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Returning now to the Legislation of 1793.

Chapter 6 fixed the times and places of holding the Quarter Sessions in each District-in the Eastern District at New Johnstown and Cornwall, in the Midland at Adolphustown and Kingston, in the Home at Newark and in the Western at Detroit-also a Court of Special Sessions at Michilimackinac. Detroit was considered as part of Canada till 1796, and was governed accordingly-Michilimackinac was given up about the same time.

Chapter 7 is a most creditable piece of legislation. It practically abolished slavery in the Province, repealed for Upper Canada, 30 Geo. III., ch. 27, authorizing the importation of slaves into a colony. All negroes then slaves continued to be slaves, children of female slaves born after the Act served the master until the age of 25 years and then became free.

It was the Lieutenant-Governor who was responsible for pressing this legislation, though Chief Justice Osgoode and Solicitor-General Grey also deserve credit. It was by no means popular, on account of scarcity of labour; and the old story of Canaan serving his brethren, Gen. x., 25, was made to do duty over and over again. But "the power of the Crown" was then something to be afraid of, and Simcoe got his wish.

As I have said, Upper Canada had reason to be proud of her record in respect of slavery. The number of negro slaves in the Province was not very large absolutely; but in comparison with the number of free settlers it was not insignificant; many had been captured by the Indians in their invasions into United States territory and sold to Canadians at a small price, and their labour was very valuable.

In the case of the negro Sommersett, to be found in 20 Howell's State Trials, 29, the Court of King's Bench in 1772 had unanimously decided that as soon as a slave set his foot upon the soil of the British Isles he became free. Cowper in The Task, in 1785, sang:

"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;

They touch our country and their shackles fall."

But that was the mother country; in the Colonies the curse of negro slavery prevailed to an extent limited only by the opportunity of obtaining negroes and the supposed need for their labour. Wilberforce had only in 1787 taken up

the cause

-which had been a favourite for many years among the Quakers of the abolition of the slave trade; but as yet no British Colony had spoken and Upper Canada led the way. She had been indeed preceded in 1792, May 6, by Denmark, but she led the British Colonies and all other nations in abolishing this infamous traffic. It was not till 1807 that it was forbidden for all the British Dominions, and not till 1833 was the Act passed abolishing slavery itself. August, 1838, saw the end of slavery under the Union Jack.

Chapter 8 established a Court of Probate in the Province and a Surrogate Court in each District. The Governor, Lieutenant-Governor or Administrator was to preside in the Court of Probate, and a Commissioner in each Surrogate Court. An appeal lay from the Surrogate Court to the Court of Probate.

This system existed till 1858. In that year, by 22 Vic. ch. 93, the Court of Probate was abolished, a Surrogate Court for each county organized with a Judge with the same authority as a Judge of a County Court, and 33 Geo. III. ch. 8, was formally repealed. Our present system is substantially that of 22 Vic. ch. 93.

By chapter 9 the Lieutenant-Governor was authorized to appoint three Commissioners to consult and agree with an equal number from Lower Canada as to duties to be imposed in the passing of goods from one Province to another. This may be passed over for the time.

Chapter 10 provided for the payment of officers of the two houses. Chapter 11 for the payment of a bounty for killing bears and wolves, 10 shillings for a bear and 20 shillings for a wolf, but this was not to extend to the Western District nor was any Indian to receive any reward for such killing.

Chapter 12 provided for the appointment by the Governor of returning officers.

Chapter 13 provided for salaries of officers of the two Houses and for contingent expenses. This is the form but the substance is rather different. By an Act of the Imperial Parliament in 1774, it had been provided that a duty of £1 16s. sterling should be paid for every license in the Province of Quebec for keeping a house of public entertainment or for retaining wine, brandy, rum or other spirituous liquor within the Province. The matter of duty upon wine and liquor brought into the Province had been up in the first session, but nothing came of the discussion. It passed the

Assembly October 4th. 1792, but received the three months' hoist in the Council October 8th.

In 1793 the Committee of Ways and Means in the Assembly reported in favour of a retail license fee of £2 per annum, and a bill was introduced accordingly and was sent up to the Council July 2nd, 1793; and this bill, after some opposition, was passed by that body. As finally passed it imposed a further license fee (in addition to the former of £1 16s.) of 20 shillings for each retail license, but this was not to extend beyond April 5th, 1797. The Receiver-General was allowed to retain 3 per cent. for himself of all money raised by this method.

During this session Peter Van Alstine, already mentioned, took the necessary oath, on the second day of the session. The day following it was ordered that such Acts as had passed or should pass the Legislature should be translated into French for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Western District and other French settlers who might come to reside. within the Province, and A. Macdonell, Esquire, Clerk of the House, was employed as a French translator for this and other purposes of the House. Thus early we meet bilingualism.

A Bill to establish two annual fairs at New Johnstown did not pass; and the same fate met a proposed "Bill to relieve the inhabitants of the Western District from the necessity of bolting the grain they, grind at their mills for toll."

