1. Several terms in this article need to be defined: First, the use of the term “conservative” here is anachronistic; it did not come into widespread use until the 1850s. The term “government supporter” would be more accurate, but it is both unwieldy and unfamiliar to the modern reader. Contemporaries referred to government supporters as “tories,” members of the “family compact party,” and Orangemen, but all of these have a somewhat narrow partisan focus; second, by “conservative political violence” I mean some form of assault, property damage, or offense against public order, directed against those opposed to the existing political order by its self-proclaimed supporters; third, from 1791 to 1841, ‘Ontario’ and ‘Quebec’ were called Upper Canada and Lower Canada respectively; from 1841 to Confederation (1867) they were called Canada West and Canada East, and were referred to as the ‘United Canadas’ or ‘the Province of Canada.’

2. See Armstrong, Frederick H. and Stagg, Ronald J., “Mackenzie, William Lyon,” [1795–1861] Dictionary of Canadian Biography 9:496–510.Google Scholar

3. John Beverley Robinson (1791–1863) was one of the colony's outstanding political and legal personalities. His abilities had been recognized when he was made acting provincial attorney general at the age of twenty-one. After a fuller legal education in England, he returned to Upper Canada, where he acted as attorney general and led government forces in the Assembly for much of the 1820s. In 1829 he became chief justice of the Court of King's Bench, a position he held until 1862. See Robert E. Saunders, “Robinson, Sir John Beverley” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 9:668–79.

4. Romney, Paul, Mr. Attorney: The Attorney General for Ontario in Court, Cabinet, and Legislature 1791–1899 (Toronto: The Osgoode Society, 1986)Google Scholar; Romney, Paul, “From the Types Riot to the Rebellion: Elite Ideology, Anti-legal Sentiment, Political Violence, and the Rule of Law in Upper Canada,” Ontario History 79 (1987): 113–44Google Scholar; Romney, Paul, “Very Late Loyalist Fantasies: Nostalgic Tory History and the Rule of Law in Upper Canada,” in Canadian Perspectives on Law & Society: Issues in Legal History, ed. Pue, W. Wesley and Wright, Barry (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988), 119–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baker, G. B., “‘So Elegant a Web’: Providential Order and the Rule of Secular Law in Early Nineteenth–Century Upper Canada,” University of Toronto Law Journal 38 (1988): 184–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Baker, “‘So Elegant a Web.’”

6. Romney's Mr. Attorney briefly considers the Upper Canadian Judicial system in a general way in the context of “verbal, constitutional, and physical violence against the reformers on the part of the provincial administration and its supporters.” Mr. Attorney, 153–57.

7. Greenwood, F. Murray, Legacies of Fear: Law and Politics in Quebec in the Era of the French Revolution (Toronto: The Osgoode Society, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Friedman, Lawrence M., Crime and Punishment in American History (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 172.Google Scholar

9. Ibid.

10. By 1840, Upper Canada's population was approaching four hundred thousand. See McCalla, Douglas, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada 1784–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 8, 45–91.Google Scholar

11. S. F. Wise has argued that loyalty went beyond “adherence to the Crown and the Empire” to mean “adherence to those beliefs and institutions the conservative considered essential in the preservation of a form of life different from, and superior to, the manners, politics and social arrangements of the United States.” See “Upper Canada and the Conservative Tradition,” in Profiles of a Province: Studies in the History of Ontario, ed. Firth, Edith G. (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1967), 31Google Scholar; and Mills, David, The Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada 1784–1850 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill–Queen's University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

12. See Elwood Jones, “The Franchise in Upper Canada, 1792–1867,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Winnipeg, June 7–9, 1986.

