ent on Saturday, December 15. The
papers of the following Monday say, that as the decision was being
given, police stood about the court with muskets and that a company of
Royal Canadian Rifles were also under arms at the Government House.

In its decision the court was not unanimous. The Chief Justice and
Justice Burns favored extradition while Justice McLean dissented. The
biographer of the Chief Justice says of this judgment: "Their decision
was neither in support of nor against slavery but was based entirely
upon the consideration of the treaty existing between the United
States and Canada." The biographer quotes also as follows from an
English contemporary: "These judges, proof against unpopularity and
unswayed by their own bitter hatred of slavery, as well as unsoftened
by their own feelings for a fellow man, in agonizing peril, upheld the
law made to their hands and which they are sworn faithfully to
administer. Fiat justitia. Give them their due. Such men are the
ballast of nations."[6]

Gerrit Smith, the famous abolitionist, was one of those who acted on
behalf of the fugitive, and his plea made a strong impression. He
argued that Anderson was not guilty of murder but at the worst of
homicide, that the Ashburton case did not require the surrender of
fugitives and that in any case Anderson's delivery was a matter for
the English courts to decide.

On the evening of December 19, 1860, a huge mass meeting was held in
St. Lawrence Hall. The mayor of the city presided and the chief
speaker of the evening was John Scoble, the abolitionist.[7] He was
able to throw considerable light upon the exact meaning of the
extradition treaty, having interviewed both Lord Aberdeen and Lord
Brougham on its terms in relation to fugitive slaves at the time that
it was passing through the British Parliament. He was at that time the
secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society of England which had become
alarmed over the possibilities to fugitives in Canada of the
extradition clauses.[8]

Ashburton told him, he said, "that the article in question was no more
designed to touch the fugitive slave than to affect the case of
deserters or parties charged with high treason." Lord Aberdeen stated
that instructions would be sent to the Governor of Canada that in the
case of fugitive slaves great care was to be taken to see that the
treaty did not work their ruin. Sir Charles Metcalfe, Governor of
Canada, was quoted by the speaker as having said