Like his brother before him the duke was very fond of dancing, and kept many a reluctant senior and many a tired-out chaperone up till all hours at the grand ball given in honour of his twenty-fourth birthday. Also like his brother he was inclined to reduce his duty dances to a minimum, much to Lady Dorchester's dismay. She had gone home with her husband for two years shortly after the duke's arrival. But she had seen enough of him, and was to see enough again on her return, to make her regret the good old times of more exacting ceremony. To her dying day, half a century later, she kept up a prodigious stateliness of manner. Before meals she expected the whole company to assemble and remain standing till she had made her royal progress through the room. She was a living anachronism for many years before her death, with her high-heeled, gold-buttoned, scarlet-coloured shoes, her Marie-Antoinette coiffure raised high above her head and interlaced with ribbons, her elaborately gorgeous dress, her intricate array of ornaments, and her long, jet-black, official-looking cane. But she was no anachronism to herself; for she still lived in the light of other days, in the fondly remembered times when, as the vice-reine of the Chateau St Louis, she helped her consort to settle nice points of etiquette and maintain a dignity befitting His Majesty's chosen representative. How did the seigneurs rank among themselves and with the leading English-speaking people? Who were to dance in the state minuet? Should dancing cease when the bishops came in, and for how long? Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to her viceregal self, and did that debutante offer her blushing cheek in quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously gave her the presentation kiss? How immeasurably far away it all seems now, that stately little court where the echoes of a dead Versailles lived on for seven years after the fall of the Bastille! And yet there is still one citizen o Quebec whose early partners were chaperoned by ladies who had danced the minuet with Lord and Lady Dorchester.
The two royal visits were not without their political significance—using the word political in its larger meaning. But the three years between them—that is, 1788-89-90—formed the really pregnant time of constitutional development, when the Canada Act of 1791 was taking shape in the minds of its chief authors —Carleton and Smith in Canada, Grenville and Pitt in England. The Loyalists and the English-speaking merchants of Quebec and Montreal took good care to make themselves heard at every stage of the proceedings. Most French Canadians would have preferred to be left without the suspected blessings of a parliament. The clergy and seigneurs wished for a continuance of the Quebec Act, and the habitants wanted they knew not what, provided it would enable them to get more and give less. The English-speaking people, on the other hand, were all for a parliament. But they differed widely as to what kind of parliament would suit their purpose best. As a rule they acquiesced, with a more or less bad grace, in the necessity of admitting French Canadians on the same terms as themselves. If Canada, without the Maritime Provinces, should be taken as a whole then the French Canadians would only be in a moderate majority. If, however, two provinces, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, were to be erected, then the English-speaking minority in Lower Canada would be outvoted three or four to one.
There was a third alternative: no less than the establishment of a regular Dominion of British North America in 1790, a step which might have saved much trouble between that time and the Confederation of 1867. William Smith was its strongest advocate, Carleton its most cautious and judicious supporter. The chief justice was in favour of federating Upper and Lower Canada with the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland into a single dominion. Each of the six provinces would have its own parliament under a lieutenant-governor, while there would also be a central parliament under a governor-general. Carleton forwarded the suggestion to the home government; but he nowhere committed himself to any very definite scheme. His own preference was for keeping the existing province of Quebec a little longer, then dividing it, and afterwards drawing in the other provinces. The chief justice preferred to make a constitution. The governor preferred to let it grow. The home government's preference could not be stated better than in Grenville's dispatch to Carleton of the 20th of October 1789: 'The general object is to assimilate the constitution to that of Great Britain as nearly as the difference arising from the manners of the People and from the present situation of the Province will admit. ... Attention is due to the prejudices and habits of the French Inhabitants and every caution should be used to continue to them the enjoyment of those civil and religious Rights which were secured to them by the Capitulation or which have since been granted by the liberal and enlightened spirit of the British Government.' Except for its rather too self-righteous conclusion this confidential announcement really is an admirable statement of the 'liberal and enlightened' views which prevailed at Westminster.