13. The executive council was a kind of cabinet made up of elite advisers to the lieutenant governor; the legislative council was a powerful appointed body like a senate. Membership on the two councils often overlapped. See Armstrong, Frederick H., Handbook of Upper Canadian Chronology, rev. ed. (Toronto and London: Dundurn Press, 1985), 38–39Google Scholar, 55–57. The system of appointment in Upper Canada has been scathingly summarized as involving “an entrenched, irremovable group of powerful administrators decid[ing], using criteria of their own, who was to receive or to be denied status and favour.” See Johnson, J. K., Becoming Prominent: Regional Leadership in Upper Canada, 1791–1841 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989), 166.Google Scholar

14. See Greer, Allan and Radforth, Ian, eds., Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid–Nineteenth–Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992).Google Scholar

15. Wise, S. F., “The Family Compact: A Negative Oligarchy,” in The Family Compact: Aristocracy or Oligarchy? ed. Earl, David W. L. (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1967), 142–43.Google Scholar

16. Johnson, Becoming Prominent, 77, 79.

17. The aboriginal inhabitants of the province (seven to ten thousand) along with six thousand or so Loyalists who had settled in Upper Canada by 1785, were swamped by post-Loyalist migrants from the United States; by 1811, the province contained sixty to seventy thousand settlers, most of them of post-Loyalist American origin. The character of the population was substantially altered by British migration to Upper Canada during 1815–25, which is estimated to have totalled 129,000. McCalla, Planting the Province, Table 1.1, p. 249; Table 3.6, p. 256.

18. See Mills, , Idea of Loyalty. Compare Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969)Google Scholar, and Stevenson, John, Popular Disturbances in England 1700–1832, 2d ed. (London and New York: Longmans, 1992), 244.Google Scholar

19. Gourlay's initiative met with charges of seditious libel, imprisonment, and a sentence of banishment. See S. F. Wise, “Gourlay, Robert Fleming,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 9:330–36.

20. Wilton, Carol, “‘A Firebrand amongst the People’: The Durham Meetings and Popular Politics in Upper Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 75 (September 1994): 348–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Dr. John Rolph (1793–1870), an Englishman who migrated permanently to Upper Canada in 1821, was both a doctor and a lawyer. He was one of the most prominent reformers in the parliamentary sessions of 1824–8 and 1828–30. See G. M. Craig, “Rolph, John,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 9:683–90. Dr. William Warren Baldwin of Toronto (1775–1844), an immigrant from Ireland, was also a doctor and a lawyer. He is best known as the father of both politician Robert Baldwin and the doctrine of responsible government. (See below, note 36). See Robert L. Fraser, “Baldwin, William Warren,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 7:35–44.

22. See Read, Colin and Stagg, Ronald J., eds., The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada: A Collection of Documents ([Ottawa]: Carleton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Read, Colin, The Rising in Western Upper Canada 1837–8: The Duncombe Revolt and After (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).Google Scholar

23. Rolph decided against prosecuting the accused, perhaps because he feared the assize grand jury would be biassed against him. Rolph had previously launched a civil action that resulted in very light damages; the Court of King's Bench refused to hear an appeal. Romney, Mr. Attorney, 109–14.

24. Armstrong, F. H., “The York Riots of March 23, 1832,” Ontario History 55 (1963): 61–72Google Scholar; Lesslie, James, “Diary of James Lesslie, March 22–24, 1832,” in Change and Continuity: A Reader on Pre–Confederation Canada, ed. Wilton, Carol (Toronto: McGraw–Hill Ryerson, 1992), 194.Google Scholar

25. See “Kerr, William Johnson,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 7:466–67.

26. Excerpt from London [Upper Canada] Sun, Ontario Archives, MS. 38 (49), Reel 3–680, CO. 42/417: 51.

27. Ibid., 55–56. Mackenzie complained bitterly that in Kerr's trial, “the person who tried the case [Judge James Buchanan Macaulay] and the person who conducted the case for the crown [solicitor general Christopher Hagerman] were the two counsel for the parties who destroyed my types in 1826!” Mackenzie's son-in-law noted, however, that Macaulay “showed the greatest impartiality on the trial.” Lindsey, Charles, William Lyon Mackenzie (Toronto, 1909), 220.Google Scholar

28. Raible, Chris, Muddy York Mud: Scandal & Scurrility in Upper Canada (Creemore, Ont: Curiosity House, 1992), 91.Google Scholar

29. Armstrong, “York Riots,” 69.

30. The apprentice had fired a gun into the crowd. Accounts differed as to whether it was loaded with type or whether it merely contained powder intended to frighten the crowd. According to Armstrong, Fitz Gibbon tried to arrest Mackenzie “for his own protection,” but ultimately entrusted the editor to the care of some of his friends and in fact conducted Mackenzie home. Armstrong, “York Riots,” 70.

