Section IL, 1913. [43] Trans. R.S.C. 



Practice of Court of Common Pleas of the District of Hesse. 

 By The Honourable Mr. Justice Riddell, L.H.D., LL.D., &c. 

 Presented by C. C. James, C.M.G., LL.D. 



Read May 28, 1913. 



A sketch of the first Puisne and fifth Chief Justice of the King's 

 Bench in Upper Canada has been written by the late D. B. Read, Q.C. ; 

 it appears in the Magazine of Western History, Vol. 5, p. 375 (1887), 

 and is included in his "Lives of the Judges." 



Mr. Read mentions the fact that Powell sat in the Court of Common 

 Pleas at L'Assomption on xVugust 11th, 1791: and says that this appears 

 from the "Archives at Osgoode Hall." The particular volume from 

 which the account is quoted is no longer to be found at Osgoode Hall;* 

 but recently in going over the vault of the King's Bench for an entirely 

 different purpose, I found a volume containing a record of earlier 

 judicial acts of the future Chief Justice. This volume naturally escaped 

 Mr. Read's notice, as it purports to be Volume 10 of the King's Bench 

 Term Books. It is of foolscap size, a parchment bound volume : while 

 the middle part is taken up with the proceedings in Term of the King's 

 Bench from November 3rd, 1828, to July 1st, 1830, a number of pages, 

 both at the front and at the back, contain a record of the proceedings 

 of the Court of Common Pleas holden at L'Assomption (the word is 

 spelled with an "o" not "u" in the original). The record begins July 

 16th, 1789, and continues till September 24th, 1789: then (reversing 

 the volume) the record is from May 19th, 1791, to August 4th, 1791, 

 at which day the Court was "adjourned to 11th inst." The volume 

 cited by Mr. Read is a continuation of this. Some 36 pages are cut 

 out from before the record of May 19th, 1791 — which may have 

 contained the proceedings from September, 1789 to May 1791. 



The history of the Court is not without interest. 



In the Royal Proclamation of 7th Oct., 1763, it was stated that 

 until Assemblies should be called, "all persons inhabiting in or resorting 

 to our said Colonies, may confide in our royal protection for the enjoy- 

 ment of the benefit of the laws of our Realm of England" — and the 

 Governor was instructed to "constitute and appoint Courts of Judicature 



*This volum(-> is now in the Oma io Archives, and cont lins the record from 

 August lUb, 1791, to October 2()th, 1791— there is also another volum g in th3 

 Archives containing the re:;cjrd from October 27th, 1791, till January 26th, 1792. 



