Pitt recognized the evil, and undertook to remedy it and in 1791 he introduced a bill to establish a constitution for Canada, which a recent historian describes as "remarkable, as recognizing for the first time the wise and generous principle of independent colonial institutions, which has since been fully developed in every dependency of the British crown capable of local self-government."[112] One peculiar difficulty in framing such a constitution arose from the circumstance of the old French colonists, who greatly outnumbered the settlers of British blood, being attached to the Roman Catholic religion; while the British settlers were nearly, or perhaps all, Protestant, though of different denominations.

The difficulty was, indeed, lessened by the circumstance that the French dwelt in Quebec and the district between that city and the mouth of the St.Lawrence, and that the English had for the most part betaken themselves to the more inland region.

And this local separation of the two races the minister now took for his guide in the arrangement which he devised.

The most important feature in it was the division of the province into two parts, as Upper and Lower Canada, and the establishment of a distinct local Legislature for each division, a House of Assembly being created in each, and a Council, so as, in Pitt's words, "to give both divisions the full advantages of the British constitution." The Assemblies were to have the power of taxation (so that there was no room left for such perverse legislation by a British Parliament as had lately cost its sovereign the United States).

The act of _habeas corpus_ was extended to the province (a privilege which no one of French blood had ever enjoyed before); the tenure of land was to be the socage[113] tenure so long and happily established in England.
Complete religious toleration was established, and a certain proportion of land was allotted in Upper Canada, as a provision for a Protestant clergy, and the foundation of an ecclesiastical establishment.