31. In the interests of keeping order, FitzGibbon reportedly threatened to call out the troops. The Colonial Advocate reported that “Magistrates sat up all night in the police office; Special Constables were sworn in. A voluntary guard of the townspeople watched at the Advocate Office and Mr. Mackenzie's house.” Quoted in Armstrong, “York Riots” 71; Lesslie, “Diary,” 195.

32. Patterson, Graeme H., “Studies in Elections and Public Opinion in Upper Canada” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1969), 111.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., 110–11.

34. See Carol Wilton, “‘The People Shall have Their Associations Also’': William Lyon Mackenzie and the Upper Canadian Petitioning Movement of 1831–32” (forthcoming).

35. Wright, Barry, “The Ideological Dimensions of Law: The Treason Proceedings of 1838,” Criminal Justice History: An International Annual 10 (1989): 131–78Google Scholar, is the best source on this subject. Compare Greer, Allan, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), chap. 11.Google Scholar

36. The earl of Durham, a major British politician, was appointed governor general of British North America by the British government in the wake of the 1837 rebellions. Charged with the task of advising on needed political changes, Lord Durham in his report of January 1839 recommended the implementation of responsible government, which implied party government, cabinet government, and a measure of local autonomy within the British empire. See Craig, Gerald M., Upper Canada 1784–1841: The Formative Years (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), 257–70.Google Scholar On the Durham meetings, see Wilton, “‘Firebrand,’” 346–75.

37. Toronto Examiner, Oct. 23, 1839; Ontario Archives, Mackenzie–Lindsey Clippings, no. 448. On Jarvis, see Robert J. Burns, “Jarvis, William Botsford,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 9:411–12.

38. Toronto Examiner, Oct. 30, 1839; Ontario Archives, Mackenzie–Lindsey Clippings, no. 448.

39. Ibid.

40. Toronto Examiner, Oct. 27, 1841.

41. See Akenson, Donald Harman, The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History (Kingston and Montreal: McGill–Queen's University Press, 1984), 166–68.Google Scholar

42. Its lodges also served its members as social centers. Houston, Cecil J. and Smyth, William J., The Sash Canada Wore: A Historical Geography of the Orange Order in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 8–14.Google Scholar

43. Gowan initiated his leadership of the Irish of Leeds by launching an attack on the magistrates of the district and on “native Canadians” (non-immigrants), according to articles in the Brockville Recorder, Jan. 17 and May 23, 1833. The authorities, who might have been expected to be hostile as a result, were nevertheless remarkably tolerant of Gowan's disruptive activities in the period 1834–36. See Akenson, Irish in Ontario, 176ff.; Patterson, “Elections and Public Opinion,” 266–68. See also Hereward Senior, “Gowan, Ogle Robert,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 10:309–14. Compare with Scott W. See, Riots in New Brunswick: Orange Nativism and Social Violence in the 1840s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

44. When Orange violence broke out at the 1834 poll for Leeds, the returning officer, Sheriff Adiel Sherwood, refused to intervene on the bizarre grounds that his authority did not extend beyond the hustings. At the new elections in March 1835, the returning officer declared Gowan and his running mate elected on the first day of a poll that was supposed to go on for six days; Orange violence had made further polling impossible. Akenson, Irish in Ontario, 183–87.

45. Sean Conway, Gerard, “Upper Canadian Orangeism in the Nineteenth Century: Aspects of a Pattern of Disruption” (M.A. thesis, Queen's University, 1977), 47Google Scholar; Akenson, Irish in Ontario, 176.

46. Robert Davis, The Canadian Farmer's Travels, 14. Quoted in Landon, Fred, Western Ontario and the American Frontier (1941; reprint Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), 152.Google Scholar

47. See W. James S. Mood, “The Orange Order in Canadian Politics 1841–1867” (M.A. thesis, University of Toronto, 1950), 31; by 1843, a reform organizer in Belleville (Victoria district) was reporting that “our opponents… have resorted to the orange system for organization.” John Ross to Robert Baldwin, Metropolitan Toronto Central Library, Baldwin Room, Robert Baldwin Papers, A68#37.

