tary of State for the Colonial Department, dated 5th
December, 1828, and included in pp. 273-288 of the blue book on the
subject issued by the Imperial Government in 1829.

[97] There is a covert irony in the portion of Judge Willis's
_Narrative_ which refers to this subject. "I wished to think," he
writes, "and from the attention he seemed to pay to business I actually
worked myself up into the belief, which I frequently expressed, that Mr.
Justice Sherwood was a _hard-headed_ sensible man; but I became
convinced that, though right in the former conjecture, yet so far as
legal knowledge or abilities were concerned, I was mistaken in the
latter part of my conclusion." The italics are Judge Willis's own.

[98] See Judge Willis's _Narrative_, ubi supra.

[99] So far as mere diction is concerned I have here chiefly followed
Collins's own report of this episode, as published in the _Freeman_, but
I have also before me the Attorney-General's account, as well as the
more elaborate one of Judge Willis himself, and the three do not
materially differ in this respect.

[100] _Ante_, p. 13.

[101] The _Freeman_, April 17th, 1828.

[102] The case, as put by the Judge, was purely hypothetical. "_If_ the
Attorney-General has acted so and so, he has neglected his duty." See
_ante_, p. 174.

[103] The announcement ran as follows:--"Preparing for publication.--A
View of the Present System of Jurisprudence in Upper Canada; by an
English Barrister, now one of His Majesty's Judges in this
Province.--_Meliora sperans._"

[104] It was time for some one to undertake the duty of ameliorating the
criminal law of Upper Canada, which was that of England as it stood on
the 17th of September, 1792, except in so far as it had been altered by
subsequent legislation. At the Assizes for the Home District, held at
York in the autumn of 1827, within a few weeks after Judge Willis's
arrival in the Province, a boy was capitally convicted and sentenced to
death for killing a cow.

[105] _On the Government of the British Colonies._ London, 1850.

[106] The investigation, according to Judge Willis's own testimony, was
entered into partly in consequence of a suggestion which he received on
the subject. See the text of his written opinion, embodied in pp. 66-74
of the Imperial blue book issued in 1829, entitled "Papers relating to
the Removal of the Honourable John Walpole Willis from the Office of One
of His Majesty's Judges of the Court of King's