Western Justice As It Was.
In the days of the Cariboo gold rush sixty thousand miners, adventurers and all the riff-raff that follow in the wake of a great mining excitement, filled the Cariboo country in Central British Columbia. The C.P.R. had not been built in those days, and the Argonauts crowded in overland through the Yellowhead Pass and down the Fraser to Quesnel, or from Victoria to Yale by steamer, thence on foot, horseback, stage or any other way up the Cariboo Road.
Barkerville became a larger city than Victoria, the seat of government, 500 miles away. Yet with all this rabble of people, rough character and law-abiding men drawn from every quarter of the globe, Cariboo was maintained as an orderly, safe district through the efforts of one man, Sir Mathew Begbie, who was judge and various other officials all in one. He administered justice with a ready and iron hand, and put fear into the hearts of those of lawless tendencies. On one occasion he had convicted and fined a malefactor $200.
“That’s dead easy,” flippantly said the culprit, “I’ve got it right here in my hip pocket.”
“—and six months in jail. Have you got that in your hip pocket, too?” came the ready amendment to the sentence, thus vindicating the dignity of the court and proclaiming to all and sundry that a British court of justice, even though held under a pine tree, was not to be trifled with.
This story has been told and retold, credited to magistrates and judges mostly in the southern States, but it really happened in Sir Mathew Begbie’s court in Cariboo in the early seventies. At least one man is living to-day who was present on the occasion and that is my old friend, Colonel Robert Stevenson, the pioneer prospector, of Similkameen, B.C.
Another characteristic incident is told of the Judge. A sandbagger, who was haled before him for assault and battery and against whom the evidence was pretty clear, was found “not guilty” by the jury—to the Judge’s utter disgust. In disposing of the case, he said to the prisoner:
“You are guilty, and I know you are guilty, but this precious jury has decided that you are not. You are free—free to go out and sandbag every blessed juryman that has let you off. Now go!”
Another story illustrating Judge Begbie’s ready resourcefulness and sense of justice, combined with a contempt for precedent, was a case where two partners in the ownership of a mining claim quarreled and then had a dispute over the division of their ground. After listening to a lot of tall swearing and contradictory evidence, Judge Begbie stopped the trial and turning to the litigants said:
“You, Jones and Brown”—that wasn’t their names but nobody remembers now who they were—“are agreed that you want to divide this ground?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you can’t agree on how the lines are to be run.”
“No, sir—” but they got no further.
“Very well, Jones, you go out to the ground and run a line dividing it the way you think it should be divided.”
“Yes, sir,” responded the exultant Jones.
“And, Brown.”
“Yes, sir.”
“To-morrow you go out and take your choice of the two halves as Jones divides it.”
Probably not since the days of Solomon has a legal dispute been more equitably or effectually settled than was that by Judge Begbie—an Englishman just out from the Old Country, in a wild frontier mining camp.
Judge Rouleau held court at widely-scattered points throughout the Northwest Territory and he was noted for the rough and ready, but shrewdly-just, quality of his decisions. On one occasion a half-breed, Louis Frechette, was charged before Judge Rouleau and a jury with the theft of a mule. The evidence was not very convincing—hardly sufficient for a Carolina mob to hang a nigger on—but the jury evidently believed somebody ought to be convicted of stealing the mule. There was no doubt the mule had been stolen. That was the only point that there was no doubt about. However, the jury brought in a verdict of “guilty” much to the chagrin of the judge, who thereupon was bound to sentence the accused which he did as follows:
“Louis, stan’ up. Louis, you have been convict’ of steal de mule. I sentence you to ‘tree mont’ in the polis Barracks at Regina. An’ Louis, d—— you, if I t’ink you guilt’ of steal dat mule I would give you t’ree year.”
Thus did the good judge vindicate the law and at the same time express his contempt for the jury’s verdict.
Another time when a half-breed was up for some offence or other, the evidence was very conflicting and barely warranted a conviction, if that. But he was found guilty and the judge, addressing the prisoner, said:
“Boy, I am not altogether sure you are guilt’, an’ so I will be lenient wit’ you. I sen’ you to de penitent’ for five years.” Goodness only knows what penalty would have been inflicted upon the unfortunate culprit if the judge had been absolutely sure of the prisoner’s guilt. But the judge was not so far wrong, after all—he sentenced the disreputable man on general principles, that if he wasn’t guilty of this particular crime, his everyday, dissolute, good-for-nothing life would be all the better for a little enforced retirement, and the countryside would also materially benefit by it.