r called a jury to determine whether
they were slaves and the jury promptly found in their favor. Riddell
preached in New Jersey until the Revolution of 1688 made it safe for
him to return to Scotland. Juries in such cases are liable to what
Blackstone calls "pious perjury." All this practice was based upon the
common law proceedings when a claim was made of villenage. When a
person claimed to be the lord of a villein who had run away and
remained outside the manor unto which he was regardant, he sued out a
writ of neif, that is, de nativo habendo. The sheriff took the writ
and if the nativus admitted that he was villein to the lord who
claimed him, he was delivered by the sheriff to the lord of the manor;
but if he claimed to be free, the sheriff should not seize him but the
Lord was compelled to take out a _Pone_ to have the matter tried
before the Court of Common Pleas or the Justices in Eyre, that is, the
assizes. Or the alleged villein might himself sue out a writ of
libertate probanda: and until trial of the case the lord could not
seize the alleged villein. The curious will find the whole subject
dealt with in Fitzherbert's _Natura Brevium_, pp. 77 sqq.

[14] This is very much like the Chloe Cooley case in Upper Canada. I
do not know what form the prosecution could possibly take if the Negro
was in fact a slave. See Chapter V, note 5 ante.

[15] It is said that August 1797 was the date of the last public slave
sale at Montreal, that of Emmanuel Allen for L36.

The last advertisement for sale by auction of a slave in the Maritime
Provinces seems to be that in _The Royal Gazette and Nova Scotia
Advertiser_ of September 7, 1790, where William Millet of Halifax
offers for sale by auction September 9 "A stout likely negro man and
sundry other articles."

In 1802 the census showed that there were 451 Blacks in Halifax; in
1791 there were 422.

Dr. T. Watson Smith says in a paper "Slavery in Canada" republished in
"Canadian History," No. 12, December, 1900, at p. 321.

"About 1806, so Judge Marshall has stated, a master and his slave were
taken before Chief Justice Blowers on a writ of habeas corpus. When
the case and the question of slavery in general had been pretty well
argued on each side, the Chief Justice decided that slavery had no
legal place in Nova Scotia."

I have not been able to trace such a decision and cannot think that it
has been correctly reported. Dr. Smith is wholly justified in his
statemen