The House was not unmindful of the privileges attached to the position of Member of Parliament. We find on Monday, 17th June, this resolution carried: "That the Speaker do inform W. B. Sheehan, Esquire, Sheriff of this district, that the House entertain a strong sense of the impropriety of his conduct towards a member of this House in having served a Writ of Capias upon the said member contrary to his privilege, and that the House has only dispensed with the necessity of bringing him to their bar to be further dealt with from a conviction that want of reflection and not contempt made him guilty of an infringement upon the privileges of the House."

This was, no doubt, the ordinary common law writ of capias ad respondendum; the defendant was not actually arrested on it, but was simply required to appear and put in common bail, i.e., formal bail; there were some cases in

which he might be arrested or compelled to put in special bail, i.e., real and substantial bail.

Naturally his power of paying a debt was increased by being put behind the bars. All the learning-or most of iton this subject to be found in Petersdorff and Tidd (Uriah Heep's favourite author), is now fortunately effete.

That the members of the Upper Canada House had the same privilege from arrest as a member of the Imperial House of Commons is certain-and that not only during the sittings of the House, but for forty days before and forty days after: Reg. v. Gamble and Boulton (1832), 9 U. C. R. 546, and several other cases down to Cox v. Prior (1899), 18 P. R. 492. Accordingly the sheriff had reason to consider himself lucky in escaping the fate of others who had been guilty of somewhat similar acts.

Upon the first day of the first Parliament of James I. in 1603, a complaint was made that Sir Thomas Shirley, who had been elected a member of the House of Commons, was arrested four days before the sitting of the Parliament and imprisoned in the fleet. A Writ of Habeas Corpus was issued and he was discharged. Precedents were looked unto and the plaintiff at whose suit and the sergeant by whom the arrest was made were sent to the Tower. The Warden of the Fleet, who had persisted in refusing to obey the writ of Habeas Corpus and deliver up his prisoner, was ordered to be committed "to the place called the Dungeon or Little-Ease in the Tower." Afterwards" delivering his prisoner" and "upon his knees confessing his error and presumption and professing he was unfeignedly sorry, the Speaker pronounced his pardon and discharge, paying ordinary fees to the clerk and the sergeant." And in February, 1606, an attorney who had procured the arrest of Mr. James, a member of the House of Commons, and the officer who had arrested him, were "for their contempt committed to the custody of the sergeant for a month, which judgment was pronounced against them kneeling at the bar, by Mr. Speaker."

It is to be hoped that Sheriff Sheehan was duly grateful for the clemency shewn him.

On Monday, 8th July, the House waited upon the Lieutenant-Governor with their address to His Majesty, expressing their horror and abhorrence of "the sacrilegious murder in France," and hoping "that a conduct so baneful to every precept of Religion and Law may serve to rivet the loyalty and

attachment of our fellow-subjects, as it has ours, to the best of Kings and of constitutions the most excellent." Louis XVI. had been executed the January before. This was "the sacrilegious number," sacrilegious because Louis was King by Divine Right-and notwithstanding that his right to the Crown was statutory, the doctrine of Divine Right was dear to George III. It was, of course, George III. who was the best of Kings," and the constitution as it then existed unre

'Wraxall tells us that it was King George's opposition to the claims of his American subjects that was the cause of his unpopularity with the English people; and it is, beyond doubt, true that as soon as peace was declared in 1783, granting independence to the North American Colonies, he recovered all his lost favour with his people. There never was a King more generally loved than he, except during the years of the Revolutionary War.

Everybody

formed the most excellent of constitutions. knows that it was the perfection of reason acquired by long study, observation and experience, and refined by learned and patriotic men in all ages-as Simcoe put it in his speech from the throne, "equally abhorrent of absolute monarchy, absolute aristocracy or tyrannical democracy."

It may not be without interest to see who attended the meetings of the Houses of Parliament.

During the Session of 1792, the following Legislative Councillors are noted in the proceedings as being present at some time: William Osgoode, James Baby, Robert Hamilton, Richard Cartwright, Jr., John Munro, Alexander Grant and Peter Russell. In 1793 all these were also in attendance, and in addition, Richard Duncan attended, having been sworn June 17th, 1793. He had been appointed in the previous August, and hailed from Rapid Plat.

As is the case with the Legislative Council, I do not know of any record kept of the attendance of members of the Assembly; but from the proceedings it is clear that of the sixteen members elected for the assembly in the first Parliament at least thirteen were in attendance at some time during the first session. The names of all but Joshua Booth and Parshall Terry appear as taking some part-Philip Dorland, of course, could not act.

In the second session I find the names of thirteen recorded as taking some part in the proceedings, Major Van Alstine among them. Those whose names do not appear are Hugh Macdonell, Parshall Terry and Nathaniel Pettit.

This was a very fair attendance, but it does not seem thatall attended every day, as Sept. 18, 1792, a resolution was

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