of affairs in Upper Canada. Francis Gore and Sir Peregrine Maitland
might successively posture as figure-heads under the title of
Lieutenant-Governors, but the real depositaries of power were the Rector
and the Chief Justice. Ominous combination! which falsified the aphorism
of a great writer--now, unhappily, lost to us--about the inevitable
incompatibility of law and gospel. Both of them had seats in the
Executive Council, and, under the then-existing state of things, were
official but irresponsible advisers of the Crown's representative. More
than one would-be innovator of those days had been made to feel the
weight of their hands, without in the least knowing, or even suspecting,
whence the blow proceeded. They were the head and front of the junto of
oligarchs who formed the Vehmgericht known as the Family Compact, and
for all practical purposes their judgment in matters relating to the
dispensing of patronage and the disposal of Crown property was final and
conclusive.

The counsel for the prosecution was a handsome young man of
twenty-eight, who for some years past had been steadily fitting himself
for the important part he was destined to play--that of Mr. Powell's
judicial[1] and political successor in the colony. The time was only ten
years distant when he, in his turn, was to become Chief Justice of Upper
Canada. The time was still less remote when he was to succeed Chief
Justice Powell as Dr. Strachan's most active colleague--as the chief lay
spokesman of his party, and the chief lay adviser of successive
Lieutenant-Governors. His name was John Beverley Robinson, and his
destiny was doubtless sufficiently clear before him on this 20th of
August, 1819. He had strong claims upon his party, for he was the son of
a United Empire Loyalist, and during the late war with the United States
had proved that he was no degenerate scion of the stock whence he had
sprung. He had been present at the surrender of Detroit, and had borne
himself gallantly at the battle of Queenston Heights. Nor had his party
shown any disposition to ignore his claims. On the contrary, they had
pushed him forward with a rapidity which would have turned any head with
a natural tendency to giddiness. He had been appointed Attorney-General
of the Province before he had been called to the bar, and when he was
only twenty-one years of age--a special Act of Parliament being
subsequently passed to confirm the proceeding. In 1815 he had been
appointed S