In 1788 Adam Lymburner, a merchant of good position in Quebec, was sent as a delegate to London, to represent the views of the British minority in the province; and on Friday, the 16th of May, 1788, he was heard at the bar of the House of Commons, in support of the petitions which had been presented. He called attention mainly to the confused state of the law in Canada, and to the defects and anomalies in the administration of justice. A debate followed on a motion by Mr. Powys[198] to the effect that the petitions deserved the immediate and serious consideration of Parliament. The mover once more attacked the Quebec Act of 1774, characterizing it ‘as a rash and fatal’ measure and, when challenged to state what he considered to be the points of greatest urgency, specified ‘the rendering the writ of Habeas Corpus a matter of right, the granting independence to the judges, the lessening of the servility and dependence of the superior officers of justice, and the establishing a House of Assembly’. Fox, Sheridan and Burke spoke as usual against the Government, denouncing Pitt for pleading that, in view of the divergent views held in Canada, the Government should be given more time to obtain further information from Lord Dorchester. The whole of Lord Dorchester’s evidence on the Quebec Bill, said Fox, who professed great respect for Lord Dorchester himself, ‘contained opinions wholly foreign to the spirit and uncongenial with the nature of the English constitution. Lord Dorchester, therefore, was the last man living whose opinion he would wish to receive upon the subject.’ Burke spoke of the Quebec Act as ‘a measure dealt out by this country in its anger under the impulse of a passion that ill-suited the purposes of wise legislation’.