Note [319 — Chapter III
Reading edition
[319] In 1793, slavery was abolished in Upper Canada by act of the Provincial Parliament. In Lower Canada, it had practically ceased by 1800, the few remaining slaves being freed by an imperial act in 1834. Jesuit Relations, lxix, p. 301. The last public sale of a slave in Canada took place in Montreal in 1797. It has been held, however, that it was the proceeding of the Canadian courts, consistent with the rising public sentiment in England and France against slavery, rather than the actual state of the law, which reached the slave owners’ claims, and finally broke them. Hamilton, Slavery in Canada, in Transactions of the Canadian Institute, 1890, i, p. 102.