Volume 3 — THE HON. GEORGE WILLIAM BURTON.

Top

Judge Burton was born at the town of Sandwich, the most ancient of the Cinque Ports, in the county of Kent, England, on the 21st of July, 1818. He was the second son of the late Admiral George Guy Burton, R.N., of Chatham. He received his education at the Rochester and Chatham Proprietary School, under the late Rev. Robert Whiston, LL.D., a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who subsequently occupied the position of Head-Master of the Grammar School at Rochester, and who was the author of several works remarkable for sound scholarship and independence of thought. Mr. Burton has always held his tutor in honoured remembrance, and to this day is accustomed to speak of him with the respect due to his great learning and attainments.

In 1836, the year before the breaking out of Mackenzie's rebellion, Mr. Burton, then a youth of eighteen, came over to Upper Canada and repaired to Ingersoll, in the county of Oxford, where he began the study of the law in the office of his paternal uncle, the late Mr. Edmund Burton, who then carried on a legal business there. The gentleman last named had formerly held an office in connection with the Admiralty, and had been stationed at the mouth of the Grand River during the War of 1812, '13, and '14. After the close of the war he devoted himself to the law, and spent the rest of his life in Upper Canada. His presence in this country was doubtless to some extent the cause of his nephew's emigration from England. The latter spent the regular term of five years in his uncle's office in Ingersoll. Upon the expiration of his articles, he was called to the Bar, in Easter Term, 1842, and settled down to the practice of his profession in Hamilton, where he was not long in acquiring a large and lucrative business. He identified himself with the Reform Party in politics, and took an active part in various local elections. He was frequently importuned to enter Parliament, but he preferred to confine his best energies to his professional duties, and, as the years passed by, his business assumed such dimensions that he had full occupation for his time. He formed various partnerships, but was always the guiding spirit of the firm, and became known from one end of the Province to the other as a sound and learned lawyer. His connexion with Mr. Charles A. Sadleir lasted for many years, and the firm of "Burton & Sadleir" was one of the best known in the western part of the Province. On the 9th of June, 1850, Mr. Burton married Miss Elizabeth Perkins, daughter of the late Dr. F. Perkins, of Kingston, in the Island of Jamaica, and niece and adopted daughter of the late Colonel Charles Cranston Dixon, of the 90th Regiment.

The life of an industrious lawyer, though interesting to himself and his clients, is uneventful, and there is not much to be said about Mr. Burton's professional career, except that it was a remarkably successful one. He had many wealthy merchants and corporations for his clients, and was regarded as an adept in the law relating to railway companies. He was for many years Solicitor for the City of Hamilton; also for the Canada Life Assurance Company, of which he is at present a Director, having been elected to that position soon after his elevation to the Judicial Bench. In 1856 he was nominated a Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada, and when that body became elective by the profession at large, under the Ontario Act of 1871, he was elected to the position. In 1863 he was invested with a silk gown.

His elevation to the Bench took place on the 30th of May, 1874, when he was appointed a Judge of the Court of Error and Appeal. He then removed to Toronto, where he has ever since resided. Upon the elevation of Mr. Justice Strong to a seat on the Bench of the Supreme Court at Ottawa, in October, 1875, Mr. Burton became, and still continues to be, the Senior Justice of the Court of Appeal for this Province. He has filled his position worthily, and with acceptance to the public and profession. He has delivered many important judgments. One of these, in the case of Smiles vs. Belford et al., is of special interest to persons connected with literary pursuits. The plaintiff was the well-known Scottish writer, Samuel Smiles, author of "The Life of George Stephenson," "Industrial Biography," and various other works of a similar character which have enjoyed great popularity among the young. The defendants were a firm of publishers in Toronto. The case came before Judge Burton in the month of March, 1877, by way of appeal from a judgment previously rendered by Vice-Chancellor Proudfoot; and the effect of Judge Burton's decision was to affirm the Vice-Chancellor's conclusions. It was held that it is not necessary for the author of a book who has duly copyrighted the work in England under the Imperial statute 5 and 6 Victoria, chapter 45, to copyright it in Canada under the Canadian Copyright Act of 1875, with a view of restraining a reprint of it there; but that if he desires to prevent the importation into Canada of printed copies from a foreign country he must copyright the book in Canada. The judgment is an elaborate one, and well worthy of the careful perusal of literary men.