Sewell or Sewall of Coventry - Person Page 191 -
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Published on: 7/21/1999
Last Visited: 9/24/2006
Steven William Sewell b. 18331
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"Sewell".
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Present:- Janet Smith (her sister), William Grant, Stephen Sewell (his brother), G. Germaine and S. Franklin.2,3 Jonathan Sewell was born into a prominent and cultivated Massachusetts family and, with his younger brother, Stephen, grew up on the love and encouragement of his parents.
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Present:- Janet Smith (her sister), William Grant, Stephen Sewell (his brother), G. Germaine and S. Franklin.2,3 Jonathan Sewell was born into a prominent and cultivated Massachusetts family and, with his younger brother, Stephen, grew up on the love and encouragement of his parents.
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Following the lead of Stuart, Sewell's former pupil, who for personal reasons had developed a "rancorous hatred" towards him and his brother Stephen, the assembly impeached Sewell and Monk, in part on the grounds that some of their rules constituted legislation and that the judges had thereby usurped the role of the assembly.
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Sewell and Monk were thrown together to prepare a defence with the assistance of Richardson.
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Sewell, it was decided, would defend their cause in London.
In early June 1814 the entire Sewell family left for England.At the Colonial Office Sewell quickly learned that the political charges against him would not even be considered: to heed them, Colonial Secretary Lord Bathurst claimed, "would be to admit that a councillor was responsible for the acts of a Governor (which is) contrary to every principle."The rules of practice were referred to the Privy Council for examination.In his defence Sewell asserted that the assembly's ultimate objective was the "revolutionary project" of "transferring the Executive Power and Prerogatives of the Crown, to the Legislative."The crown had therefore to rescue its judicial and administrative officers from dependence on the elected body.Sewell transformed his own defence into an attack on Prevost's conciliatory administration.
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Meanwhile, Sewell had turned to other matters.The War of 1812 had made colonial defence a primary concern in London.To address it, in November 1814 Sewell sent to Prince Edward Augustus, now the Duke of Kent, a plan for union of all the British North American colonies.The Canadians, he now realized, would fight the Americans as long as they could retain their language, laws, and religion under British rule.But effective resistance to the more powerful enemy could be achieved, he thought, only by the combined efforts of all the colonies.Initially, he envisaged a central executive and legislature, with each colony retaining a lieutenant governor and an executive council.Sewell's proposals sought to reinforce the crown and executive at the expense of the legislature and to free judicial and administrative officials from harassment by elected assemblies.No doubt criticism of the small place he left to the central, legislature induced Sewell to modify his plan by adding provincial legislatures to handle strictly local matters.His scheme was then apparently published in 1814 as A plan for the federal union of British provinces in North America.It was a product of the New England loyalist mind; like a federal plan drafted by his father in 1784, and contrary to another proposed by his New Yorker father-in-law, it sought to achieve stability by excluding the masses from the political process rather than by admitting them into it.
Sewell arrived back at Quebec on 4 July 1816 to a rare salute from the fortress.With him he brought a highly flattering letter from Lord Bathurst instructing Governor Sir John Coape Sherbrooke to promote Sewell's interests.Sherbrooke warned Bathurst that "an infatuated dislike amounting almost to detestation" of Sewell "pervades all classes," particularly the clergy.
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Thanks to the governor's skilful management, however, the assembly even voted Sewell a salary of ,1,000 as speaker of the Legislative Council in return for the council's agreeing to make permanent Papineau's equivalent salary as speaker of the assembly.
Throughout his long involvement in public life Sewell had remained active socially.In December 1808 he had assumed the patronage of a literary society formed by Aubert de Gasp, and other young men of Quebec.He promoted the theatre and attempted in vain to persuade Plessis to lift his prohibition of it for Catholics.In October 1818 he was appointed to the board of the Royal Institution.A few months later he chaired a meeting of the managers of the Quebec Dispensary.Long a subscriber to the Agriculture Society, in 1819 he donated to it a fine imported cow and her bull calf.
Sewell's re-engagement in the maelstrom of Lower Canadian politics from 1816 did nothing for his health.In July 1820 an alarmed Governor Lord Dalhousie (Ramsay), cognizant of "how large a space (Sewell) fills in the direction of public affairs," warned Bathurst that "a Complication of disorders, arising from intense study, and anxiety of mind appears to have broken his Constitution."Dalhousie developed an exceptional friendship and political relationship with his urbane, conservative, and well-informed chief justice.In November 1820 he told Bathurst that "as my Confidential adviser in the . . . administration of the Government, I turn to him on all occasions of difficulty."
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The governor was particularly upset in late 1822 when Sewell, in a politically reckless move, jumped at the position of sheriff of Quebec for his son William Smith.
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Nevertheless, only Dalhousie's firmness discouraged Sewell in 1826 from pursuing his strenuous efforts to have another son, Robert Shore Milnes, appointed protonotary for the district of Quebec.
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It was as an office holder, in fact, that Sewell approached the issues of the day.With regard to financial matters, for example, he insisted that salaries be the priority item of payment on the civil list and, taking a line in opposition to his merchant colleagues in the English party, in 1821 he combatted, unsuccessfully, incorporation of the Quebec Fire Assurance Company, the Quebec Bank, and the Bank of Montreal.Again it was as an office holder that Sewell responded to a growing sentiment in the early 1820s, particularly among Montreal merchants, for a legislative union of the Canadas.He gave Dalhousie a copy of his plan of 1814 for federation, but the governor rejected it as according too much influence to the crown and executive and likely to provoke a furious reaction from the assembly.In any case Dalhousie too preferred a legislative union of the Canadas, and he supported just such a scheme in 1822.Sewell, however, warned the Colonial Office that the proposed plan was arousing hostility among the Canadians.Once more he put forward his project for federating all the colonies.
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Meanwhile, in early 1823, Sewell had urged Dalhousie not to allow a clause respecting religion to be included in any union bill, for fear of provoking the Canadians; rather, he suggested the negotiation of a "Concordat," on the basis of Denaut's petition, whenever a successor to Plessis had to be appointed.
Sewell's opposition to the proposed legislative union of the Canadas in 1822 was noticed in the assembly (he had engineered defeat of a motion for it in the Legislative Council), and at the end of the session of 1823 Dalhousie recorded that "the whole House of Assembly in body has dined at the private house of the Chief Justice"; only Papineau declined.Under the temporary administration of Burton in 1824-25 the political tensions that had characterized Dalhousie's administration decreased to such an extent that even Papineau was constrained to exchange invitations with Sewell.
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In early 1825 Sewell suggested the rejection of Papineau as speaker of the assembly, but Burton refused.
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Sewell was more clearly conciliatory towards the Canadians while on the bench in the early 1820s.Before a grand jury in 1822 he applauded the growing acceptance of both French civil and English criminal law as "the triumph of good sense over national prejudice."When the post of advocate general came open in early 1823 he recommended that it be reserved for "a Canadian gentleman of the first standing at the Bar."Sewell's influence in improving the quality of the judiciary remained strong, but his presence in court declined for reasons of health.At the same time the judicial system was increasingly taxed.The number of causes handled by the provincial courts of King's Bench had swelled from 1,103 in 1808 to 3,409 in 1826.In 1828 Sewell warned Dalhousie that the courts had become overwhelmed.
The bench had other problems.The refusal of the assembly from the early 1820s to provide what the judges deemed reasonable pensions to Monk and Isaac Ogden spurred them, led by Sewell, to seek financial independence of that house.
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Sewell argued that the colonial judiciary had matured to such a point that the judges should be placed on the same footing as their British counterparts.
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Sewell, whose wife was Pr
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