78 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTB. [VoL. 1. 



the members of wliich were to be appointed by the Governor from amongst 

 tlie British and French citizens of the colony. The passage of this Act had 

 probably the effect of hastening the American revolution, and it had cer- 

 tainly the effect of preventing the French people from casting their lot in with 

 the revolutionists. In 1776 the Declaration of Independence was signed, 

 and in 1783 Great Britain, by the Treaty of Paris, acknowledged the inde- 

 pendence of the revolted colonies as the " United States of America." 



The " United Empire Loyalists " — those who had stood by the King of 

 Great Britain durino; the revolutionary war — in some cases from choice, in 

 other cases to escape persecution, emigrated from the adjacent States to 

 various parts of what is now the Dominion of Canada — Nova Scotia, New 

 Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. In the last named Province they 

 '' squatted " along the St. Lawrence between Kingston and Montreal, along 

 the north shore of the eastern part of Lake Ontario, about the Bay of 

 Quinte, and in the Niagara Peninsula. Niagara had for them special 

 attractions, inasmuch as it was comparatively near and well known, natu- 

 rally adapted for agricultural life, and protected against Indian depreda- 

 tions by Fort Niagara, which remained in the hands of the British authori- 

 ties till the negotiation of the Jay Treaty in 1796. During the seven years, 

 from 1783 to 1790, the population of the western part of the Province of 

 Quebec, as defined by the Act of 1794, increased with rapidity, owing to the 

 immigration of these English-speaking exiles, and it soon became evident 

 that the primitive constitution provided by the Quebec Act would have to 

 be changed in conformity with the altered conditions. The Constitutional 

 Act, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1791, divided Quebec 

 into Upper and Lower Canada, the line of division being in part the Ottawa 

 River, and in part a line from the Ottawa to the St. Lawrence along the 

 western limit of the most westerly of the French seigniories. Each of these 

 Provinces was furnished with a Parliament of its own, and each Parliament 

 consisted of a Governor, a Legislative Council, whose members were ap- 

 pointed by the Crown, and a Legislative Assembly, whose members were 

 elected under a very restricted franchise. 



It should be borne in mind that though the " United Empire Loyalists " 

 had opposed their fellow colonists in the attempt to assert their indepeii- 

 dence of Great Britain, they had long been accustomed to a system of 

 Government under which they made their own laws in all important mat- 

 ters, and administered for the most part their own affairs of state. The thirteen 

 colonies had all been provided with legislatures for a longer or a shorter 

 period — some of them for over a century — and had enjoyed a degree of 

 political freedom which left nothing to be desired until the unfortunate 

 a,ttempts of the British Parliament to collect an Imperial tax between 176'1: 