The bill, postponed in 1790, was introduced by Pitt himself in the House of Commons on the 7th of March 1791. Sixteen days later Adam Lymburner, a representative merchant of Quebec, whom Carleton described as 'a quiet, decent man, not unfriendly to the administration,' pleaded for hours before the committee of the House of Commons against the division of the province. All the English-speaking minority in the prospective province of Lower Canada were afraid of being swamped by the French-Canadian vote, and so of being hampered in liberty and trade. The London merchants naturally backed Lymburner. Fox opposed the bill as not being liberal enough. Burke flared up into the speech which led to his final breach with Fox. Pitt, the pilot who was to weather far greater storms in the years to come, eventually got the bill through both Houses with substantial majorities. On the 14th of May it became law. Quebec and Ontario were parted for good, notwithstanding the legislative union of fifty years later.
The Canada Act, or, as it is better known, the Constitutional Act, cut off Upper Canada. Lower Canada was now the old Quebec reduced to its right size, endowed with clarified laws and a brand-new parliament, and made as acceptable as possible to the English-speaking minority without any injustice to the vastly greater French majority. Quebec, Three Rivers, Montreal, and Sorel got each two members in the new parliament, an allotment which ensured a certain representation of the 'British' merchants. The franchise was the same in both provinces: in the country parts a forty-shilling freehold or its equivalent, and in the towns either a five-pound annual ownership value or twice that for a tenant. The Crown gave up all taxation except commercial duties, which were to be applied solely for the benefit of the provinces. Lands outside the seigneuries were to be in free and common socage, while seigneurial tenure itself could be converted into freehold on petition. One-seventh of the Crown lands was reserved for the endowment of the Church of England. The Crown kept all rights of veto and appointment. The legislatures were small in membership. The Upper Houses could be made hereditary; though the actual tenure was never more than for life during good behaviour. Carleton favoured the hereditary principle whenever it could be applied with advantage. But he knew the ups and downs of colonial fortunes too well to believe that Canada was ready for any such experiment.
No one dreamt of having what is now known as responsible government, that is, an executive sitting in the legislature and responsible to the legislature for its acts. Nor was the greatest of all parliamentary powers—the power of the purse—given outright. This, however, was owing to simple force of circumstances and not to any desire of abridging the liberties of the people. The fact is that at this time eighty per cent of the total civil expenditure had to be paid by the home government. It is frequently ignored that the mother country paid most of Canada's bills till long after the War of 1812, that she paid nearly all the naval and military accounts for longer still, and that she has borne far more than her own share of the common defence down to the present day.
The new constitution came into force on the 26th of December 1791; and, for the first time, Upper and Lower Canada had the right to elect their own representatives. Assemblies, of course, were nothing new in British North America. Nova Scotia had an assembly in 1758, the year that Louisbourg was taken. Prince Edward Island had one in 1773, the year before the Quebec Act was passed. New Brunswick had one in 1786, the year Carleton began his second term. But assemblies still had all the charm of novelty in 'Canada proper.' Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that Upper Canada experienced more charm than novelty while Lower Canada experienced more novelty than charm. The Anglo-Canadians in all five provinces were used to parliaments in America. Their ancestors had been used to them for centuries in England. So the little parliament of Upper Canada at Newark passed as many bills in five weeks as that of Lower Canada passed in seven months. The fact that there were fifty members in the Assembly at Quebec, while there were only half as many in both chambers at Newark, doubtless had something to do with it. But the fact that the Quebec parliament was an innovation, while the one at Newark was a simple development, had very much more.
There is no need to follow the course of legislation in any of the five provinces. As most of the civil and practically all the naval and military expenditure had to be met by the Imperial Treasury, and as Canada was five parts and no whole from her own parliamentary point of view, the legislation required for a grand total of two hundred and fifty thousand people could not be of the national kind. But at Quebec the scene, the setting, and the unheard-of innovation itself all give a special interest to every detail of the opening ceremony on the 17th of December 1792.
