80 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. I. 



seems to make it probable that for some time the sessions were held in the old 

 Indian Council House, the site of which is still pointed out on the Garrison 

 Common to the south-west of the town of Niagara. 



Perhaps the most convenient way of getting a view of the legislation 

 of the first Parliament during its five sessions will be to classify the 

 statutes passed according to the subjects with which they deal, and for 

 this purpose the following heads will suffice: (I) Administration of 

 Justice, (2) Municipal Affairs, (3) Militia and Defence, (4) the Status of 

 Special Classes of Persons, and (5) the Work of Legislation and Adminis- 

 tration. 



I, ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 



It has already been intimated that the discontent of the English- 

 speaking immigrants, whether from the United States or Great Britain, 

 with French Canadian law, was one of the reasons for the passage of the 

 Constitutional Act of 1791, and the division of Quebec into Upper and 

 Lower Canada. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first Act passed 

 by the first Upper Canadian Parliament, at its first session was " An Act to 

 Repeal certain parts " of the Quebec Act of 1774, "" and to introduce the 

 English law as the rule of decision in all matters of controversy rela- 

 tive to property and civil rights." The preamble to this statute gives as a 

 reason for enacting it that " the part of the late Province of Quebec now 

 comprehended within the Province of Upper Canada has become inhabited 

 principally by British subjects, born and educated Avhere the English 

 laws were established, and who are unaccustomed to the laws of Canada;" 

 and one section of the Act provides that " all matters relative to testi- 

 mony and legal proof in the investigation of fact, and the forms therof, 

 in the several courts of law and equity within this Province be regulated by 

 the rules of evidence established in England." The second Act passed 

 during this first session was one to establish trial by jury, in strict ac- 

 cord with the law and custom of England. The effort to work the system 

 of trial by jury in the French colony to the east had proved unsatisfac- 

 tory, and in 1774 it had been abandoned in civil cases. During the 

 same session an Act was passed "to abolish the summary jurisdiction of 

 the Court of Common Pleas in actions under ten pounds sterling," and 

 another "for the more easy and speedy recovery of small debts," by 

 means of local tribunals, each made up of two or more justices of the 

 peace and designated a " Court of Requests." And, still during the 

 same session, an Act was passed to provide for the erection of a jail and 

 courthouse in each of the four districts into which the Province was then 

 divided — Eastern, Midland, Home, and Western. 



