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  • Canadian State Trials, vol. 3: Political Trials and Security Measures, 1840–1914
  • Robert Diab
Barry Wright and Susan Binnie, eds. Canadian State Trials, vol. 3: Political Trials and Security Measures, 1840–1914. Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History / University of Toronto Press, 2009, 648 p.

This book offers more than a collection of essays on political trials and security measures in nineteenth-century Canada; it offers a fascinating window onto a broader legal and political culture in the process of being forged in the decades before and after Confederation.

The inspiration for the series, on the part of founding editors Barry Wright and the late Murray Greenwood, was to produce a Canadian equivalent to William Cobbett and Thomas Howell's early-nineteenth-century English State Trials. That series consolidated archival records of criminal prosecutions by the Crown for treason, sedition, and other public order offences, with a view to bolstering emerging "libertarian Whig understandings of the implications of the constitutional compromises of the late seventeenth century" (p. 4); the Canadian series illuminates the conditions in which a culture of the rule of law was fostered in the colonial setting.

At the outset, the editors describe their specific objective as providing "a comprehensive examination of the Canadian historical record of trials for offences that were thought to threaten the safety of the state, as well as other legal responses to perceived threats to the internal or external security of the state" (p. 4). The first two volumes cover the period from 1608–1837 and the rebellions of 1837–9, respectively.13 The present volume traces developments from 1837 to 1914, which Binnie and Wright describe as a "tumultuous period of Canadian history, a time when governments confronted external invasions, internal rebellions and new forms of collective disorder" (p. 3).

The introductory chapter to vol. 3 places key issues of the text within a wider context and summarizes main themes running through earlier volumes. One common theme has been "the manner in which the actions of executively dominated colonial governments, and in particular partisan resort to the criminal law to fend off challenges to the authority of local elites, evoked references to the British constitution and to the rule of law" (p. 5). On this basis, the editors argue, courts became "a key pre-confederation political battleground in the struggles for more accountable and representative government" (p. 5). Successful cases in state prosecutions relating to security and public order "reflected the scope of liberties to be enjoyed by all British subjects and demonstrated the pressures on colonial states to conform to formal constitutional and legal claims" (p. 5). Challenges to the [End Page 255] suspension of habeas corpus, and successfully defended cases of sedition and treason, "were more than symbolic gestures of law's impartiality" (p. 6): they were instrumental in establishing a wider cultural embrace of the rule of law.

The period in question saw the federal government become "the dominant political actor in relation to security issues" (p. 4). These issues arose partly in response to rapidly shifting social conditions, including "population increase, territorial expansion, industrial growth, and technological change" (p. 7); widespread concerns about public order followed from frequent encounters with "sectarian conflict, growing urban tensions, and a developing labour movement" (p. 4). Prosecutions for treason and related offences remained an indispensable tool for state security, most notably in the wake of the Fenian invasions of 1866 and the North-West Rebellion of 1888. But the period also saw a gradual shift from prosecution to pre-emptive measures, including "special security operations" and "secret political policing" of seditious elements and unlawful activity (p. 7). A trend toward "professional policing" provided a more effective means of curbing unlawful assembly, riots, and other forms of collective unrest (p. 7).

The book is divided into four parts. The first, dealing with the threat posed by the Fenian invasions, includes chapters on state trials and the suspension of habeas corpus in the wake of the assassination of parliamentarian Thomas D'Arcy McGee. In addition to providing a concise but informative introduction to the Fenian episode in Canadian history, essays in this section lend insight into John A. MacDonald's involvement...

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