48. Conway, “Upper Canadian Orangeism,” 51. Duncombe was a leader of the rebellion in the southwest of Upper Canada in 1837; see Michael S. Cross, “Duncombe, Charles,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 9:228–32.

49. Lesslie, “Diary,” 195.

50. On Duggan, see Barrie Dyster, “Duggan, George,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 10:262–63.

51. Toronto Patriot, Oct. 31, 1834.

52. Brockville Recorder, Aug. 8, 1839; British Colonist, July 24, 31, and Aug. 7, 1839; St. Catharines Journal, Aug. 7 and Sept. 5, 1839; Bytown Gazette, Sept. 11, 1839.

53. Baker, “‘So Elegant a Web,’” 190, 197–98.

54. Baker sometimes implies that the beliefs of the types rioters were a specialized subset of those held by members of the colony's elite more generally. The point of this article, however, is to explore the worldview of the legal elite specifically.

55. Quoted in Romney, Mr. Attorney, 110.

56. Ontario Archives, R.G. 5, Al, Upper Canada Sundries, Circuit Report, J. B. Macaulay, York, Oct. 1, 1832.1 am indebted to Peter Oliver of Toronto's York University for this reference.

57. Brode, Patrick, Sir John Beverley Robinson: Bone and Sinew of the Compact (Toronto: The Osgoode Society, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58. McMahon, Donald J., “Law and Public Authority: Sir John Beverley Robinson and the Purposes of Criminal Law,” University of Toronto Faculty Law Review 46 (Spring 1988): 410–11, 414–15.Google Scholar

59. Quoted in Kealey, Gregory S., “Orangemen and the Corporation,” in Forging a Consensus: Historical Essays on Toronto, ed. Russell, Victor L. (City of Toronto Ses-quicentennial Board, 1984), 59.Google Scholar

60. Romney, “Types Riot,” 135; see also Romney, “Very Late Loyalist Fantasies.”

61. Romney, Mr. Attorney, 133–39.

62. The independence of the judiciary will be considered later.

63. Romney, “Very Late Loyalist Fantasies,” 124.

64. Thompson, E. P., Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 265.Google Scholar

65. Idem, The Making of the English Working Class (1963; reprint Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1968), 121–23, 126–27; Booth, Alan, “Popular loyalism and public violence in the north-west of England 1790–1800,” Social History 8 (1983): 295–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also of interest is Elmsley, Clive, “Repression, ‘terror’ and the rule of law in England during the decade of the French Revolution,” English Historical Review 100 (1985): 801–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66. Thompson, Working Class, 746–65.

67. Barry Goldwater, acceptance speech, Republican presidential nomination, July 16, 1964.

68. Quoted in Greenwood, Legacies of Fear, 27.

69. Ibid., 27–28.

70. Ibid., 29.

71. Ibid., 257.

72. Romney, Mr. Attorney, 151.

73. Greenwood, Legacies of Fear, 28; Romney, Mr. Attorney, 151.

74. Wright, , “Sedition in Upper Canada: Contested Legality,” Labour/Le Travail 29 (1992): 17–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75. Ibid., 32–38.

76. See Robinson, J. B., Canada and the Canada Bill (London, 1840; Johnson Reprint 1967).Google Scholar

77. Wright, “Sedition in Upper Canada,” 23.

78. Lewthwaite, Susan, “Keepers of the Peace: The Magistrates of Georgina Township, 1830–1850” (unpublished paper, University of Toronto, 1987) 61–68.Google Scholar

79. Bowsfield, Hartwell, “Upper Canada in the 1820s: The Development of a Political Consciousness” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1976), 281.Google Scholar

80. John Beverley Robinson to Lieutenant Governor Maitland, May 10, 1828, quoted in Wright, “Sedition in Upper Canada,” 45.

