Assembly of Saint-Ours, 7 May 1837

The first assembly protesting about both Russell’s Resolution and the colonial authorities took place at Saint-Ours on 7 May 1837. Its importance lies in the resolutions that it passed and because it provided a model for subsequent Patriote assemblies. The assembly was a direct consequence of Russell’s Resolutions introduced into the House of Commons when the Whig government rejected the Ninety-Two Resolutions. They allowed the colonial government to authorise taxation without the approval of the Assembly. Russell’s Resolutions were approved by both Whigs and Conservatives in the House of Commons though there was opposition from radicals especially Hume, Roebuck and O’Connell.[1] News of the adoption of these resolutions reached Quebec around 10 April and its effect was explosive. La Minerve and The Vindicator encouraged the people to revolt: The Vindicator called for ‘Agitation! Agitation!’

On 20 April, La Minerve announced the calling of an assembly in the comté de Richelieu. It was announced a second time a week before it was well by a group of professionnals, farmers and artisans influential in the parishes of Saint-Charles, Saint-Denis and Saint-Ours.[2] 1,200 electors from all the comtés attended the first assembly. Côme-Séraphin Cherrier de Saint-Denis chaired the assembly while J.P. Boucher de Belleville, schoolteacher from Saint-Charles a journalist on the Écho du Pays, acted as secretary.[3] Speeches were made by Dr. Wolfred Nelson, from Saint-Denis, Charles-Olivier Côté, deputy for Lacadie and Siméon Marchesseault, another schoolteacher from Saint-Charles. Twelve resolutions, prepared by the Comité central et permanent des patriotes,[4] were passed and are best known as the Déclaration de Saint-Ours.[5] The first six resolutions denounced the Russell Resolutions and violations of the 1791 Constitution and the rights of the people by an oppressive government that inspired only loathing and contempt.[6] Resolution seven voiced the desire for resistance and revolt that existed among the Patriotes. Resolutions eight and nine were associated with the principle of ‘No taxation without representation’: the Patriotes decided not to buy British imports or pay taxes to the government on other imported goods and to put pressure on the government by smuggling goods.[7] Resolution nine announced an assembly of the six comtés at Saint-Charles advocated a patriotic association, devised by several comtés, to ensure that all article bought were either manufactured in the colony or were the product of smuggling. It also nominated yen people to a committee that would communicate with committees in the other comtés.[8] The tenth resolution proclaimed Papineau, who did not attend this first assembly, as the only leader of the Patriotes.[9] Finally, resolutions eleven and twelve thanked the reforms in England and Upper Canada who supported their cause and criticised those Patriotes who had turned from the movement.[10]

The Patriote press grouped these assemblies and the various patriotic reunions, almost thirty in the course of the summer and early autumn of 1837, under the title of ‘La voix du peuple’.[11] In its report of the assembly at Saint-Ours, La Minerve emphasised the importance of the twelfth resolution commenting that

Douze cents personnes ont pris part à ses procédés marqués au coin de la vigueur, de la fermeté et du désir d’obtenir justice. [12]

The Vindicator was more discrete providing only a brief summary of the resolutions[13]. Le Canadien thought the assembly was strange, absurd and impractical while the loyalist press avoided the subject. Later, conservative opinion viewed the assemblies as an unrealistic fantasy while others consider the impact of the Déclaration de Saint-Ours to be as important as the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme de la France in 1789.[14] The assembly of Saint-Ours is important not as a parliamentary manifesto such as the Ninety-Two Resolutions but as an appeal to the people[15] and within a week this had spread throughout the colony.[16]

