Number 9 of the rules for conducting the business of the assembly ran:
“No motion shall be debated or put unless the same be in writing and seconded. When a motion is seconded it shall be read in English and French by the speaker if he is master of both languages. If not, the speaker shall read in either of the two languages most familiar to him and the reading in the other language shall be at the table by the clerk or his deputy before the debate.”
“Resolved, that this house shall keep its journal in two registers, in one of which the proceedings of the house and the motion shall be wrote in the French language, with a translation of the motions originally made in the English language; and in the other shall be entered the proceedings of the house and the motions in the English language with a translation of the motions originally made in the French language.”
Finally it was resolved that the rules for introduction of bills should be as follows:
“The bills relative to the criminal laws of England enforced in this province and to the rights of the Protestant clergy as specified in the act of the thirty-first year of His Majesty, Chapter 31, shall be introduced in the English language; and the bills relative to the laws, customs, usages and civil rights of this province shall be introduced in the French language in order to preserve the unity of the texts.”
On the 9th of May, 1793, Sir Alured Clarke in his speech from the throne was forced to make allusions to the first French revolution, which had been already four years in progress before the opening of the assembly of Lower Canada in December, 1792. The Bastille had fallen on June 17, 1789. “At the first meeting of the legislature I congratulated you,” he said, “upon the flattering prospects which opened to your view and upon the flourishing and tranquil state of the British empire, then at peace with all the world; since that period, I am sorry to find, its tranquility has been disturbed by the unjustifiable and unprecedented conduct of the persons exercising the supreme power in France, who, after deluging their own country with the blood of their own fellow citizens and embruing their hands in that of their sovereign, have forced His Majesty and the surrounding nations of Europe in a contest which involves the first interests of society.”