81. Ibid., 48.

82. For the treatment of treason, see Wright, “Ideological Dimensions of Law,” 131–77.

83. In his recent study of members of the Assembly, J. K. Johnson has stressed the strengths of the old regime in the 1830s: “dominance by established groups and families … continued or increasing militarism … and adherence to Conservative political principles,” Becoming Prominent, 143. Others have emphasized the degree to which the old system was changing. David Mills, for example, highlighted the emergence of moderate Toryism in the 1830s. Idea of Loyalty, 92. The extraordinary methods resorted to by the Tories to win the 1836 election, including political campaigning by the lieutenant governor, the manufacture of votes, and electoral violence, cast some on the extent to which the composition of the 1836 assembly genuinely reflected the strength of conservatism. See Gates, Lillian F., Land Policies of Upper Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 186–88.Google Scholar

84. Colonial Advocate, Jan. 19, 1832; Brockville Recorder, Jan. 19, 1832; see also handbill in Colborne to Goderich, Jan. 31, 1832, in Ontario Archives, MS. 38 (45), Reel 3–676, CO. 42/411: 15.

85. Cobourg Reformer, quoted in Brockville Recorder, June 7, 1832.

86. G. M. Boswell to the editor of the Cobourg Star, Mar. 2, 1832, reprinted in the Colonial Advocate, Apr. 12, 1832.

87. Wilton, “‘Firebrand,’” 348–49; Jackson, Eric, “The Organization of Upper Canadian Reformers, 1818–1867,” in Historical Essays on Upper Canada, ed. Johnson, J. K. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975), 96–121.Google Scholar

88. Romney, “Types Riot,” 139.

89. See generally Wilton, Carol [Siegel], “The Transformation of Upper Canadian Politics in the 1840s” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar, and Mills, The Idea of Loyalty.

90. Kealey, “Orangemen,” 41 passim. The Rebellion Losses Bill was passed in the Assembly of the United Canadas in Montreal in 1849. Intended to meet the claims of those who had suffered losses during the 1837 rebellion in Lower Canada, it aroused the fury of conservatives who believed that its effect would be to “compensate” many rebels. When governor general Lord Elgin accepted the bill on April 25, 1849, his carriage was stoned. That night, an angry mob burned the parliament buildings in Montreal. In Toronto in 1849, there were several outbursts of conservative disorder occasioned by the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill, including effigy burnings of William Lyon Mackenzie and Lord Elgin, and a riot.

91. Conway, “Orange Order,” 47–51.

92. Wilton, Carol, “Crime in Mid–Nineteenth Century Toronto” (unpublished paper, University of Toronto, 1977), 26, 34–35.Google Scholar

93. Kealey, “Orangemen,” 69.

94. See Anderson, Richard B., “Respectability vs. Rowdyism: Non-Material Culture, Ideology, and Geography in Victoria County Ontario 1860–1880” (M.A. thesis, York University, 1984).Google Scholar

95. See Wilton, “Crime Rates,” 32; W. A. Richardson, “Crime and the Labouring Community in Toronto, 1870–1891” (research paper, University of Toronto, 1976), 31; Gattrell, V. A. C. and Hadden, T. B., “Criminal Statistics and Their Interpretation,” in Nineteenth–Century Society: Essays in the Use of Quantitative Methods for the Study of Social Data, ed. Wrigley, E. A. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 336–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, “Interpersonal Violence in English Society 1300–1980,” Past and Present (1983): 22–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., “Debate: The History of Violence in England: Some Observations,” Past and Present (1985): 206–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

96. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, the most impressive display of labor unrest in Canadian history, essentially closed down the city from May 15 to June 21, 1919. In an effort to break the strike, ten of its leaders were arrested on June 16. The arrests, undertaken without proper authority, were actually illegal, as federal minister of justice Arthur Meighen acknowledged. Meighen wrote the agent of the ministry in Winnipeg: “Notwithstanding any doubt I have as to the technical legality of the arrest and the detention at Stony Mountain [penitentiary], I feel that rapid deportation is the best course now that the arrests are made, and later we can consider ratification.” Quoted in Penner, Norman, ed., Winnipeg 1919: The strikers' own history of the Winnipeg General Strike (Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 1973), 235–36.Google Scholar

97. The most notorious episode was the burning of a barn near Montreal in 1972 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (federal security force), an action directed against the separatists. See Sawatsky, John, Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1980), 282.Google Scholar For routine police violence in an earlier era, see Marquis, Greg, “‘A Machine of Oppression Under the Guise of the Law’: The Saint John [New Brunswick] Police Establishment,” Acadiensis 16 (Autumn 1986): 63.Google Scholar