lavery
Society and many persons of more or less note. An application was made
to the Court of Queen's Bench of England for a writ of habeas corpus,
notwithstanding the Upper Canadian decision, and while Anderson was in
the jail at Toronto, the court after anxious deliberation granted the
writ,[39] but it became unnecessary, owing to further proceedings in
Upper Canada.

In those days the decision of any court or of any judge in habeas
corpus proceedings was not final. An applicant might go from judge to
judge, court to court[40] and the last applied to might grant the
relief refused by all those previously applied to. A writ of habeas
corpus was taken out from the other Common Law Court in Upper Canada,
the Court of Common Pleas. This was argued in Hilary Term, 1861, and
the court unanimously decided that the warrant of commitment was bad
and that the court could not remand the prisoner to have it
amended.[41] The prisoner was discharged. No other attempts were made
to extradite him or any other escaped slave and Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation put an end to any chance of such an attempt being ever
repeated.

W. R. RIDDELL.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] This paper has appeared in _Transactions of the Royal Society of
Canada_, May, 1919.

[1] Per Hargrave _arguendo_, Somerset _v._ Stewart (1772), Lofft 1, at
p. 4; the speech in the State Trials Report was never actually
delivered.

[2] (1772) Lofft 1; (1772) 20 St. Trials 1.

[3] These words are not in Lofft or in the State Trials but will be
found in Campbell's _Lives of the Chief Justices_, Vol. II, p. 419,
where the words are added: "Every man who comes into England is
entitled to the protection of the English law, whatever oppression he
may heretofore have suffered and whatever may be the colour of his
skin. 'Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses'" and certainly
Vergil's verse was never used on a nobler occasion or to nobler
purpose. Verg. E. 2, 19.

William Cowper in _The Task_, written 1783-1785, imitated this in his
well-known lines:

"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free.
They touch our country and their shackles fall."

[4] I use the spelling in Lofft; the State Trials and Lord Campbell
have "Somersett" and "Steuart."

[5] See, _e. g._, Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, passim;
Hallam's _Middle Ages_ (ed. 1827), Vol. 3, p. 256; Pollock & Mai