least seven members,
appointed by writ of summons, issued pursuant to a mandamus under the
sign manual of the Sovereign. The tenure of appointment was for life,
to be forfeited for treason or vacated by swearing allegiance to a
foreign power, or by two years continual absence from the province
without the Governor's permission, or four years of such absence
without permission of the Sovereign. The King could grant hereditary
titles of honor, rank or dignity. The Speaker of the Council was to be
appointed by the Sovereign or his representative. The Assembly was to
be elected by persons over twenty one years of age, subjects of the
British Crown, by birth or naturalization, possessing property of the
yearly value of forty shillings sterling, over and above all rents and
charges, or paying rent at the rate of ten pounds sterling per annum.
Here were, undoubtedly, three legislative branches; but as the
Legislative Assembly could, at the most, only be composed of thirty
members, many of whom would be half pay officers, the Crown, through
its representative, had a direct and overwhelming preponderance. Yet,
however unsuited such a Parliament would be for the present time,
however uncongenial it might have been to the feelings of a Cobbett or
Hunt-man, escaped from Spa Felds ten or twenty years afterwards, it
undoubtedly well represented the conservative, semi-despotic feelings
of the military settler, or United Empire loyalist, a kind of
privileged being, whose very descendants were entitled to a free grant
of two hundred acres of land. When the Separation Act was before the
British Parliament, the public mind in England was to some not
altogether inconsiderable extent contaminated by the spurious
liberty-feeling of the French Revolution, and by the consequences of
the American strike for independence. "The Rights of Man," as
enunciated by Paine, had infected many among the lower orders in
society, and not a few among the higher orders. Edmund Burke, Mr.
Chancellor Pitt, and Charles Fox, were members of the British
Parliament. By the Act, a provision for a Protestant Clergy, in both
divisions of the province, was made, in addition to an allotment of
lands already granted. The tenures in Lower Canada, which had been the
subject of dispute, were to be settled by the local legislature. In
Upper Canada the tenures were to be in free and common soccage. No
taxes were to be imposed by the Imperial Parliament, unless such as
were n