e magistrates. These paragraphs
contained a vivid but faithful picture of the abuses existing in the
Crown Lands Department, and it would probably have been difficult to
find a jury anywhere in Upper Canada, some members whereof had not had
personal experience of those abuses. Having failed in two attempts to
convict him of libel, Mr. Gourlay's foes hit on another and more
effectual method of accomplishing his destruction.

By a Provincial statute known as the Alien Act, passed in 1804,
authority was given to certain officials to issue a warrant for the
arrest of any person not having been an inhabitant of the Province for
the preceding six months, who had not taken the oath of allegiance, and
who had given reason for suspicion that he was "about to endeavour to
alienate the minds of His Majesty's subjects of this Province from his
person or government, or in anywise with a seditious intent to disturb
the tranquillity thereof." In case the person so arrested failed to
prove his innocence, he might be notified to depart this Province within
a specified time, and if he failed so to depart he was liable to be
imprisoned until he could be formally tried at the general jail
delivery. If found guilty, upon trial, he was to be adjudged by the
court to quit the Province, and if he still proved contumacious he was
to be deemed guilty of felony, and to suffer death as a felon, without
benefit of clergy. This statute, be it observed, was not passed at
Westminster during the supremacy of the Plantagenets or the Tudors, but
at York, Upper Canada, during the forty-fourth year of the reign of
George the Third. More than one eminent authority has pronounced it an
unconstitutional measure. There was, however, some show of justification
for it at the time of its enactment, for the Province was then overrun
by disloyal immigrants from Ireland and by republican immigrants from
across the borders, many of whom tried to stir up discontent among the
people, and were notoriously in favour of annexation to the United
States.[8] It was against such persons that the Act had been levelled,
and there had never been any question of attempting to apply it to
anyone else. Now, however, it was pressed into requisition in order to
compass the ruin of as loyal a subject as could have been found
throughout the wide expanse of the British Empire; who had resided in
Upper Canada for a continuous period of nearly eighteen months; who was
no more an alien tha