Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume XI : Quebec and the Canadas

The essays in this volume deal with the legal history of the Province of Quebec, Upper and Lower Canada, and the Province of Canada between the British conquest of 1759 and confederation of the British North America colonies in 1867. The backbone of the modern Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, this geographic area was unified politically for more than half of the period under consideration. As such, four of the papers are set in the geographic cradle of modern Quebec, four treat nineteenth-century Ontario, and the remaining four deal with the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes watershed as a whole. The authors come from disciplines as diverse as history, socio-legal studies, women’s studies, and law. The majority make substantial use of second-language sources in their essays, which shade into intellectual history, social and family history, regulatory history, and political history. Contents 5 Foreword 7 Preface 9 Introduction Quebec and the Canadas, 1760 to 1867: A Legal Historiography 13 1. Les débuts de la littérature juridique québécoise, 1767–1840 106 2. Les revendications des nouveaux sujets, francophones et catholiques, de la Province de Québec, 1764–1774 141 3. “A just and obvious distinction”: The Meaning of Imprisonment for Debt and the Criminal Law in Upper Canada’s Age of Reform 197 4. The Law of Nations in the Borderlands: Sovereignty and Self-Defence in the Rebellion Period, 1837–1842 245 5. Minority Groups and the Law in Quebec, 1760–1867 288 6. Être « demanderesse » en Justice: Permanences civilistes dans la Province de Québec, de la Juridiction royale de Montréal (1740–1760) à la Cour des plaids communs de Montréal (1760–1791) 340 7. “To shudder at the bare recital of those acts”: Child Abuse, Family, and Montreal Courts in the Early Nineteenth Century 380 8. Married Women’s Property Law Reform, Couples, and Fraud in Canada West / Ontario, 1859–1900 437 9. From Shaved Horses to Aggressive Churchwardens: Social and Legal Aspects of Moral Injury in Lower Canada 470 10. “Possession of arms among these men ... might lead to serious consequences”: Regulating Firearms in the Canadas, 1760–1867 513 11. Grand Juries and “Proper Authorities”: Low Law, Soft Law, and Local Governance in Canada West / Ontario, 1850–1880 548 Contributors 581 Index 585 Annotation The essays in this volume deal with the legal history of the Province of Quebec, Upper and Lower Canada, and the Province of Canada between the British conquest of 1759 and confederation of the British North America colonies in 1867. The backbone of the modern Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, this geographic area was unified politically for more than half of the period under consideration. As such, four of the papers are set in the geographic cradle of modern Quebec, four treat nineteenth-century Ontario, and the remaining four deal with the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes watershed as a whole. The authors come from disciplines as diverse as history, socio-legal studies, womens studies, and law. The majority make substantial use of second-language sources in their essays, which shade into intellectual history, social and family history, regulatory history, and political history