[199] In 1789, Hugh Finlay, Postmaster-General of the province and member of council, wrote suggesting that ‘We might make the people entirely English by introducing the English language. This is to be done by free schools, and by ordaining that all suits in our courts shall be carried on in English after a certain number of years’. See Shortt and Doughty, p. 657. He anticipated to some extent Lord Durham’s views.
[200] The correspondence is given in full in Mr. Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives for 1890, Note B, p. 10. See also Shortt and Doughty, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-91, and Egerton and Grant, Canadian Constitutional Developments.
[201] Compare the very similar language used by Carleton in a private memorandum written in 1786 and quoted in note 3, p. 551, Shortt and Doughty.
[202] No. 46 in ‘Papers relative to the province of Quebec ordered to be printed April 21, 1791’. The Order in Council is referred to in Lord Dorchester’s Commission as having been made on August 19, 1791; but that was the date on which the report was made upon which the Order was based. The boundary line sketched out in the Parliamentary Paper, and adopted almost word for word in the Order in Council, was again adopted by Sec. 6 of the British North America Act of 1867, when the Dominion was formed and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, i.e. Upper and Lower Canada, were, after having been re-united by the Act of 1840, again separated from each other.
[203] 18 Geo. III, cap. 12: ‘An Act for removing all doubts and apprehensions concerning taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain in any of the colonies, provinces, and plantations in North America and the West Indies, &c.’ The preamble ran as follows: ‘Whereas taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain, for the purpose of raising a revenue in H.M.’s colonies, provinces and plantations in North America, has been found by experience to occasion great uneasiness and disorders among H.M.’s faithful subjects, who may nevertheless be disposed to acknowledge the justice of contributing to the common defence of the Empire, provided such contribution should be raised under the authority of the general court or general assembly of each respective colony.’
[204] The above statement represents the general effect and intent of the Act, but a long and complicated controversy arose subsequently as to the disposal of the taxes raised under the Imperial Act of 1774 (14 Geo. III, cap. 88), ‘to establish a fund towards further defraying the charges of the Administration of Justice and support of the Civil Government within the Province of Quebec in America.’ It was contended that the effect of the Declaratory Act of 1778, together with the Constitution Act of 1791, was to hand over the proceeds of these taxes to be disposed of by the provincial legislatures. The contention had no real basis, and the Law officers of the Crown reported it to be unfounded, but eventually, by an Act of 1831 (1 and 2 Will. IV, cap. 23), the legislatures of the two Canadas were empowered to appropriate the revenues in question.
[205] Report on Canadian Archives, 1891; State Papers, Upper Canada, p. 16.
[206] The monument is in the North Choir aisle. The inscription runs as follows:
‘Sacred to the memory of John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-General in the army and Colonel of the 22nd regiment of Foot, who died on the 26th day of October, 1806, aged 54, in whose life and character the virtues of the Hero, the Patriot, and the Christian were so eminently conspicuous that it may be justly said he served his King and his country with a zeal exceeded only by his piety towards his God.
‘During the erection of this monument, his eldest son, Francis Gwillim Simcoe, lieutenant of the 27th regiment of Foot, born at Wolford Lodge in this county, June 6, 1791, fell in the breach at the siege of Badajoz, April 6, 1812, in the 21st year of his age.’