ilment extended over a long period, and from time to
time during several years it continued, at longer or shorter intervals,
to thrust itself upon public attention. Meanwhile it was not the only
instance of abuse of power on the part of the Executive to which the
people of Upper Canada were constrained to submit. Several other notable
contemporaneous examples shared with it in the unenviable work of
widening the breach between the Government and the people, and in
destroying popular confidence in the impartial administration of
justice. It is a rather singular fact that of all the many high-handed
measures resorted to during the existence of the Ninth Parliament, the
one which aroused the greatest indignation was perhaps the least
blameworthy of them all. It has been the fashion with writers who have
dealt with this period of our history to represent the amoval of Justice
Willis as being upon the whole the most glaring iniquity of the time.
This view is not borne out by the facts. In the Willis affair Sir
Peregrine Maitland had recourse to the espionage system, and certainly
went to the utmost verge of his authority, but he cannot be said to have
run violently in the teeth of precedent and good sense, as was done, for
instance, in the Forsyth case. Nor can it be said that he acted with
despotic rashness or precipitation. His decade of misrule in Upper
Canada was characterized by many cruel, tyrannical and shameful deeds:
deeds which stare out from the pages of the past with lurid
distinctness. He has enough to answer for at the bar of history; and it
is quite unnecessary to load the formidable indictment against him with
surplusage or dubious matter. A careful and dispassionate examination of
all the circumstances in the Willis case must convince the inquirer that
the faults were not all on one side, and that the Judge himself is
bound to at least share with Sir Peregrine the responsibility for the
bitterness arising out of the "amoval."

John Walpole Willis, whose name was destined to win considerable
celebrity in the judicial annals of this Province; was a lawyer of good
standing at the English Chancery bar. He came of a respectable county
family, but had no hereditary expectations, and from his earliest youth
had applied himself to study with a zeal begotten of the conviction that
he would be compelled to depend upon his own exertions for a livelihood.
He devoted himself with assiduity to studying the literature perta