In the collective memory of the rebellions of 1837-1838, the Assemblée de Saint-Ours holds an important position. It had an immense influence on the events that led up to the risings. It was also the first anti-coercive assembly. Planned by the Comité Central et Permanent, it was a response to Russell’s Resolutions recently sent from London and more than 1,200 Patriotes attended. The majority came from the comté de Richelieu but there was also a considerable number of participants from the neighbouring comtés, several of whom arrived on the steamer Le cygne that had lowered its fares for the occasion. The assembly began at 2 p.m., at the end of Vespers.[17] Speeches, which were both energetic and confrontational, were made by Wolfred Nelson, C-O Côté and S Marchesseau.[18] These were, according to Greer, of a revolutionary nature made in the context of political crisis.[19] This assembly is recognised as having provided the tone for the radicalisation of Patriote demands and was the model for the assemblies that followed. Its twelve resolutions were, in many respects revisited the Ninety-Two Resolutions with the difference that London was now considered not as an ally but an adversary clearly showing the end of the long-term Patriote strategy of co-operation with the metropolis. For Filteau, the resolutions of Saint-Ours were the equivalent of a ‘Declaration of French Canadian rights’.[20]

Appendix: The Declaration of Saint-Ours

Résolu:

Que nous avons vu avec les sentiments de la plus vive indignation les résolutions proposées à l’adoption de la chambre des communes, le 6 Mars dernier, résolutions dont l’effet nécessaire est de nous enlever toute garantie de liberté et de bon gouvernement pour l’avenir de cette province.

Que l’adoption de ces résolutions sera une violation flagrante de la part des communes et du gouvernement qui les a proposées, de la Capitulation, des traités et des actes constitutionnels qui ont été octroyés au pays. Que ces actes, ces traités, portant des obligations réciproques, savoir de notre part, amour et obéissance, de la part de l’Angleterre, protection et garantie de liberté, seraient virtuellement annulés par la violation des promesses de l’une des parties contractantes.

Que dans ces circonstances, nous ne pourrions regarder le gouvernement qui aurait recours à l’injustice, à la force et à une violation du contrat social, que comme un pouvoir oppresseur, un gouvernement de force, pour lequel la mesure de notre soumission ne devrait être désormais que la mesure de notre force numérique, jointe aux sympathies que nous nous trouverons ailleurs...

Que nous nions au Parlement anglais le droit de législater sur les affaires intérieures de cette colonie, contre notre consentement et sans notre participation et nos demandes, comme le non-exercice de ce droit par l’Angleterre nous a été garanti par la Constitution et reconnu par la métropole lorsqu’elle a craint que nous n’acceptassions les offres de liberté et d’indépendance que nous ferait la république voisine. Qu’en conséquence, nous regardons comme nuls et non-avenus l’acte du commerce du Canada, l’acte qui incorpore la société dite Compagnie des Terres, et enfin l’acte qui sera sans doute basé sur les résolutions qui viennent d’être adoptées par les Communes.

Que ne nous regardant plus liés que par la force au gouvernement anglais, nous lui serons soumis comme à un gouvernement de force, attendant de Dieu, de notre bon droit et des circonstances un sort meilleur, les bienfaits de la liberté et un gouvernement plus juste. Que cependant, comme notre argent public dont en ose disposer sans aucun contrôle le gouvernement métropolitain, va devenir entre ses mains un nouveau moyen de pression contre nous, et que nous regardons comme notre devoir, comme de notre honneur de résister par tous les moyens actuellement en notre possession à un pouvoir tyrannique; pour diminuer autant qu’il est en nous, ces moyens d’oppression, nous résolvons:

Que nous nous abstiendrons, autant qu’il sera en notre pouvoir, de consommer les articles importés, particulièrement ceux qui paient des droits plus élevés, tels que le thé, le tabac, les vins, le rhum, etc. Que nous consommerons de préférence, les produits manufacturés en ce pays; que nous regarderons comme bien méritant de la patrie quiconque établira des manufactures de soie, de draps, de toiles, soit de sucre, de spiritueux, etc. Que considérant l’acte du commerce comme non avenu, nous regarderons comme très licite, le commerce désigné sous le nom de contrebande; jugerons ce trafic très honorable; tâcherons de le favoriser de tout notre pouvoir, regardant ceux qui s’y livreront comme méritant bien du pays, et comme infâme quiconque se porterait dénonciateur contre eux.

