60 JOHN GEORGE BOURINOT ON 
These courts of quarter sessions have long existed in English counties, and their functions 
have been regulated by aseries of statutes commencing in the T'ndor times and coming down 
to the present day. The English counties were subdivided into petty sessional divisions. 
At the head of this civil organisation in a county is the lord-lieutenant and the Custos 
Rotulorum. These two offices are usually held by one person, who holds office under 
a special commission from the Crown, and is generally a peer of the realm or large land- 
owner. “ His office,” says Hallam, “ may be considered as a revival of the ancient local 
earldom, and it certainly took away from the sheriff a great part of the dignity and impor- 
tance which he had acquired since the discontinuance of that office. Yet the lord-lieutenant 
has so peculiarly military an authority that it does not in any degree control the civil power 
of the sheriff as the executive minister of the law.” 
It would appear from the old records that there was a similar officer appointed in the 
early times of Canada. Speaking of Lower Canada, Lord Durham says: “ The justices of 
the peace scattered over the whole of Lower Canada are named by the governor on no very 
accurate information, there being no lieutenants or similar officers of counties in this as in 
the upper province.”* The Duke de la Rochefoucault, writing in 1795, says: “Simcoe 
is by no means ambitious of investing all power and authority in his own hands, but 
consents that the Meutenants, whom he nominates for each county, should appoint the 
justices of the peace and officers of the militia.’ From these and other references to the 
duties of the officer, he appears to have discharged functions similar to those of the lord- 
lieutenant in England, since he appointed justices and commanded the militia. The 
title, however, appears to have fallen into disuse in the course of a few years, though 
there was a custos rotulorum or chairman of sessions in all of the provinces. The lieut- 
enancy in Upper Canada never assumed as much importance as did the same office in 
Virginia. ° 
As I have already shown, the justices in sessions appointed as in England a high 
constable, and discharged certain functions now performed by municipal bodies in 
Canada. All moneys collected by assessors of taxes were to be paid into the hands of 
treasurers who were appointed by the justices in general quarter sessions. The justices 
so assembled directed how the moneys were to be disbursed in accordance with the law. 
The legislature, from time to time, regulated the time and place for holding these courts. 
The quarter sessions were held in 1793, at Adolphustown, Kingston, Michillimackinac. 
Newark, New Johnstown, and Cornwall, then the principal towns of the province. The 
jurisdiction of the justices was very extensive in those times. They had the carrying out 
in a great measure of the acts of the legislature providing for the defraying of the expenses 
of building court houses and jails, of keeping the same in repair, of the payment of jailers, of 
the support and maintenance of prisons, of the building and repairing of houses of correc- 
tion, of the construction and repairs of bridges, of the fees of coroners and other officers, 

1 The English Citizen Series. Local Government in England, M. D. Chalmers, p. 93. 
? Const. Hist., (Eng. ed. 1881) ii. 134. * Report, p. 41. * Vol. i. 416. 
5 “One is struck by the prominence of the lieutenant, anciently the commander, who, besides being the chief 
of the militia in his county, was a member of the Council, and as such a judge of the highest tribunal in the county. 
With Commissioners of the Governor he held monthly courts for the settlement of suits, not exceeding in value 
one hundred pounds of tobacco, and from this court, appeal was allowed to the Governor and Council.” Local 
Institutions of Virginia. By Ed. Ingle (Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science) p. 83. 
