issues of the ordinary tribunals. Sir
John Colborne was instructed to take steps for reducing the number of
prisoners still remaining, by allowing some of them after arraignment to
plead guilty, on the assurance that the judgment recorded against them
should not be executed, if they would consent to leave the province.
From the remaining number he was directed to select four or five cases,
and bring them before the ordinary courts of the province, the juries
being convened according to the existing practice; but in case this line
of proceeding should not appear expedient, it was suggested that a
law should be passed, suspending the _habeas corpus_ act, and that
the prisoners should be detained until Lord Durham's arrival. Sir
John Colborne adopted this latter course, being little disposed to try
state-prisoners under what he considered a certainty of their acquittal.
In the meantime, however, the news arrived of the new act of parliament,
which provisionally invested him with the powers which were eventually
to devolve on Lord Durham. In pursuance of his fresh instructions he
proceeded to nominate provisionally a special council, consisting
of twenty-one members, of whom eleven were French Canadians, and two
natives of the province. After preparing a series of "rules and orders"
for the better conduct of their deliberations, this council proceeded to
pass ordinances for such domestic objects as would have come before the
local parliaments in the ordinary course, and to take necessary measures
to meet the peculiar exigencies of the time. Among the latter class may
be mentioned enactments suspending the _habeas corpus_, and imposing
certain restrictions on the publishers of newspapers. An ordinance
was also passed to continue the local act for the transportation of
offenders from the province to England, and from thence to New South
Wales and Van Diemen's Land; an act which was on the point of expiring.
By a second ordinance it was provided that, upon the petition of any
person charged with high treason committed in the province, it should
be lawful for the person administering the government, before the
arraignment of the offender, to grant a pardon upon such terms as should
seem proper, which pardon should have the same effect as an attainder,
so far as regarded the forfeiture of the real and personal estate of
the person therein named; and further, that in case any person should be
pardoned under that ordinance, upon con