Que pour rendre ces résolutions plus efficaces, cette assemblée est d’avis qu’on devrait faire dans le pays une association patriotique dont le centre serait à Québec ou à Montréal, dans le but de s’engager à ne consommer, autant qu’il est en nous, que des produits manufacturés en ce pays, ou importés ici sans avoir payé de droits... Que pour opérer plus efficacement la régénération de ce pays, il convient, à l’exemple de l’Irlande, de se rallier tous autour d’un homme. Que cet homme, Dieu l’a marqué comme O’Connell pour être le chef politique, le régénérateur d’un peuple. Qu’il lui a donné pour cela une force de pensée et de parole qui n’est pas surpassée; une haine de l’opression, un amour du pays, qu’aucune promesse, aucune menace du pouvoir ne peut fausser. Que cet homme déjà désigné par le pays: est L.J. Papineau. Cette assemblée, considérant les heureux résultats obtenus en Irlande du tribut appelé tribut O’Connell, est d’avis qu’un semblable tribut appelé tribut Papineau devrait exister en ce pays. Les comités de l’Association contre l’importation seraient chargés de le prélever.

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[1] Rumilly, Robert, Papineau et son temps, (Fides), 1977, p. 423.

[2] Ibid, Ouellet, Fernand, Histoire économique et sociale du Québec, 1760–1850: structures et conjuncture, pp. 434-435.

[3] Ibid, Filteau, Gerard, Histoire des patriotes, 1980, p. 211.

[4] Latouche, Daniel, Le Manuel de la parole, Vol. 1, (Editions du Boreal), 1977, document 15

[5] Ibid, Filteau, Gerard, Histoire des patriotes, p. 211.

[6] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 23-25.

[7] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, p. 26.

[8] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, p. 27.

[9] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, p. 27.

[10] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, p. 28.

[11] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, p. 18, The Vindicator, 12 May 1837.

[12] La Minerve, 11 May 1837.

[13] The Vindicator, 12 May 1837.

[14] Ibid, Filteau, Gerard, Histoire des patriotes, p. 218.

[15] Ibid, Latouche, Daniel, Le Manuel de la parole, document 15.

[16] Ibid, Filteau, Gerard, Histoire des patriotes, p. 218.

[17] Ibid, Couillard, Després, Armand, Histoire de la famille et de la seigneurie de Saint-Ours 2ième partie 1785-1916, (Impr. de l'Institution des sourds-muets), 1917, p. 232.

[18] Ibid, Filteau, Gerard, Histoire des patriotes, p. 83.

[19] Ibid, Greer, Allan, The patriots and the people, p. 137

[20] Ibid, Filteau, Gerard, Histoire des patriotes, p. 87.

Crime and the courts

There has been an unprecedented growth of academic research and publications in the history of crime.[1] Until recently, most books dealing with crime tended to be ‘popular’ rather than narrowly ‘academic’ in character and concentrated on particular, notorious events or personalities and many depended on largely anecdotal and literary sources. Since the 1970s, historians have increasingly turned their attention to crime and how former societies understood it and sought to deal with it.

Some historians have made a distinction between ‘real crime’ such as murder, rape and theft and ‘social crime’ or offences that had a degree of community acceptance or that can be linked with social protest.[2] John Rule has suggested that it is useful to think of two main types of social crime during the late-eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. First, some crimes drew society’s support because of their protest nature. In this category he includes rioting over the high cost of food, over enclosures, recruiting for the army or navy or over turnpike tolls.[3] Secondly, some crimes were not regarded as criminal by those who committed them. ‘Perks’ or the appropriation of things from the workplace became increasingly the object of criminal prosecution by employers in the nineteenth century. Poaching fell into the same category.[4] The poor did not look upon it as a crime

...they almost universally look upon game, when in a wild state, as not being the property of any individual. [5]

Bow Street court c1910

The degree to which the state criminalises certain types of behaviour and not others has always been a matter of debate. The traditional view is that humanitarian reformers like Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir James Mackintosh gradually created awareness both inside and outside Parliament that England’s Bloody Code needed drastic revision. While such men stressed the barbarity of the legal code, other reformers like John Howard paved the way for improvement in the penal system. This picture fitted well with the Whig idea of history as progress and implied a logic that neglects the economic, social and political context for change.

Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs Pankhurst and Flora Drummond at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, 1913

Eighteenth century Parliaments tended to pass laws to deal with local problems but gradually government saw crime in its national context. Sir Robert Peel‘s reorganisation of the criminal law during the 1820s was symptomatic of this change. Yet national laws still had to be implemented at local level by local people, whose perceptions were not always the same as those in Parliament. The law may have been seen as impartial but, it had to be interpreted and enforced by local agents such as the magistracy who had their own assumptions, interests and prejudices and who could, on occasions, be at odds with each other. [6]

Offenders in England and Wales were brought before three main kinds of court during the nineteenth century.[7] Before the appointment of professional prosecutors in the late-nineteenth century, criminal cases were initiated by complaints from private citizens, usually the victims, to local magistrates. Their role was to assess the allegations and, if proceedings seemed warranted, to choose the appropriate course of action. Criminal prosecution was rather more like civil litigation. Private prosecution was expensive and only wealthy people could afford to pay for a lengthy court trial. The cost of the litigation meant that for the masses of the poor recourse to criminal justice was not possible and often they ‘took the law into their own hands’.

The main developments during the nineteenth century were the decline in private prosecution and the extension of use of the courts by the working class. The criminal justice system, in particular the magistrates courts, moved into the working-class areas of the expanding cities and was part of the same dynamic that resulted in the formation of the modern police. The increasing use of the magistrates’ courts, known, appropriately, as police courts, by the masses was a key feature of these developments. The main vehicle of this change was the extension of access to the courts for the masses through the expansion of summary jurisdiction. The percentage of offences in England and Wales tried in front of lay magistrates rose from 66 percent in 1857 to 80 percent by 1911. Misdemeanours, the least serious offences such as drunkenness, soliciting, and vagrancy were dealt with summarily by magistrates sitting alone or in pairs on the bench, although those accused were allowed to employ a defence counsel. These summary powers were extended during the nineteenth century to include some cases of petty larceny and assault with the passage of the Juvenile Offenders Acts in 1847 and 1850 and the Criminal Justice Acts of 1855 and 1879.[8] At the beginning of the nineteenth century, individual magistrates frequently tried summary offences in their own home but this became less common by the 1830s and was abolished in 1848 by the Summary Jurisdiction Act. After this, all summary trials took place at formally constituted Petty Sessions, before at least two magistrates. Petty Sessional courts had since the eighteenth century but in 1828, legislation had tightened up procedures and carefully defined Petty Sessional divisions within counties. In the larger towns and cities, stipendiary or paid magistrates, acting in what were increasingly referred to as ‘police courts‘ took on more and more of the burdens of summary justice.[9] Summary jurisdiction benefitted the working-classed by making access to the courts quick and cheap but also entailed ‘handing over’ to the police and increasingly middle-class magistrates by the masses of the right to sort out their conflicts.

When the offence appeared more serious, the magistrate drafted a bill of indictment for a grand jury which, if satisfied that there was a case to answer, sent it for trial by jury in one of two venues.[10] More serious offences or felonies were prosecuted on indictment and were heard at Quarter Sessions that met four times a year in the county town and in those boroughs where the right for a borough session was included in its charter. These courts were held before a bench of county justices or magistrates appointed by a borough corporation, with a jury. Quarter Sessions were regarded as consistently poor throughout the nineteenth century due to failure by chairmen, who did not have to be legally qualified, to take proper note of evidence, often displaying open hostility to prisoners and the severity of sentences compared to the Assizes.

