In the other provinces, happily, there were no racial differences to divide the community and aggravate those political disputes that are sure to arise in the working of representative institutions in a British country.  In Upper Canada for years the questions under discussion were chiefly connected with the disposal of the public lands, which in early times were too lavishly granted by Simcoe; and this led to the bringing in for a while of some undesirable immigrants from the United States —­undesirable because they were imbued with republican and levelling ideas by no means favourable to the development and stability of English institutions of government.  One of the first acts of the legislature was the establishment of courts of law and equity, in accordance with the practice and principles of English jurisprudence.  Another very important measure was one for the legalisation of marriages which had been irregularly performed during early times in the absence of the clergy of the Anglican Church by justices of the peace, and even the officers in charge of military posts.  Magistrates were still allowed to perform the marriage ceremony according to the ritual of the Church of England, when the services of a clergyman of that denomination were not available.  Not until 1830 were more liberal provisions passed and the clergy of any recognised creed permitted to unite persons legally in wedlock.

It was in the second session of the first parliament of Upper Canada, where the Loyalists were in so huge a majority, that an act was passed “to prevent the further introduction of slaves and to limit the term of contract for servitude within this province.”  A considerable number of slave servants accompanied their Loyalist masters to the provinces at the end of the war, and we find for many years after in the newspapers advertisements relating to runaway servants of this class.  The Loyalists in the maritime provinces, like the same class in Upper Canada, never gave their approval to the continuance of slavery.  So early as 1800 some prominent persons brought before the supreme court of New Brunswick the case of one Nancy Morton, a slave, on a writ of habeas corpus; and her right to freedom was argued by Ward Chipmim, one of the Loyalist makers of New Brunswick.  Although the argument in this case was not followed by a judicial conclusion—­the four judges being divided in opinion—­slavery thereafter practically ceased to exist, not only in New Brunswick, but in the other maritime provinces, leaving behind it a memory so faint, that the mere suggestion that there ever was a slave in either of these provinces is very generally received with surprise, if not with incredulity.