The views of the Chief Justice were not embodied in the law which was eventually passed in 1791. Pitt had pledged himself to deal with the Canadian question in the session of 1790, but in that year Great Britain was on the brink of war with Spain, owing to the seizure by the Spaniards in 1789 of British trading vessels in Nootka Sound, an inlet of what is now known as Vancouver Island. The matter was adjusted by the Nootka Sound Convention of 28th October, 1790, after which Vancouver began his voyages of survey and discovery along the Pacific Coast of North America; and, the hands of the British Government being free, a Royal Message to the House of Commons, dated the 25th of January, 1791, announced that it was the King’s intention to divide the province of Quebec into two provinces to be called Upper and Lower Canada, whenever His Majesty was enabled by Act of Parliament to make the necessary regulations for the government of the said provinces. The message further recommended that a permanent appropriation of lands should be made in the provinces for the support of a Protestant clergy. [Sidenote: Proceedings in Parliament.] On the 4th of March Pitt introduced the Bill. On the 23rd of March Lymburner was heard at the bar of the House on behalf of its opponents. He took objections, among other points, to the division of the province, to the creation of hereditary Legislative Councillors, to the small number of members who were to constitute the Assemblies, and to making the Assemblies septennial instead of triennial. The passage of the Bill through Committee in the House of Commons was chiefly remarkable for the historic quarrel between Burke and Fox on the subject of the French Revolution which was dragged into the debate. There was no real opposition to the measure, though Fox opposed the division of the province, the hereditary councillors, the small numbers assigned to the Assemblies, and the large provision made for the Protestant clergy. The duration of the Assemblies was reduced from seven years to four, and the number of members in the Assembly of Lower Canada was raised from thirty to fifty. Thus amended the Bill was read a third time in the House of Commons on the 18th of May, and received the Royal Assent on the following 10th of June, one of its sections providing that it should take effect before the 31st of December, 1791, and another that the Councils and Assemblies should be called together before the 31st of December, 1792. It had been intended that Dorchester should be present in London during the passing of the Act, in order to advise the Government on points of detail, but the dispatch informing him that the Act had already been passed crossed him on his way to England. [Sidenote: Omissions from the Act.] [Sidenote: It contained no definition of the boundaries of Upper and Lower Canada.]