined either in the Articles of Capitulation or 

 in the Treaty of Paris, but the conquered country was regarded in a vague 

 way as extending westward to the Mississippi and northward to the south- 

 ern limit of the territory covered by the Hudson Bay Company's Charter. 

 The most easterly part of this vast region was erected into the " Province 

 of Quebec " by the Royal proclamation of 1763, with an area not greatly 

 different from the area of the same Province to-day, the south-westerly 

 limit being a line drawn from Lake Nipissing to Lake Champlain. The 

 Proclamation did not provide any machinery for the government of the new 

 Province, which, with the rest of the surrendered territory, had been ad- 

 ministered for three years under "military law. Civil government was 

 established by the issue of a commission to General Murray as Governor of 

 Quebec in 1764, the appointment of a small advisory council, and the 

 appointment of a Chief Justice and other civil oJQScials. 



For eleven years the Government of Quebec retained this rudimentary 

 form, but in 1774 the British Parliament, prompted partly by the demands 

 of the people of Quebec for a more regular form of government, partly by 

 the requests of the residents in the distant French settlements for protec- 

 tion, and partly by the desire of preventing the Canadians generally from 

 joining in the then rising revolutionary movement of the English colonists, 

 passed the Quebec Act. This statute enlarged the Province by extending 

 it westward to the Mississippi, and southward to the Ohio, secured the 

 French Catholic clergy in the enjoyment of their " accustomed dues and 

 rights," established "Canadian law " as the rule of decision in all contro- 

 versies respecting property and civil rights, and created a legislative body, 



