Note 11 — Chapter V

Ont. Arch. Rep. for 1909, pp. 64, 69, 70, 71, 75; ibid. for 1910, pp. 67, 68, 69, 70.

The bill was introduced in the Lower House by Christopher Robinson, member for Addington and Ontario. He was a Virginian Loyalist, who in 1784 emigrated to New Brunswick, and in 1788 to that part of Canada, later Lower Canada; and in 1792 to Upper Canada. Accustomed from infancy to slavery, he saw no great harm in it—no doubt he saw it in its best form.

The chief opponent of the bill was Robert Isaac Dey Gray, the young Solicitor General, the son of Major James Gray, a half-pay British Officer. He studied law in Canada. He was elected member of the House of Assembly for Stormont in the election of 1796, and again in 1804.

The motion for the three months' hoist in the Upper House was made by the Honorable Richard Cartwright seconded by the Honorable Robert Hamilton. These men, who had been partners, generally agreed on public measures and both incurred the enmity of Simcoe. He called Hamilton a Republican, then a term of reproach distinctly worse than Pro-German would be now, and Cartwright was, if anything, worse. But both were men of considerable public spirit and great personal integrity. For Cartwright see The Life and Letters of Hon. Richard Cartwright, Toronto, 1876. For Hamilton see Riddell's edition of La Rochefoucault's Travels in Canada in 1795 (Toronto, 1817), in Ont. Arch. Rep. for 1916; Miss Carnochan's Queenston in Early Years, Niagara Hist. Soc. Pub. No. 25; Buffalo Hist. Soc. Pub. Vol. 6, pp. 73-95.

There was apparently no division in the Upper House although there were five other Councillors in addition to Cartwright and Hamilton in attendance that session, viz.: McGill, Shaw, Duncan, Baby and Grant; and the bill passed the committee of the whole.