On the 28th of April, 1786, Mr. Powys, a private member of the House of Commons called attention in the House to the petition of 1784;[197] and, in view of the fact that two years had passed since it was presented, and that the Government had taken no action upon it, he moved for permission to bring in a Bill to amend the Quebec Act and ‘for the better securing the liberties of His Majesty’s subjects in the province of Quebec in North America’. The object of the Bill, which had been drafted in the previous year, was to limit the power of the governor, for the mover complained that the Quebec Act had ‘established as complete a system of despotism as ever was instituted’, and stated that the aim of his measure was ‘to give the inhabitants of the province of Quebec a system of government in the particulars he had mentioned, founded on known and definitive law. At present the government of that province rested altogether on unfixed laws, and was a state of despotism and slavery’. The Bill purported to give to the Canadians in the fullest measure the right of Habeas Corpus, except in case of rebellion or of foreign invasion, when it might be suspended, but only for three months at a time, and only by ordinance of the Legislative Council; to give trial by jury in civil cases at the option of either of the parties; to take from the governor the power of committing to prison by his own warrant, and of suspending judges and members of the Legislative Council; while the last clause increased the numbers of the council. It was supported by Fox, who took the opportunity to denounce the Quebec Act ‘as a Bill founded upon a system of despotism’, and by Sheridan; but the majority in a very thin House rejected it, agreeing with Pitt that, in view of the contradictory petitions which came from Canada, it would be well to wait until Carleton went out and reported upon the feeling of the country. Petitions continued to come in. In June, 1787, Lord Dorchester wrote to Lord Sydney that with the increase of the English population the desire for an Assembly would increase, but that he himself was at a loss for a plan, and that a more pressing matter was a change in the tenure of land. In the following September Lord Sydney replied, in somewhat similar terms, that there was no present intention to alter the constitution, but that the King would be advised to make a change in the system of land tenure. [Sidenote: Adam Lymburner heard before the House of Commons.] [Sidenote: Fox and Burke on the Quebec Act.]