Passage of the Constitutional Act 1791

Background. The act reformed the government of the Province of Quebec (1763–1791) to accommodate, among other Loyalists, the 10,000 United Empire Loyalists who had arrived from the United States following the American Revolution. The Province of Quebec had a population of 145,000 French-speaking Canadiens at the time of the division.

Legislative Context. The act was passed during the First Session of the Seventeenth Parliament of Great Britain, which had begun and been held at Westminster on 25 November 1790, in the thirty-first year of the reign of George III. The statute was printed in London by Charles Eyre and Andrew Strahan in 1791. A bill for the act, dated 7 March 1791, sought to repeal certain parts of the Quebec government act of the fourteenth year of the king's reign and to make further provision for the government of the province.

Division and Provisions. The act divided the old Province of Quebec into Lower Canada and Upper Canada, each with its own parliament and government. The largely unpopulated western half became Upper Canada (now southern Ontario) and the eastern half became Lower Canada (now southern Quebec), named according to their relative elevation along the St. Lawrence. Upper Canada received English law and institutions, while Lower Canada retained French civil law and institutions, including seigneurial land tenure and the privileges accorded to the Roman Catholic Church. The act also repealed the Quebec Act 1774 (14 Geo. 3. c. 83).

Significance. The act is often seen as a watershed in the development of French Canadian nationalism, as it provided for a province (Lower Canada) which the French considered to be their own, separate from English-speaking Upper Canada. Income from the lease or sale of reserves constituting one-seventh of the territory of both provinces went, from 1791, exclusively to the Church of England.