Canadian State Trials: Law, Politics, and Security Measures, 1608-1837

Alexander David Kurke is a criminal lawyer in Sudbury, Ontario.

Readers of this book will come away with a heightened knowledge not only
of Canadian political history but also of “the role of law in the
exercise of power.”

The introduction by F. Murray Greenwood and Barry Wright provides a
context for the 17 essays that follow. The essays consider the various
tensions that characterized the periods they cover—tensions between
order and (real or perceived) disorder, loyalty and disaffection; and
freedom of speech and sedition, among others. The competing interests
almost invariably resolved in favor of the concerns of the power elite,
who far too often silenced opposition by combining the prosecuting power
with the suspension of habeas corpus and a conflicted judiciary.

Some of the most interesting pieces concern the mechanisms for
suppressing anti-government criticism in the postwar period. Barry
Wright considers the legal significance of the proceedings surrounding
the governmental persecution of Robert Gourlay; when criminal sedition
trials failed, deportation under the Sedition Act accomplished the
government’s ends. J.M. Bumsted points out the futility of defending
oneself against charges of contempt in chancery, when the focus of the
contempt—the lieutenant governor of Prince Edward Island—also
presided as chancellor. (This sort of conduct is not without historical
precedent; an instructive comparison could be made to the Roman trial of
M. Granius Marcellus, a trial presided over by the “victim” of
Marcellus’s treasonous slander, the emperor Tiberius.) Barry Cahill
provides an interesting overview and analysis of the 1835 libel trial of
self-represented publisher Joseph Howe.

As a study of the mechanisms governments employ to stifle criticism,
this book may help us to understand why youthful demonstrators in
Ontario could end up charged with intimidating the legislature while the
power elite can sip martinis on country club greens and congratulate
themselves on their “law and order” stance.