[170] Miles' School History of Canada, Part III., Chap, i., pp. 192, 193.
CHAPTER XLVI.
The Constitution of Upper Canada was the same as that of Lower, established by the same Constitutional Act of 1791, the Act 31 George III., Chapter 31.
Before the Constitution of Upper Canada was established, when it formed part of the province of Quebec, Lord Dorchester, by proclamation, divided the now western part of the province, afterwards Upper Canada, into four districts with German names—namely, Lunenburg, extending from the River Ottawa to Gananoque; Mecklenburg, extending from Gananoque to the Trent; Nassau, extending from the Trent to Long Point, on Lake Erie; and Hesse, including the rest of the western part of Upper Canada to the Lake St. Clair. To each of these four districts a judge and a sheriff were appointed, who administered justice by means of Courts of Common Pleas.
Under the new Constitution, Upper Canada, like Lower Canada, had a Legislature consisting of a Governor, appointed by the Crown, and responsible only to it; a Legislative Council, appointed by the Crown, and the members appointed for life; and a Legislative Assembly, elected by the freeholders of the country. The Assembly was to be elected once in four years, but might be elected oftener if dissolved by the Governor, and was empowered to raise a revenue for public services, roads, bridges, schools, etc.; the Legislative Council consisted of seven members, appointed for life by the Crown; the House of Assembly consisted of sixteen members, elected by the people.
By usage and by approbation of the Imperial Government, though not by the provisions of the Constitutional Act, the Lieutenant-Governor was assisted, mostly ruled, by an Executive Council, consisting for the most part of salaried officers, judges, and members of the Legislative Council, who were not responsible either to the Governor or to the Legislative Council, or to the House of Assembly—an independent, irresponsible body—an oligarchy which exercised great power, was very intolerant, and became very odious.
The first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada was General John Graves Simcoe, who had commanded the Queen's Rangers in the revolutionary war; he was a landed gentleman, elected to the British House of Commons, in which he supported the Constitutional Act of 1791, and afterwards accepted the office of Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada created by that Act, and did all in his power to give beneficial effect to it. He arrived in Upper Canada the 8th of July, 1792, when the members of the Executive and Legislative Councils were sworn in at Kingston, and writs were issued for the election of members of the Legislative Assembly.
After much hesitation and perplexity, the seat of government was first established at a village then called Newark, now Niagara, at the mouth of the Niagara River, where the Governor built a small frame house which had to serve as a Parliament House, as well as residence for the Lieutenant-Governor. The Governor, with the usual state and ceremony, opened the first session of the first Parliament of Upper Canada the 17th of September, 1792. There were present three members of the Legislative Council and five members of the House of Assembly. The members of the Assembly have been represented as "plain, home-spun clad farmers and merchants, from the plough and the store." The members of the Legislature have always, for the most part, been such from that day to this, but many of the members of the first Parliament of Upper Canada had possessed respectable, and some of them luxurious homes, from which they had been exiled by narrow-minded and bitter enemies; they had fought on battle fields for the country whose forests they now burned and felled; their home-spun garments were some of the fruits of their own industry, and that of their wives and daughters. Eight years had elapsed since 10,000 of these United Empire Loyalists, driven from their homes in the States, came into the dense wilderness of Upper Canada, to hew out homes for themselves and their families in the vast solitude, the silence of which was only broken by the barking of the fox, the howl of the wolf and the growl of the bear, and the occasional whoop of the Indian.[171]