| Book Review | Law and History Review, 22.3

Book Review

David Murray, Colonial Justice: Justice, Morality, and Crime in the Niagara District, 1791–1849, Toronto: The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and University of Toronto Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 281. $37.00 CDN (ISBN 0-8020-3749-6).

David Murray's Colonial Justice is a valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship on the criminal justice system in pre-Confederation Canada. Murray examines the local administration of the criminal law in the Niagara district of Upper Canada from the establishment of the colony in 1791 to the elimination of districts as the primary administrative units of local government in 1849. The book offers one of the most thorough studies of the operation of the pre-reform criminal justice regime in British North America.

Murray is intent on responding to two historiographical trends and adding his voice in support of a third. He argues first that it is important to finally and completely dismiss the myth propagated by loyalist historians that early Upper Canada experienced a golden age generally free of crime. He asserts, rather, that Niagara always had "high levels of certain crimes, most notably personal assaults" some of which revealed "savage levels of brutality" (218). Second, he seeks to temper the assertions of historians who emphasize government use of the criminal law to suppress political opposition. Instead, Murray suggests that "maintaining law and order in the Niagara district was in truth a cooperative venture, requiring the support of the population as well as the active commitment of the magistrates, the sheriff, and the constables recruited in each local community" (218). While Murray recognizes that some high profile cases were shaped, and stained, by political corruption, he focuses more on how the justice system interacted with average citizens. The justice system, he concludes, gradually drifted away from the English-inspired form envisioned by the colony's first governor, John Graves Simcoe, in response to local concerns about race, gender, Christian morality, personal safety, and economic developments. Finally, Murray contributes to the historiography demonstrating that the criminal justice system often disadvantaged women and visible minorities. Unequal treatment, in his view, was rooted most often "in the status or race of individuals who appeared before the courts" (222).

To prove these claims, Murray first provides an overview of the Niagara district's economy, geography, and demography. The remainder of the book is divided into three parts. Part one, "Justice," describes the institutional framework of the justice system, including the court structure and role of magistrates, sheriffs, constables, and jurors, to demonstrate the local character of law enforcement in the period. In part two, "Morality," Murray explores the connection between Christian morality and the legal system by, in turn, detailing the enforcement of Sabbath breaking, the treatment of the insane, and conceptions of public charity. Part three, "Crime," examines, in three separate thematic chapters, the justice system's treatment of African Canadians and the victims of spousal abuse, the challenges posed to law enforcement by the close proximity of the American border for the certain crimes, and the societal attitudes toward fugitive slaves as perceptible through a detailed examination of the attempted extradition from Upper Canada of an escaped American slave, Solomon Moseby.

Murray has written a well-researched book; he has scoured newspapers, court records, petitions, grand jury presentments, and private correspondence. To the extent possible, he succeeds in integrating the voices and stories of ordinary individuals. Murray's work also sheds new light on the role of low-level officials within the criminal justice system. For example, many readers will find especially interesting Murray's discussion of the relative loyalty of magistrates and sheriffs to the colonial elite. Though magistrates required social prestige and political connections to secure an appointment, Murray argues that they were generally free from the colonial government's control. Thus, he suggests that "magistrates were not passive agents," but were "fully capable of representing their own or their community's interests when it was in their interests to do so" (42). Sheriffs, Murray argues, by contrast, "had to be utterly loyal to established authority and willing to act, even in unorthodox ways, during times of crisis" (43).

Despite the book's considerable strengths, two criticisms may be made of Colonial Justice. The first concerns Murray's reluctance to deal with problems of historical causation. Shadowing Murray's discussion of the justice system is the knowledge that at mid-century an increasing number of reforms professionalized, expanded, and centralized the formal instruments of state control in Upper Canada. Historians such as Bruce Curtis have emphasized the growth of a colonial leviathan at mid-century. Murray, however, seems reluctant to address such claims; instead, he often depends on functionalist explanations for historical developments. Changes in the justice system, for example, are explained by pointing to large historical forces such as immigration and population growth. Murray makes this approach explicit in his introduction when he suggests that "[l]ocal conditions in the Niagara district moulded the environment in which the transplanted English system of law emerged in the new colony and they certainly influenced how it was administered" (5). While these broad factors were undoubtedly important, Murray missed an excellent opportunity to use his detailed examination of local concerns to explore whether people at the peripheries of the colony supported or opposed an expanded state.

The second criticism that can be made relates to Murray's conclusions about the treatment of African-Canadian and female crime victims. These findings do not move beyond other recent and well-established assertions concerning the justice system's mistreatment of such groups. For example, he argues that criminal cases in the district illustrate that women and African Canadians "faced far more difficulties in attempting to secure justice for themselves in colonial Niagara. The constitutional guarantee of equality for all under the British law proved to be badly flawed in practice" (174). Or, in discussing the attempted return of Solomon Moseby to American slave hunters in 1837, Murray asserts the main lesson from the incident is "that African Canadians living in the Niagara region had been victims of British injustice" (214). For readers familiar with the work of Constance Backhouse and James Walker, among others, these conclusions are quite unsurprising.

Despite these concerns, Murray has written a rich book that significantly adds to our understanding of the operation of local government and ably demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-Confederation criminal justice system in Upper Canada.

R. Blake Brown

Dalhousie University

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