He adds: “The Canadian noblesse were hated because their birth and behaviour entitled them to respect and the peasants were abhorred because they were saved from the oppression they were threatend with.”
The letter concludes: “I glory in having been accused of war with unfairness in protecting the king’s Canadian subjects and of doing the utmost in my power to gain to my royal master the affections of that great, hardy people whose emigration, if ever it should happen, will be an irreparable loss to this country.”
Though Murray was recalled it must not be assumed that his policy of colonial government was disapproved of by the ministers for it was not until April, 1768, that he relinquished the office of governor in chief. After a time the opposition between the military and the magistrates died down, but the latter now became a fertile source of oppression to the civil population.
Let us then turn our attention to the Montreal justices of the peace. In 1769, reports had reached the Council at Quebec as to the oppresive practices of some of the magistrates of the Montreal district, and in consequence the council addressed to many of them on July 10, 1769, a letter of remonstrance applicable to “those magistrates only who had given occasion for the complaint.”
The circular prepared by a committee of the Council was addressed “To the Justices of the Peace active in and for the district of Montreal.” It opened with a charge that “it appears from facts too notorious to be dispelled that His Majesty’s subjects in general, but more particularly his Canadian subjects, are daily injured and abused to a degree they are no longer able to support nor public justice endure.” The chief charges were of extorting excessive fees from litigants applying freely to the court and that in addition a low class of bailiffs, many of them French Canadians, who provoked and instituted lawsuits among the inhabitants were going about with blank forms signed with the justices’ names ready to be filled up at any moment. Thus abuses were numerous.
In August a committee of the Council sat to consider further the state of the administration of Justice under the justices of peace. A report was prepared and was read on August 29th and September 11th. It was agreed to in the Castle of St. Louis by the council on September 14th, and Acting Attorney General Kneller was instructed to prepare an ordinance on the point.
The report after stating that although the original powers in matters of property given to justices of the peace by the ordinance of September 14, 1764, were exceedingly grievous and oppressive to the subjects, yet even so “the authority given to the Justices hath been both too largely and too confidently entrusted and requires to be retrenched if not wholly taken away.” It then notices “The Justices of Montreal have in one instance, and probably in many others which have passed without notice, assumed to themselves powers of a nature not fit to be exercised by any Summary Jurisdiction, whatsoever, in consequence of which Titles to Land have been determined and possessions disturbed in a way unknown to the laws of England and inconsistent with the solemnity and deliberation which is due to matters of so high and important a nature. And we are not without information, that even where personal property only has been in dispute, one magistrate in particular under pretense that it was at the desire and request of both the contending parties has by himself exercised a jurisdiction considerably beyond what the ordinance has allowed even to three Justices in full court at their Quarter Sessions.
“From an omission of a similar nature and for want of ascertaining the manner in which their judgments were to be inforced, we find the Magistrates to have assumed another very high and dangerous Authority in the exercise of which Gaols are constantly filled with numbers of unhappy objects and whole families reduced to beggery and ruin.”
Later the report refers to evils “which will probably always be the case when the office of a Justice of Peace is considered as a lucrative one and must infallibly be so when it is his principal, if not, only dependence.”
One consequence of the report was the appointment in the ordinance of a Court of Common Pleas to be held before judges constantly residing in the town of Montreal. This court was now to be independent of, and with the same powers as, that at Quebec. Hitherto the latter had held adjourned meetings on different days at Montreal. The object was to give inexpensive, speedy and expert hearing to Montrealers.