1889-90.] FIRST LEGISLATIVE WORK OF UPPER CANADA. 79 



and 1774. In spite of their adhesion to the Royal cause, the "Loyalists" 

 were of a robust political temperament, and the appointed " Legislative 

 Council," which they found sitting in distant Quebec, was a poor substitute 

 both theoretically and practically for the legislative machinery to which 

 they had been accustomed. Their feelings in this matter were shared by 

 the immigrants from Britain, who were familiar with representative parlia- 

 mentary government there. Both classes of the new community were 

 further accustomed to the common law of England, to free and common 

 soccage tenure of land, and to the exercise of local self government through 

 the medium of municipal machinery, however imperfect. The settlers in 

 Western Canada were at once distant from Quebec and close to the United 

 States, far from their own seat of government and near a people whom 

 they regai'ded as their bitterest enemies. From every point of view the 

 system of government under which they found themselves was unsuited to 

 their needs and peculiarities, and from knowing what these were one might 

 almost predict without actual acquaintance with the work of the first Upper 

 Canadian Parliament what that work would be like. 



Nor should it be forgotten that under the new system introduced in 1791 

 the offices of Governor and Chief Justice were of the very greatest impor- 

 tance. The occupant of the former acted then on his own personal respon- 

 sibility as an Imperial officer, having no ministry, as colonial governors 

 now have, responsible to Parliament for the advice they gave. He wrote 

 his own speeches to be read from the throne, and in this and other ways 

 intimated his own wishes and propounded his own policy to the Houses of 

 Parliament. The first Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, had 

 been a British otticer during the Revolutionary war, and he came to the dis- 

 charge of his duties with a high sense of the dignity of his position and of the 

 political value of the British Parliamentary system. In the first Chief Justice, 

 Sir William Osgoode, he had an able coadjutor and a cordial sympathiser. 

 Behind or beneath a somewhat amusing assumption of vice-regal and judi- 

 cial formality there can l)e little donbt that there existed among the various 

 parties to the work of legislation a certain frank familiarity which made it 

 possible for all, untrammelled by partisanship, to bring to bear on that work 

 the most earnest consideration, the most assiduous effort, and the most dis- 

 interested desire to promote the common good. 



The first Parliament of Upper Canada met at Newark, now Niagara, on 

 the 17th of September, 1792. It continued its meetings at the same place 

 for four sessions, the last being held in 1795. The first session of the 

 second Parliament was held at Newark in 1796, and the second session at 

 York, now Toronto, in 1797. It is impossible now to say, with certainty, 

 in what building the first Parliament met, but the weight of local tradition 



