Murray’s commission as governor empowered him, ‘so soon as the situation and circumstances of our said province under your government will admit thereof, and when and as often as need shall require, to summon and call General Assemblies of the freeholders and planters within your government.’ But by the terms of the commission a council was joined with the governor and Assembly as the authority for making laws and ordinances, and the Royal Instructions provided that, pending the calling of a General Assembly, the governor was to act on the advice of his council in making regulations, which would have the force of law, and which were, as a matter of fact, styled ordinances, certain important subjects, such as taxation, being excluded from their scope. Thus, until representative institutions could be given to Canada, legislative and executive authority was placed in the hands of the governor acting on the advice of a nominated council. But the council, again, was constituted on liberal lines, as its members were to be the Lieutenant-Governors of Montreal and Three Rivers, the Chief Justice of the province of Quebec, the Surveyor-General of Customs in America for the Northern district, and ‘eight other persons to be chosen by you from amongst the most considerable of the inhabitants of, or persons of property in, our said province’. From the first, therefore, it was intended that the unofficial element in the council should outnumber the officials--evidence, if evidence were wanted, that it was desired to govern Canada in accordance with the wishes of the people. [Sidenote: Courts of justice established.] [Sidenote: Causes of the difficulties which arose.] Immediately after civil government had taken the place of military rule, an ordinance was, in September, 1764, promulgated, constituting courts of justice, the law to be administered being in the main the law of England, and trial by jury being introduced without any religious qualification for jurymen. One provision in the ordinance, it may be noticed in passing, abolished the district of Three Rivers, which had hitherto been, like Montreal, in charge of a Lieutenant-Governor. Thus Canada was started on its course as a British colony, with the best intentions, the prospect of such self-government as other American colonies enjoyed, British law and justice, and above all a governor who was in sympathy with the people, and earnestly worked for their good; but difficulties arose almost immediately, and the causes of them are not far to seek. [Sidenote: The religious question.]