The Diary and Selected Papers of Chief Justice William Smith, 1784–1793, Volume I, The Diary, January 24, 1784 to October 5, 1785. Volume II, The Diary, October 6, 1785 to May 18, 1787; Selected Papers, 1785 to 1793. ed. by L. F. S. Upton (review)

HUMANITIES 435 facing Napoleon's guns in Vendemiaire (when in fact it was royalists whom the "whiff of grapeshot" scattered) and somehow not a part of the Paris which was seized by "a terrible fear" of the mob; we are expected to shudder because thousands of people were executed in Paris, which "reeked of blood," and yet the millions who died in Napoleon's armies or in opposing them seem to call for nothing more than musing in tragic vein. Except for the conclusion, which like a death-bed confession hurriedly and unexpectedly condemns the bayonets at Saint Cloud, the book expresses all the vanity and cynicism of Napoleon's table-talk and in all except details ignores the scholarship of the last twenty years. (J. F. BOSHER) Chief Justice William Smith' played important roles in New York before the American Revolution and in Quebec after it. These volumes: devoted to the years after American independence had been won, only partially reflect the second part of his career. The whole of Volume I and almost half of Volume II have London, not Quebec City, as their backdrop. Affairs at an empire's centre are, of course, important in comprehending affairs in its parts but Smith was never at the centre of affairs in the centre, and neither in London nor in Quebec did he show himself to be a particularly perspicacious judge of personalities and policies. Banished from New York, he reached England early in 1784. There, he, together with a horde of other Loyalists, scurried through the anterooms of power in search of compensation and advancement. But this activity still left much time for the provincial to indulge in, and comment on, the opportunities afforded by a great metropolis. Life in London in the mid-1780s is minutely illustrated and there are particularly good pictures of the Radicals, the theatre, the opera, and such tourist attractions as the Tower and Somerset House. In mOre serious moments Smith assiduously pursued his own ambitions and worked hard, first to persuade Pitt's government to make Sir Guy Carleton, his patron, viceroy in North America, then to persuade Carleton to accept less sweeping 'The Diary and Selected Papers of Chief Justice William Smith, 17841793 . Volume I, The Diary, January 24, 1784 to October 5, 1785. Volume II, The Diary, October 6, 1785 to May 18, 1787; Selected Papers, 1785 to 1793. Edited by L. F. S. Upton. [Publications of the Champlain Society, Volumes XLI and XLII.] (Toronto: the Society, 1963. Pp. lvi, 296: 1965. Pp. xli, 335. Available only to members of the Society.) 436 LETTERS IN CANADA powers when they were offered him. Carleton's acceptance (after being given the marketable bauble of a barony) provided Smith with the opportunity to put into effect many of the ideas on imperial administration he had been formulating for some thirty years. The chief justice, in his own eyes and those of his editor, was the eminence grise in Canadian government until his death in 1793. It is a judgment that can hardly be disputed in extenso since the papers of both the governor and his private secretary were destroyed at their own request. The strictly Canadian content is much greater in Volume II, and the diary, letters, and papers there comprise a body of valuable material. Probably most significant are Smith's drafts and memorandums of letters to his governor and such lesser figures in British bureaucratic and commercial circles as Evan Nepean and Brook Watson. Here are offered Smith's lengthy, matured views on the nature of the British empire and his ideas on the future of Canada, among them an embryonic scheme for confederation. As for Quebec, Smith had detailed answers for nearly all the important problems in the colony. Upton has provided introductions for both volumes and footnotes to these and the text; in the second part of Volume II, each paper has a prefatory note. Throughout, comment and text combine to give us fresh insights into the workings of both the imperial and the colonial governments as well as the career of an articulate Loyalist. But the edition has serious shortcomings. Both the introductory essays and the text have...