In a note on p. 35 of a paper in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1900, on La Declaration de 1732 M. L'Abbé Auguste Gosselin, Litt.D., F.R.S., Can., we read:
"On trouve dans le livre de Mgr. Tanguay A travers les Registres, p. 157, une notice sur l'Esclavage au Canada, avec un 'Tableau des familles possédant des esclaves de la nation des Panis' L'esclavage ne fut definitivement aboli par une loi, en Canada, qu'en 1833."
The learned author does not mean that there was legislation on slavery in Canada in 1833, or that it was Canadian legislation which abolished slavery; for such was not the case.
[20] From September 8, 1828, to October 19, 1830.
[21] Canadian Archives, State K, p. 406.
CHAPTER V
Upper Canada—Early Period
The first Parliament of the Province of Upper Canada sat at Newark formerly and now Niagara-on-the-Lake, September 17, 1792. The very first act of this first Parliament of Upper Canada reintroduced the English civil law.[1] This did not destroy slavery, nor did it ameliorate the condition of the slave. It was rather the reverse, for as the English law did not, like the civil law of Rome and the systems founded on it, recognize the status of the slave at all, when it was forced by grim fact to acknowledge slavery, it had no room for the slave except as a mere piece of property. Instead of giving him rights like those of the "servus," he was deprived of all rights, marital, parental, proprietary, even the right to live. In the English law and systems founded on it, the slave had no rights which the master was bound to respect.[2] At one time, indeed, it was understood in the English colonies that the master had the jus vitæ necisque over his slaves; but at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Crown much to the anger and disgust of the colonists made the murder of a Negro a capital offence, and at least some of the governors vigorously upheld this decision.[3]