On the 24th of November, 1784, immediately after Haldimand’s departure, a petition for a free constitution was addressed to the King by his ‘ancient and new subjects, inhabitants of the province of Quebec’. The petitioners asked, among other points, for a House of Representatives or Assembly, with power to impose taxes to cover the expense of civil government; for a Council of not less than 30 members, without whose advice no officer should be suspended and no new office be created by the governor; for a continuance of the criminal law of England, and of the ancient laws of the country as to landed estates, marriage settlements and inheritances; for the introduction of the commercial laws of England; and for the embodiment in the constitution of the Habeas Corpus Act. It will be remembered that an ordinance had lately been passed by the Legislative Council, on the 29th of April, 1784, ‘For securing the liberty of the subject and for the prevention of imprisonments out of this province,’[195] but the petitioners wished to have the right of Habeas Corpus laid down as a fundamental rule of the constitution. The petition purported to be from the ‘New Subjects’, i. e. the French Canadians, as well as from those of British extraction; but among the signatories hardly any French Canadian names appeared, and a counter petition was signed by French Canadian seigniors and others, deprecating the proposed change in the system of government. ‘This plan’, they wrote, ‘is so much more questionable, as it appears to us to aim at innovations entirely opposed to the rights of the King and of his Government and to detach the people from the submission they have always shown to their Sovereign.’ In April, 1785, a petition was presented in London by Sir John Johnson on behalf of the disbanded soldiers and other Loyalists settled above Montreal, asking for the creation of a new district separate from the province of Quebec, whose capital should be Cataraqui, now Kingston, and that ‘the blessings of the British laws and of the British Government, and an exemption from the (French) tenures, may be extended to the aforesaid settlements’.[196] [Sidenote: Debate on Mr. Powys’ Bill in the House of Commons April, 1786.]