Curiously complex were the conditions which the Bill was intended to meet. Assuming that the population of Canada had been homogeneous and of British descent, and assuming that Canada had been a single, well-defined colony, so that no question of subdivision could arise, it would still have remained a most difficult problem to decide within what limits political representation should be given and how far it should involve responsibility and real self-government. The British demand in Canada was for institutions to which Englishmen had always been accustomed, and which the old North American colonies of Great Britain had enjoyed. The petition of November, 1784, showed that the demand included right of taxation and a certain control over the Executive. This last point seems subsequently not to have been pressed, though it involved the essence of self-government, had been prominent in the disputes between the old colonies and the mother country, and had been emphasized in Canada by the fact that on the one hand the Home Government had conspicuously misused its patronage in making appointments in Canada, and that on the other, two strong governors, Carleton and Haldimand, in time of war and in face of disloyalty, had not hesitated so to put forth their strength as to incur the charge of being arbitrary. But the population of Canada was not homogeneous, and the colony was obviously not one and indivisible. Even among the English residents there was diversity of interest. Those who lived in the districts of Quebec and Montreal, and for whom Lymburner spoke, were opposed to a division of the province, because the main body of subjects of English birth was to be found in the new settlements in Upper Canada. These newcomers, on the contrary, had much to gain by being severed from French Canada and incorporated into a separate colony. The British minority again in the old province contended that half the number of the representatives to be elected should be assigned to the towns where the number and the influence of the English residents was greatest, Quebec and Montreal containing at the time one Englishman to every two Canadians; thus town and country interests were pitted against each other. Meanwhile the overwhelming majority of the population, the French Canadians, set little store by the representative institutions which the English desired to enjoy. They had never known them and therefore never valued them, and they had reason to fear that any change might tend to give more power to the English minority accustomed to a political machinery which was novel to themselves. The habitants thought only whether their taxes would be increased, and whether new laws and customs would be substituted for those which they understood; the seigniors dreaded losing their feudal rights; the priests their privileges and authority. There was a very strong element of conservatism in French Canada running counter to the demand for political reform, and even in