A legislature now sat at Quebec, the result of the new Constitutional Act passed in 1791, and Nairne might have become a member. Murray Bay then formed a part of what, with little fitness, had been called by the English conquerors the County of Northumberland, no doubt because it lay in the far north of Canada as Northumberland lies in the far north of England. Two members sat in the legislature for this county. "I never had any idea of trying to be one of them," writes Nairne in 1800, "but succeeded in procuring that honour for a friend Dr. Fisher, who resides in Quebec. He is rich and much flattered with it and is ready on all occasions to speak." To Nairne, contrary to a general impression, the climate of Canada did not seem to grow milder as the land was cleared. In any case the blood of old age runs less hotly. Formerly the winter had its delights of hunting excursions but now, he writes, these are all over. "The passion I had formerly for hunting and fishing and wandering through the woods is abated.... What with the cold hand of old age my former Winter excursions into the woods seem impossible and no more now of fishing and hunting which formerly I esteemed so interesting a business." He writes again: "My employment is more in the sedentary way than formerly and what from calls in my own affairs and calls from people here in theirs, accounts to settle, &c., [I have] ... plenty of occupation. Besides being a Justice of the Peace and Colonel of Militia ... I employ myself without doors in farming, gardening, clearing and manuring land." If we may credit the words of Bishop Hubert of Quebec written just at this time (in 1794) the new liberties gained by the habitants did not make the seigneur's task easier. The good bishop makes sweeping charges of general dishonesty; of attempts to defraud the church of her tithe and the seigneurs of their dues; of bitter feuds between families and innumerable law suits. In such conditions Nairne, as a justice of the peace, would have his hands full.