an
application."[11]

Then came a number of applications for the return of runaway slaves
cloaked under criminal charges, the pretence being made that they had
committed some crime and that it was desired to bring them to trial
and punishment. There can be no doubt that in the absence of some
constitutional provision every country has the right to keep out
criminals and, if they have entered the country, to hand them over to
the authorities of the country whence they came; but the rules of
international law have never gone so far as to make it obligatory on
any country to send away immigrant criminals even if demanded by their
former country. It has always been the theory in Upper Canada that the
Governor had the power independently of statute or treaty to deliver
up alien refugees charged with crimes.[12] This was not wholly
satisfactory and the legislature took the matter up and passed an act
governing such cases, February 13th, 1833,[13] providing for the
apprehension of fugitive offenders from foreign countries, and
delivering them up to justice. This provides that on the requisition
of the executive of any foreign country the governor of the province
on the advice of his executive council may deliver up any person in
the province charged with "Murder, Forgery, Larceny or other crime
which if committed within the province would have been punishable with
death, corporal punishment, the pillory, whipping or confinement at
hard labour." The person charged might be arrested and detained for
inquiry, but the act was permissive only and the delivery up was at
the discretion of the Governor-in-Council.

It was under this act that the extradition of Thornton Blackburn was
sought but finally refused. The case was this: Two persons of color
named Blackburn, a man and his wife, were claimed as slaves on behalf
of some person in the State of Kentucky. They were arrested in Detroit
in 1833 and examined before a magistrate, who, in accordance with the
law of the United States, made his certificate and directed them to be
delivered over as the personal property of the claimant in Kentucky.
The sheriff took them into custody but when one of them was on the
point of being removed from the prison to be restored to his owner,
he was violently rescued and directed across the river into Canada. On
the day before the rescue of Thornton Blackburn his wife eluded the
jailer in disguise and escaped to Canada.

The Upper Canadian G