Carleton was in England, so the Speech from the Throne was read by the lieutenant-governor, Major-General Sir Alured Clarke. Half of the Upper House and two-thirds of the Lower were French Canadians. A French-Canadian member was nominated for the speakership and elected unanimously. Both races were for the most part represented by members whose official title of 'Honourable Gentlemen' was not at all a misnomer. The French members of the Assembly were half distrustful both of it and of themselves. But they knew how to add grace and dignity to a very notable occasion. The old Bishop's Palace served as the Houses of Parliament and so continued for many years to come. It was a solid rather than a stately pile. But it stood on a commanding site at the head of Mountain Hill between the Grand Battery and the Chateau St Louis. Every one was in uniform or in what corresponded to court dress. Round the throne stood many officers in their red and gold, conspicuous among them the Duke of Kent. In front sat the Executive and Legislative Councillors, corresponding to the modern cabinet ministers and senators. Their roll, as well as the Assembly's, bore many names that recalled the glories of the old regime—St Ours, Longueuil, de Lanaudiere, Boucherville, de Salaberry, de Lotbiniere, and many more. The Council chamber was crowded in every part long before the governor arrived. 'The Ladies introduced into the House' were 'without Hat, Cloak, or Bonnet,' the 'Doorkeeper of His Majesty's Council' having taken good care to see them 'leave the same in the Great Committee Room previous to their Introduction.' 'The Ladies attached to His Excellency's Suite' were admitted 'within the railing or body of the House' and 'accommodated with the seats of the members as far as possible.' Outwardly it was all very much the same in principle as the opening of any other British parliament—the escort, guard, and band, the royal salute, the brilliant staff, the scarlet cloth of state, the few and quiet members of the Upper House, the many of the Lower, jostling each other to get a good place near Mr Speaker at the bar, the radiant ladies, the crowded galleries corniced with inquiring faces and craned necks, the Gentlemen Ushers and their quaint bows, the Speech from the Throne and the occasional lifting of His Excellency's hat, the retiring in full state; and then the ebbing away of all the sightseers, their eddying currents of packed humanity in the halls and passages, the porch, the door, the emptying street. But inwardly what a world of difference! For here was the first British parliament in which legislators of foreign birth and blood and language were shaping British laws as British subjects.
In September 1793 Carleton returned from his two years' absence and was welcomed more warmly than ever. Quebec blazed with illuminations. The streets swarmed with eager crowds. The first session of the first parliament had been better than any one had dared to hope for. There was a general tendency to give the new constitution a fair trial; and all classes looked to Carleton to make the harmony that had been attained both permanent and universal. Dr Jacob Mountain, first Anglican bishop of Quebec, also arrived shortly afterwards and was warmly greeted by the Roman Catholic prelate, who embraced him, saying, 'It's time you came to shepherd your own flock.' Mountain was statesman and churchman in one. He had been chosen by the elder Pitt to be the younger's tutor and then chosen by the younger to be his private secretary. The fact that the Anglican bishop of Quebec was then and for many years afterwards a sort of Canadian chaplain-general to the Imperial troops and that most of the leading officials and leading Loyalists belonged to the Church of England made him a personage of great importance. It was fortunate that, as in the case of Inglis down in Halifax, the choice could not have fallen on a better man or on one who knew better how to win the esteem of communions other than his own. This same year (1793) died William Smith, full of honours. But the next year his excellent successor arrived in the person of William Osgoode, the new chief justice, an eminent English lawyer who had served for two years as chief justice of Upper Canada and whose name is commemorated in Osgoode Hall, Toronto. He had come out on the distinct understanding that no fees were to be attached to his office, only a definite salary. This was a great triumph for Carleton, who certainly practised what he preached.