Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to her viceregal self, and did that _debutante_ offer her blushing cheek in quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously gave her the presentation kiss? How immeasurably far away it all seems now, that stately little court where the echoes of a dead Versailles lived on for seven years after the fall of the Bastille! And yet there is still one citizen o Quebec whose early partners were chaperoned by ladies who had danced the minuet with Lord and Lady Dorchester. The two royal visits were not without their political significance--using the word political in its larger meaning. But the three years between them--that is, 1788-89-90--formed the really pregnant time of constitutional development, when the Canada Act of 1791 was taking shape in the minds of its chief authors --Carleton and Smith in Canada, Grenville and Pitt in England. The Loyalists and the English-speaking merchants of Quebec and Montreal took good care to make themselves heard at every stage of the proceedings. Most French Canadians would have preferred to be left without the suspected blessings of a parliament. The clergy and seigneurs wished for a continuance of the Quebec Act, and the habitants wanted they knew not what, provided it would enable them to get more and give less. The English-speaking people, on the other hand, were all for a parliament. But they differed widely as to what kind of parliament would suit their purpose best. As a rule they acquiesced, with a more or less bad grace, in the necessity of admitting French Canadians on the same terms as themselves. If Canada, without the Maritime Provinces, should be taken as a whole then the French Canadians would only be in a moderate majority. If, however, two provinces, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, were to be erected, then the English-speaking minority in Lower Canada would be outvoted three or four to one.