grim fact to acknowledge slavery, it had no room for the
slave except as a mere piece of property. Instead of giving him rights
like those of the "servus," he was deprived of all rights, marital,
parental, proprietary, even the right to live. In the English law and
systems founded on it, the slave had no rights which the master was
bound to respect.[2] At one time, indeed, it was understood in the
English colonies that the master had the _jus vitae necisque_ over his
slaves; but at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Crown much
to the anger and disgust of the colonists made the murder of a Negro a
capital offence, and at least some of the governors vigorously upheld
this decision.[3]

Upper Canada was settled almost wholly by United Empire Loyalists who
had left their homes in the revolted colonies and kept their faith to
the Crown. Many of them brought their slaves as well as their other
property to the new land. The statute of 1790 encouraged this
practice.[4]

The first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada was Col. John Graves
Simcoe. He hated slavery and had spoken against it in the House of
Commons in England. Arriving in Upper Canada in the summer of 1792, he
was soon made fully aware by the Chloe Cooley case that the horrors of
slavery were not unknown in his new province. There came up to the
Executive Council the complaint that a Negro girl thus named had been
cruelly forced across the border and sold in the United States by one
Vroomen. Much indignation was expressed by both citizens and
officials.

The Attorney-General was John White[6] an English lawyer of no great
eminence indeed but of sufficient skill to know that the brutal master
was well within his rights in acting as he did. He had the same right
to bind, export, and sell his slave as to bind, export, and sell his
cow. Chloe Cooley had no rights which Vrooman was bound to respect;
and it was no more a breach of the peace than if he had been dealing
with his heifer. Nothing came of the direction to prosecute and
nothing could be done unless there should be an actual breach of the
peace.

It is probable that it was this circumstance which brought about
legislation. At the second session of the First Parliament which met
at Newark, May 31, 1793, a bill was introduced and unanimously passed
the House of Assembly. The trifling amendments introduced by the
Legislative Council were speedily concurred in, the royal assent was
given July 9, 1793,