The Canada Act took effect on the 26th of December, 1791. Dorchester was then in England, and Sir Alured Clarke, Lieutenant-Governor of the province of Quebec under the old system and Commander of the Forces in British North America, was acting for him. Under the new Act Clarke was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada, while the Lieutenant-Governorship of Upper Canada was conferred upon Colonel Simcoe, both officers being subordinate to Dorchester as Governor-in-Chief. Dorchester had left Canada on the 18th of August, 1791, and did not return till the 24th of September, 1793. His prolonged absence was unfortunate in more ways than one. Technical difficulties arose owing to the absence of the Governor-in-Chief, for, as soon as the new Act came into force, Clarke’s authority was confined by his commission to Lower Canada. The practical effect too was that Simcoe started on his new charge with a free hand and found it irksome, when Dorchester returned, to take a second place. Added to this were the complications caused by the French declaration of war against Great Britain in February, 1793, the hostilities between the United States and the Indian tribes on the border land of Canada, and the persistent and increasing bitterness in the United States against Great Britain, caused partly by sympathy with the French Revolution and the intrigues of French agents, and partly by the British retention of the frontier forts and supposed British sympathy with the Indians. However, the political arrangements in Canada were carried into effect without any appreciable friction. Clarke, a man of judgement and discretion, did not hurry matters in Lower Canada. He divided the province into electoral districts, and summoned the Legislature for its first session at Quebec on the 17th of December, 1792, when the Act had been in force for nearly a year. The session then lasted into May. Simcoe arrived at Quebec on the 11th of November, 1791; but, as no Executive Council had yet been constituted for Upper Canada, he could not be sworn in as Lieutenant-Governor and take up his duties until the following midsummer, Upper Canada being in the meantime left without any governor or lieutenant-governor. In July, 1792, he issued a proclamation at Kingston, dividing Upper Canada into districts, and on the 17th of September the new Legislature met for the first time at Newark, on the Canadian side of the Niagara river, near where that river flows into Lake Ontario. The Lieutenant-Governor fixed his head quarters at ‘Navy Hall’, a building constructed in the late war for the use of the officers of the naval department on Lake Ontario. It stood by the water’s edge, nearly a mile higher up the river than Newark; and on the bank above, in the war of 1812, covering the buildings below, stood the historic Fort George. The session was a short one, closing on the 15th of October, but important work was done. English law and procedure, and trial by jury, were established,