the regulations of the community from which it held. To ascertain the propriety of dividing the provinces required a degree of local knowledge, which he did not possess ; but he should take it that the measure was convenient. An attempt to join people dissimilar in law, language, and manners, appeared to him highly absurd; to join too the conquerors and the conquered must give rise to much unpleasant feeling, and many invidious distinctions. Such a measure would appear to him to sow what must be most fatal to the establishment of a new government, the seeds of discord. This geographical distribution then was in his opinion highly convenient. The upper colony was chiefly inhabited by emigrants from America: these then were desirous of the English constitution. Let the Canadians have a constitution formed upon the principles of Canadians, and Englishmen upon the principles of Englishmen. Let them be governed upon the nature of men, the only wise foundation of all governments; and let there not be adopted any wild theories, more unknown than the north-west coast of America. In this point of view he approved of the division, as accommodated to the circumstances of the country, and the natural prejudices of the inhabitants. He recommended that system of government which tends to promote the union of the good of the individual and of the public, in opposition to that which attempted to methodize anarchy. He admired the division; no, he did not possess sufficient local knowledge to admire it: but he could at least say that he did not disapprove of it. Situated as he was, in a state supported by no party, there was a voice which cried to him, beware. In the short time during which he remained in parliament, and it would be but a very short time, he would, however, support those principles of government which were founded upon the wisdom of antiquity, and sanctioned by the experience of time. On the present bill, necessary as it was

for him to be careful of what he should say, he would state the arguments that occurred to him, as they should arise, upon every clause.

Yet

Mr. Chancellor Pitt said, that there were none who from their attention to every clause were more qualified, on the present bill, to communicate information from the source of their knowledge, or draw illustration from their powers of eloquence, than the right honourable gentleman; yet he was desirous, that in considering particular clauses, regard should likewise be had to their connexion with the general tenor of the bill. It was intended to give a free constitution to Canada, according to British ideas of freedom. This could not be done without a division of the provinces, to prevent that clashing of opposite interests which must otherwise necessarily ensue. even this measure, he had owned, was not free from local inconvenience, though by no means equal to the inconvenience of either not giving them a new system of government, or not providing in that system for this division of the provinces. Could it be inferred, from his Majesty's proclamation, that he was to give Canada the whole of the English laws? This proclamation was made in 1763; and by an act of parliament in 1773, all English laws had been abolished except the criminal laws. From this fact it would be judged how far it was binding on his Majesty to give to this colony the whole of the English laws.

It

Lord Sheffield said, that in addition to the objections which had been made to the division of the province, he thought it not justifiable, on any principle of policy or colonization, to encourage settlements in the anterior parts of America, which the division certainly tended to do. had been much doubted whether colonies were advantageous to the mother country. Certainly those which furnished only the same products were not; but those which assisted our fisheries, and above all the West India plantations, were highly advantageous; the latter produced what

we could not; we supplied them with every thing we carried for them. They do not build ships, or vie with us in any thing, and never could manufacture for themselves. He noticed the design of building the seat of the new government on the most distant part of Lake Ontario, between which place and the mother country the communication must ever be difficult. He observed that it could not be the interest of Great Britain to form a settlement of farmers in a country which grows the same articles as our own. The expense would be great, as it must be a long time before it could maintain its own government, At the same time it would not be possible to retain the supply of such settlements, as it would not be practicable to prevent the smuggling of manufactures from the adjoining United States. He concluded by saying that it would be advisable to maintain a few posts to promote a trade with the Indians; but to encourage migration from the coast to the interior parts of that great continent, he conceived to be a system extremely unwise.

Mr. For asserted, that it was a mistaken inference of the right honourable gentleman, that those who disapproved of the division of the colony rejected the whole clause. They wished only to amend it, by leaving out the first part. That clause contained the whole Plan of Government, the Governor, the Legislative Council, the Assembly, to which no one had stated any objections. With regard to the different opinions of the division of the colony, there was certainly difficulties on both sides. If the division should take place, the French laws would be established as general in one province, and the English laws in another. Many had gone to settle in the colony, on the faith of his Majesty's proclamation, that the British constitution would be established. Could this division be attended with a complete separation of the old and new inhabitants, its views would then be answered. But several of those who had come on the faith of his Majesty's

proclamation resided, not in the upper, but in the lower province; and several of those who might be deemed to be hardly used, resided in the upper. But it might be auswered, that the act made seventeen years since did away the proclamation. That act had given great dissatisfaction at the time, and since it had frequently been thought that it ought to be repealed. If the question of right was insisted upon, it was certainly done away legally; but in forming this new constitution, it would be more desirable to act upon the principles of good faith. Was it necessary, asked Mr. Fox, to adhere to the proclamation, that all the English laws should be introduced into the colony? None wished it, and that was a reason why they should not do it. With regard to the French laws, they might be allowed to have constitutional and municipal laws, if they were desirous that these laws should not be taken away. But, in fact, these were not the French laws at the conquest of Canada. They had sent only a part of their laws to their colony; they formed merely what was called the custom of Paris; but that had been long since abrogated. Hence arose the utmost difficulty in appeals to the Privy Council; the law to which they referred no longer existed; it was necessary to consult, not the French lawyer, but the antiquarian. If any middle way could be found, he owned it would be the best. He would suggest one expedient, and that was to adopt the French laws in the upper, and compel the government to alter them till they should have accommodated them to the local circum stances of the country. But as for the division, he owned that he regarded it as attended with the utmost possible inconvenience. The commerce of the upper part, in order to be carried on, must pass through the lower; and might in its passage be fettered, by the Legislature there, with whatever duties or obstructions they might choose to impose. All English merchants had complained of the loss which they had sustained from the French laws; and

affirmed that, in consequence of their uncertainty and defective regulations, whatever flourishing appearance their trade might have exhibited, they had ultimately been sufferers in every connexion with that colony. So that the result of their experience had been to abandon trade, from which the uncertainty of law had shut up every avenue of advantage.

Mr. W. Grant said that, in general, commercial laws differed but little from one another. The commercial laws of England and of France were nearly the same. All commercial laws were founded on the principle of contracts, either expressed or implied. He begged leave to correct a mistake, on a subject of which he was enabled to speak from his local knowledge. The custom of Paris had no reference to the regulations of commerce, but of real property. The merchants were aggrieved, not in consequence of commercial decisions, but of insolvency. The relief granted to creditors was very different in different countries. It was granted in France, according to the nature of the debts. The merchants thought that they had reason to complain, when they found the whole of the bankrupt estate run away with by French deeds, of which they knew nothing. The uncertainty of laws was, in every colony, necessarily a subject of complaint. They brought with them, only that part of the laws of the mother country which was applicable to their new situation. In Canada, the uncertainty, from the mixture of French, was still greater. Another disagreeable circumstance was, a dispute whether a collection of commercial laws, made by Lewis the XIVth, called the "Code Marchand," had ever been really introduced into the colony, or ought to form part of the system. Instead of framing a new bankrupt law, would it not be better to allow any sort of an assembly to enter into the detail of regulations, which, in the local circumstances of the country, they should find most convenient? It was not to be wondered at, that appeals should be a