in the usual manner before the
courts of justice, as at present constituted for the trial of criminal
offences. By the verdict of the ordinary juries, the fate of the
prisoners must be decided.... Except in cases of murder, capital
punishments should be avoided." In dealing with this difficult subject
Lord Durham availed himself of the assistance of his special council,
the members of which were Vice-admiral Sir Charles Paget, Major-general
Sir James Mac-donnell, Colonel Couper, the governor's military
secretary, and principal aide-de-camp, Colonel Grey, and Mr. Charles
Buller. The council met on the 18th of June; but it was not for the
purposes of consultation that Lord Durham convened his board, for on the
very day on which they were summoned to meet, appeared the celebrated
ordinance, by which Lord Brougham not only accomplished his fall, but
contrived that all the odium of the transaction should attach to the
ministers themselves The nature of this ordinance will be clearly seen
in the following debates which took place in both houses of parliament.

On the day before mentioned (30th July), when the attack was opened on
Lord Durham in the upper house, Lord Brougham called the attention of
the peers to the ordinance which had been passed by the noble governor
of Canada, asserting that if carried into effect it would involve the
crime of murder, the whole proceeding being at variance with law. Seven
days after, Lord Brougham renewed the attack. No power, he said, to
inflict pains and penalties upon individuals who had not been brought to
trial, which that ordinance usurped, was conferred upon Lord Durham.
He might make general laws for the good government of the colony, but
subject to an exception which restrained him from altering any act
of the British parliament. The ordinance in question contravened the
provisions of the act 7th William III. "for the trial of treasonable
offences;" and if Lord Durham had the power of dispensing with that act,
he might condemn in every case as traitors men against whom no witnesses
had been examined, and into whose alleged offences no inquiry had
been made. Lord Glenelg remarked that Lord Durham had been placed in
a situation of extreme difficulty: he had been solicited for extreme
punishments on the one hand, and for a complete amnesty on the other;
he had adopted a middle course, and when his decision was announced, it
gave general satisfaction. Lord Brougham replied, that the nob