The most serious offences were tried before professional circuit judges and juries at Assizes that generally sat twice a year. Before 1842, when legislation assigned all capital offences and those with life imprisonment for the first offence to the Assizes, the line between Assize and Quarter Sessions cases was rather blurred. It has been estimated that in the early-nineteenth century, trials lasted about 20 minutes with Assizes hearing 20-30 cases a day. Traditionally, English felony trials consisted of a relatively unstructured exchange between the victim of the felony or a hired prosecutor and the accused generally appearing without a lawyer.[11] In cases of high treason, the right to make a defence had been established in 1696 [12] but it was not until 1836 that the Prisoners’ Counsel Act recognised the defendant’s right to legal counsel in felony trials and lifted many restrictions on the activities of defence lawyers.[13] This recognised the growing practice, which had developed during the previous century, of judges allowing counsel to examine witnesses on the defendant’s behalf.[14] In the early-nineteenth century, there were two assizes per year held in the major county towns of most counties at Lent and during the summer. Emergencies, such as food riots or other types of public disorder, could lead to a special assize being called. The metropolitan equivalent of the assizes was the court at the Old Bailey that, by the 1750s, held eight sessions a year. In 1834, it was enlarged and re-housed in the new Central Criminal Court.[15]

The King’s or Queen’s Bench was the monarch’s personal court concerned with protecting the interests of the Crown. Cases could be referred to it where it was believed that a fair hearing in a particular locality was impossible. It was also a court of review for magistrates, who could ask it to rule on points of law. Judges at the Assizes normally consulted their colleagues on points of law but, in 1848, the Court for Crown Cases Reserved was set up for this. During the nineteenth century, there was no appeals procedure or court of appeals. A convicted criminal’s only hope was the Royal Pardon, in practice delegated to the Home Secretary. A Court of Criminal Appeal was finally established in 1907.[16]

Magistrates and judges were not the only agents of the law who were called upon to interpret the law. The nineteenth century saw the creation of a new police force in Britain. The police had some discretion in identifying behaviour as criminal or not and in deciding what action to take. It was largely victimless crimes that were open to such discretion: drunkenness, prostitution, street gaming and especially Sunday street-selling.

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[1] Emsley, C., Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, 4^th ed., (Longman), 2010 is the most recent general text and should be read in conjunction with his Policing and its Context 1750-1870, (Macmillan), 1983 and ‘Crime in Nineteenth Century Britain’, History Today, Vol. 38, (4), (1988), pp. 40-46, Gattrell, V., ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state‘, in Thompson, F.M.L., (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950: Vol. 3 Social Agencies and Institutions, (Cambridge University Press), 1900, pp. 243-310 and the older study by Tobias, J.J., Crime and Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century, (Batsford), 1967. See also, Taylor, David, Crime, policing and punishment in England, 1750-1914, (Macmillan), 1998, and McLynn, Frank J., Crime and punishment in eighteenth-century England, (Routledge), 1989.

[2] Taylor, H., ‘Rationing Crime: The Political Economy of Criminal Statistics since the 1850s’, Economic History Review, Vol. 51, (1998), pp. 569-590 and Sindall, R.S., ‘The criminal statistics of nineteenth-century cities: a new approach’, Urban History, Vol. 13, (1986), pp. 28-36 consider the problem of crime statistics.

[3] Shakesheff, T., Rural conflict, crime and protest: Herefordshire, 1800 to 1860, (Boydell), 2003, pp. 78-112, 141-175 provides a good local study on this issue.

[4] Osborne, Harvey and Winstanley, Michael J., ‘Rural and Urban Poaching in Victorian England’, Rural History, Vol. 17, (2006), pp. 187-212 and Hopkins, H., The Long Affray: the poaching wars, 1760-1914, (Secker and Warburg), 1985.

