28th, 1793, after which until its abolition, the Court was presided over by McDonell and Munro. This Court according to extant records sat at Cornwall, Osnabruck, Stormont and New Johnstown.22

In the next District, Mecklenburg, the commissions issued to Richard Cartwright, Neil McLean and James Clark, James Clark did not sit after July 8th, 1789, and Hector McLean took his place January 3rd, 1791,23 and these three. i.e. Messrs. Cartwright and the two McLeans continued to preside over the Court until its abolition-often, however only two of them sat.

This Court sat at Kingston except on one occasion, January 14th and 15th, 1793, when it sat at Adolphustown and tried two cases.2+

first member in the Legislative Assembly (1792) for the second Riding of Glengarry and the first Speaker of the House. Edward Jessup was born at Albany, was a Loyalist and fought on the loyal side during the Revolutionary wars: came to Canada and settled on land now in part occupied by the Town of Prescott: he became member of the Assembly for the second Parliament, 1796, representing the County of Grenville. In 1800, he became Clerk of the Peace for the District of Johnstown, and died at Prescott, 1815.

22 New Johnstown was a settlement in the township of Cornwall, upon the River St. Lawrence, below the Long Sault; and was afterwards called Cornwall-the present name. The name New Johnstown still lingered and was for long used occasionally. The township of Osnabruck was above Cornwall, also on the St. Lawrence: it does not appear at what precise part of the township the Courts were held; Judge Pringle thinks probably it was near what is now Dickenson's Landing: Luneburg or the Old Eastern District, by J. F. Pringle, Cornwall, 1890, p. 47. I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of this identification.

23 Richard Cartwright was born at Albany in 1759 and educated there he took the Loyalist side during the Revolution and served two campaigns with Col. Butler, of the Queen's Rangers, as his Secretary. At the close of the war. having in the meantime come to Kingston, Canada, he joined the Honourable Robert Hamilton in business. The partnership dissolving, Hamilton went to Niagara, and Cartwright remained at Kingston. Cartwright was afterwards a member of the first Legislative Council of Upper Canada, and was most attentive to his duties as such. He was the grandfather of Sir Richard Cartwright, of the late Master in Chambers, and the present efficient Deputy Attorney-General.

Niel McLean and Hector McLean were prominent settlers of Scottish descent.

James Clark was afterwards one of the first members of the Law Society of Upper Canada, having been so fortunate as to be one of those receiving a license to practise, under the provisions of the Act of 1794. 34 George III., c. 4. It is said that a Commission as judge was offered to the Reverend John Stuart, but declined by him; and that Richard Cartwright was appointed in his stead: The Story of Old Kingston, by Miss Machar, p. 78.

"Kingston had been called Frontenac during the French regime: it rapidly assumed and continued to hold a position of great prominence in the St. Lawrence District.

Adolphustown was for some time of great relative importance, but has long lost its place in the advance of the rest of the province.

In the District of Nassau, there was a curious mistake made. It had been intended to appoint Benjamin Pawling, Colonel John Butler and Robert Hamilton, judges of the Court, but Jesse Pawling's name was inserted in the Commission instead of Benjamin Pawling's however this was speedily rectified, and on October 22nd, 1788, Jesse Pawling's Commission as judge was revoked (he being appointed a Coroner for the District), and Benjamin Pawling, Peter Tenbrook and Nathaniel Petit were added as judges to the two already appointed, Colonel Butler and Robert Hamilton.25

There is no record of the proceedings of this Court extant but no doubt it sat at Newark.26

25 John Butler, the celebrated Coloner Butler of Butler's Rangers, was the son of Lieutenant Butler, a native of Ireland, who came to New York in 1711. The father accumulated a large estate by dealing with the Indians; he died in 1760. The son was born in New London, Connecticut, in 1728, he joined the British forces against France for the Conquest of Canada. He was present at Lake George (1755), Ticonderaga and Fort Frontenac: he also took a distinguished part in the siege of Fort Niagara by Sir William Johnson (1759): his great forte was the management of Indian troops-in 1778, he built the Butler's Barracks at Niagara on the Canadian side. He fought on the British side during the Revolution, and at its close came to Niagara, where he survived till 1796, dying after a life of service to the Crown.

Peter Tenbrook (should be Ten Broeck), also a resident of Niagara.

Nathaniel Petit (or Pettit) was recommended by Dorchester for appointment as Legislative Councillor, but failing this, he became member of the first Legislative Assembly for the Riding of Durham, York and first Lincoln; he was also a member of the Nassau Land Board. A farmer, he owned the land on which the Town of Grimsby stands.

