Thus Canada was endowed with representative institutions, and entered on the second stage in its history as a British possession. It was divided into an English province and a French province, in order as far as possible to prevent friction between two races not yet accustomed to each other. For the English province English land tenure was made the law of the land, in the French province it was only made optional. Taxation of members of one religion for the upkeep of another found no place in the Act, nor did taxation of a colony by the mother country for the purposes of Imperial revenue. The popular representatives were in the main given control of the moneys raised from taxes: and no doubt was left as to who had the keeping of the people’s purse.[204] On the other hand the Executive power was left with the Crown, and the waste lands provided possibilities of a revenue by which the government might be supported apart from the taxes, and by which an Established Church might be maintained apart from the tithes. The Imperial Parliament too retained the power of regulating commerce, while making no money out of the colony by any commercial regulations. It was in short a prudent and tolerant half-way Act, wise and practical in view of the times and the local conditions, and it was evidence that England and Englishmen had learnt good and not evil from the War of American Independence. A study of Canadian history, with special reference to the Quebec Act of 1774 and the Canada Act of 1791, and the results which flowed from them, leads to the conclusion that in either case the British Government of the day tried most honestly and most anxiously to deal with a very complicated problem on its merits; that every effort was made by the ministers of the Crown to mete out fair and considerate treatment to the majority of the resident population in Canada; and that those who framed and carried the laws guided themselves by living facts rather than by _a priori_ reasoning. But it is also impossible to resist the conclusion that at almost any time from 1783 onwards, until the Canadian Dominion came into being, there was little to choose between the arguments for retaining a single province, and those for constituting two provinces. In any case it was inevitable that the provisions of the Act of 1791 should give rise to new complications of various kinds; and apart from specific questions, constitutional and otherwise, there were two very practical difficulties which necessarily arose from the division of the province of Quebec. The first was an Executive difficulty, of which more will be said presently. From the date of the Act there was increasingly divided authority in the Canadas. The second was a financial difficulty arising from geographical conditions. One of the two provinces had the keeping of the other, so far as regarded access from and to the sea. [Sidenote: Financial difficulties between the two provinces.]