[5] A Bedfordshire JP to the Select Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions, Parliamentary Papers 1826-7, Vol. 6, p. 34.

[6] Zangerl, C.H.E., ‘The Social Composition of the County Magistracy in England and Wales, 1831-1887’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 11, (1971), pp. 113-125, Philips, D., ‘The Black Country Magistracy 1835-1860’, Midland History, Vol. 3, (1975), pp. 161-190 and Swift, R., ‘The English Urban Magistracy and the Administration of Justice during the early Nineteenth Century: Wolberhampton 1815-1860’, Midland History, Vol. 17, (1992), pp. 75-92.

[7] Cottu, Charles, On the Administration of Criminal Justice in England: and the Spirit of the English Government, (R. Stevens), 1822 provides a contemporary view. Bentley, D.J., English Criminal Courts in the Nineteenth Century, (Continuum), 1998 and Langbein, John H., The Origins of the Adversary Criminal Trial, (Oxford University Press), 2003. See also, King, Peter, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 1740-1820, (Cambridge University Press), 2000 and Cornish William, Anderson J. Stuart, Cocks Ray, Lobban Michael, Polden Patrick and Smith, Keith, (eds.), The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Volumes XI, XII and XIII, 1820-1914, (Oxford University Press), 2010, Vol. XI for detailed discussion of the development of the criminal justice system.

[8] The Juvenile Offenders Act of 1847 permitted summary trial for larceny by offenders aged under 14. This was raised to 16 in 1850. The Criminal Justice Act of 1855 extended summary jurisdiction with the consent of the accused to all cases of simple larceny.

[9] Davis, J., ‘A poor man’s system of justice: The London police courts in the second half of the nineteenth century’, Historical Journal¸Vol. 27, (2), (1984), pp. 309-335.

[10] Grand juries met to assess the indictments and decide whether there was sufficient evidence to try the case before a trial jury. At this point prosecutors and their witnesses, but not defendants, could testify. Those cases for which a grand jury believed the evidence was sufficient to warrant a trial were approved as ‘true bills’; those rejected were labelled ‘ignoramus’ or ‘not found’ and the case was dropped. There were repeated calls throughout the nineteenth century for the abolition of the grand jury but it was not until 1933 that England abandoned them in favour of a committal procedure. See, Hostettler, John, The Politics of Criminal Law Reform in the Nineteenth Century, (Barry Rose Law Publishers), 1992, pp. 150-154 and The Criminal Jury Old and New: Jury power from early times to the present day, (Waterside Press), 2004, pp. 109-125.

[11] Although victims could hire a lawyer to present their case before the courts but in practice few did so. In most felony trials, the judges were the only participants with any legal training. Consequently, they dominated the courtroom and orchestrated the brief confrontation between the accused and the victim that lay at the heart of the trial.

[12] See, Shapiro, Alexander H., ‘Political Theory and the Growth of Defensive Safeguards in Criminal Procedure: The Origins of the Treason Trials Act of 1696’, Law & History Review, Vol. 11, (2), (1993), pp. 215-255.

[13] Beattie, J.M., ‘Scales of Justice: Defense Counsel and the English Criminal Trial in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Law & History Review, Vol. 9, (2), (1991), pp. 221-267 examines the development of defence in felony cases.

[14] Langbein, John H., ‘The Prosecutorial Origins of Defence Counsel in the Eighteenth Century: The Appearance of Solicitors’, Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 58, (1999), pp. 314-365.

[15] May, Allyson M., The Bar and the Old Bailey, 1750-1850, (University of North Carolina Press), 2003.

[16] In Scotland, the nineteenth century justice system consisted of two courts, the Sherrif Court and the High Court (based in Edinburgh). Both of these courts travelled on a circuit to different regional locations where cases would be tried. The most common crimes to be tried in the Sherrif Court were theft and assault while more difficult cases were referred to the High Court, the supreme criminal court of Scotland.