Robert Hamilton was of Scottish extraction: a partner of Richard Cartwright on Carleton Island, near Kingston, on the dissolution of the partnership, he came to Niagara; he built at Queenston a large stone residence, a brewery and a warehouse, and was the most important personage commercially in that little community. He became a member of the Land Board for Nassau and also one of the first Legislative Councillors of Upper Canada. He and Cartwright generally saw eye to eye, but did not always agree with Simcoe, who did not hesitate, most unjustly, to call them Republicans.

Benjamin Pawling was a native of Pennsylvania, of Welsh descent, who served seven years in the Butler's Rangers. He had been a farmer, and in the close of the war, settled in Niagara. He was the first representative of the second Riding of Lincoln, in the Legislative Assembly, having then become a Colonel. Jesse Pawling was a brother of Benjamin's.

It is much to be desired that some one of local or family knowledge should write a full account of these pioneers, men of sterling character and loyalty above reproach, who did much to make our Queen Province what it is.

Niagara-on-the-Lake was called Niagara. West Niagara, Loyaltown, Butlersburg, Nassau and Newark at different periods of its history.

WILLIAM RENWICK RIDDELL.

(To be continued.)

A NOTE ON SOVEREIGNTY AND FEDERALISM.

Had he commented with any fullness upon it, the Constitution of the United States would doubtless have provoked the vehement derision of John Austin, for nowhere, either in theory or in practice, has it chosen to erect an instrument of sovereign power. In England, as De Lolme told us a century ago, nature alone has set limits to the omnicompetence of the King in Parliament, and what he so forcibly taught Professor Dicey has reiterated in the most famous of all his books. So that, in some sort, there would seem a theoretical deficiency in American government. We do not know who rules. Certainly the President is not absolute. Neither to Congress nor to the Supreme Court is unlimited power decreed. And, as if to make confusion worse confounded, there cut athwart this dubiousness certain sovereign rights possessed by the States alone.

It

Professor Dicey would shrug his shoulders and tell us that it is the natural consequence of federalism. is, he writes, "the method by which federalism attempts to reconcile the apparently inconsistent claims of national sovereignty and State sovereignty." The sarcasm is but thinly veiled. The fathers reconciled these opposites by abolishing altogether any notion of Austinian sovereignty. Federal government, we are therefore told, is notoriously weak government, since in it there is no final arbiter. The legislature of the United States, or of Canada, for the matter of that, is degraded to the level of an English railway company. It is a non-sovereign law-making body. It derives its powers, like the Great Eastern Railway Company, from a written document, which simultaneously limits them. Federalism, Professor Dicey notes further, tends to produce Conservatism. For the Constitution is written and rigid. It acquires a kind of sacrosanct character in the eyes of the people. Change of any kind becomes difficult because it almost seems irreligious. It is condemned before it is attempted. The unitary method. of government impresses Professor Dicey as being as far more admirable in conception as it is more efficacious in results.

Any criticism of this well-established doctrine has at least two obvious lines of attack. We might, in the first place,

urge that to talk of parliamentary omnicompetence in such downright fashion is to beg the whole question. Theoretically existent, practically Parliamentary sovereignty is, in the technical sense, an absurdity. The British Parliament may be the legal superior of the colonial legislatures; but everyone is well aware that it dare not in fact override them on any fundamental question. When the South African Parliament forbade the admission of Indians to the Transvaal Great Britain felt that a grave injustice had been inflicted on a meritorious section of its subjects; but Great Britain did not dare, despite the theoretical sovereignty of its legislature, to repair the injustice so inflicted. When Lord Grey tried, in 1849-50, to turn the Cape of Good Hope into a penal colony, he was compelled, despite the delegation to him of sovereign power, to desist. Lord Brougham caused the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to be created the Supreme tribunal in ecclesiastical cases; but it is notorious that churchmen have refused to accept its decisions as binding in spiritual matters. Sir James Graham, in 1843, took the legally admirable ground that if the Courts upheld the right of lay entry into patronage in the Scottish Church he must uphold their decision in Parliament; but that legal rectitude did not prevent Dr. Chalmers and his colleagues disrupting the Church to emphasize their dissent. In a more recent time, when the Welsh miners struck in complete defiance of the provisions of the Munitions Act, it was found simply impossible to enforce its penalties. The American Revolution was, on the English side. an experiment in applied Austinianism. It is surely obvious that a sovereignty so abstract is practically without utility.

The second method of approach is more constructive. It is the result of the view that sovereignty, rightly regarded, ought not to be defined as omnicompetence at all. Sovereignty is, in its exercise, an act of will, whether to do or to refrain from doing. It is an exercise of will behind which there is such power as to make the expectation of obedience reasonable. Now it does not seem valuable to urge that a certain group, the State, can theoretically secure obedience to all its acts, because we know that practically to be absurd. This granted, it is clear that the sovereignty of the State does not in reality differ from the power exercised by a church or a trade union. The obedience the church or trade union will secure depends simply on what.