Assembly

Rapports Et Témoignages Du Comité Special…Auquel ont été référées La Pétition des Habitans du Comté de York celle des Habitans de la Cité de Montréal et autres Petitions Se

1829 · ref. elala1084 — np: 1829. 1829. 8vo. pp. 1 p.l. 3index 4-255. modern calf covers bit discoloured. The majority of the grievances were directed at the authoritarian regime of Lord Dalhousie as governor of Lower Canada and Governor-in-Chief of British North America 1820-28 when he was recalled. Included are grievances relating to Dalhousie’s establishment of a new Quebec Gazette his censure of Sir Francis Burton for having sanctioned a Bill of Supply his dismissal of militia officers and exercise of intimidation during elections his dismissal of justices of the peace and the unfair manner of jury selection. "Among other things the Montreal petitioners complained that contrary to the laws of England juries both grand and petty and both King's Bench and Quarter Sessions were being drawn exclusively from the town of Montreal rather than from the district at large. The committee chaired by Denis-Benjamin Viger concluded that this practice of jurors being "selected or as it were packed - summoned exclusively from among the inhabitants of a particular place or from a particular class - cannot be more compatible with liberty than it is with the rules of impartial justice. It is repugnant to every principle of our government and can only tend to the overthrow of the constitution of the country….The executive's control over the process of selecting juries became for the Patriotes yet another symbol of despotism and of the attempted exclusion of canadiens from their democratic rights given that they predominated in the countryside; a number of highly political jury trials for libel and sedition did nothing to help matters. The controversy only began to die down from 1830 when James Kempt ordered that jurors be drawn from the body of the district; the denouement came in 1832 when the legislature adopted a law regulating the qualification and selection of jurors…" Donald Fyson ‘Grand Juries Political Power And Citizenship In Quebec And Lower Canada 1764-1830’ a paper for the 77th annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association Ottawa May 1998TPL 1549. Sabin 10568. cfCasey I 1279. Not in Dionne Gagnon or Lande. np: 1829. unknown