[10] This Act (1790) 30 Geo. III, c. 27, was intended to encourage "new settlers in His Majesty's Colonies and Plantations in America" and applied to all "subjects of the United States." It allowed an importation into any of the Bahama, Bermuda or Somers Islands, the Province of Quebec (then including all Canada), Nova Scotia and every other British territory in North America. It allowed the importation by such American subjects of "negros, household furniture, utensils of husbandry or cloathing free of duty," the "household furniture, utensils of husbandry and cloathing" not to exceed in value £50 for every white person in the family and £2 for each negro, any sale of negro or goods within a year of the importation to be void.
[11] The Royal Proclamation is dated 7th October, 1763; it will be found in Shortt & Doughty, Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada published by the Archives of Canada, Ottawa, 1907, pp. 119 sqq. The Proclamation fixes the western boundary of the (Province or) Government at a line drawn from the south end of Lake Nipissing to where the present international boundary crosses the River St. Lawrence.
The Quebec Act is (1774) 14 Geo. III, C. 83. It extends Quebec south to the Ohio and west to the Mississippi; Shortt & Doughty, pp. 401 sqq.
[12] The division of the Province of Quebec into two provinces, i. e., Upper Canada and Lower Canada, was effected by the Royal Prerogative, Sec. 31 George III, c. 31, the celebrated Canada of Constitutional Act. The Message sent to Parliament expressing the Royal intention is to be found copied in the Ont. Arch. Reports for 1906, p. 158. After the passing of the Canada Act, an Order in Council was passed August 24, 1791 (Ont. Arch. Rep., 1906, pp. 158 et seq.), dividing the Province of Quebec into two provinces and under the provisions of sec. 48 of the act directing a royal warrant to authorize the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Quebec or the person administering the government there, to fix and declare such day as he shall judge most advisable for the commencement of the effect of the legislation in the new provinces not later than December 31, 1791. Lord Dorchester (Sir Guy Carleton) was appointed, September 12, 1791, Captain General and Governor-in-Chief of both provinces and he received a Royal warrant empowering him to fix a day for the legislation becoming effective in the new provinces (Ont. Arch. Rep., 1906, p. 168). In the absence of Dorchester, General Alured Clarke, Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Quebec, issued November 18, 1791, a proclamation fixing Monday, December 26, 1791, as the day for the commencement of the said legislation (Ont. Arch. Rep., 1906, pp. 169-171). Accordingly technically and in law, the new province was formed by Order in Council, August 24, 1791, but there was no change in administration until December 26, 1791.
[13] The first session of the First Parliament of Upper Canada was held at Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) September 17 to October 15, 1792; the statute referred to is (1792) 32 Geo. III, c. 1 (U. C.).
[14] Everyone will remember the words of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the celebrated Dred Scott case. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1856 (19 How. 354, pp. 404, 405), Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, speaking of the view taken of the Negro when the Constitution was framed, says: "They were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race and whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them" (p. 407). "They had no more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order ... and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic" (p. 411). "All of them had been brought here as articles of merchandise."
This repulsive subject now chiefly of historical interest is treated at large in such works as Cobb's Law of Slavery, Philadelphia, 1858; Hurd's Law of Freedom and Bondage, Boston, 1858; Von Holst's Const. Hist. U. S. (1750-1833), Chicago, 1877; the judgments of all the Judges in the Dred Scott case are well worth reading, especially that of Mr. Justice Curtis.
[15] This is copied from the Canadian Archives Collection, Q. 282, pt. I, pp. 212 sqq.; taken from the official report sent to Westminster by Simcoe. There is the usual amount of uncertainty in spelling names Grisley or Crisly, Fromand, Frooman, Froomond or Fromond (in reality Vrooman).
Osgoode was an Englishman, the first Chief Justice of Upper Canada. Arriving in this Province in the summer of 1792, he left to become Chief Justice of Lower Canada in the summer of 1794. Resigning in 1801, he returned to England on a pension which he enjoyed until his death in 1824. He left no mark on our jurisprudence and never sat in any but trial courts of criminal jurisdiction. Osgoode Hall, our Ontario Palais de Justice, is called after him.
Russell came to Upper Canada also in 1792 as Receiver-General and Legislative Councillor; he was an Executive Councillor and when Simcoe left Canada in 1796, he acted as Administrator until the coming of the new Lieutenant Governor Peter Hunter in 1799. Russell was not noted for anything but his acquisitiveness but he was a faithful servant of the Crown in his own way.