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But many of the circumstances detailed in the present chapter were unknown to the bulk of the Canadian people, by whom he was regarded as a martyr to his upright and liberal principles. His amoval produced a wider excitement than any event since Gourlay's time.
The Lieutenant-Governor, through his Secretary, notified him that the Council had felt it incumbent upon them to advise this step. The "amoval" was now an accomplished fact. A vacancy was thus created on the bench, which was filled on the 2nd of July by the appointment of Christopher Alexander Hagerman to a puisne judgeship.
The news of Judge Willis's "amoval" spread rapidly through the Province, and produced widespread excitement. The circumstance that his course had met with the approval of Rolph and the Baldwins led to the belief among non-professional people that he was sound on the legal question, and that he had been driven from the bench because he would not stoop to corruption.
The Lords of the Judicial Committee, before whom the case was heard in June and July, 1846, reported that in their opinion the Governor-in-Council had power in law to amove Mr. Willis, and that the facts were sufficient to justify his amoval, but that an opportunity ought to have been afforded him of being previously heard.
A careful and dispassionate examination of all the circumstances in the Willis case must convince the inquirer that the faults were not all on one side, and that the Judge himself is bound to at least share with Sir Peregrine the responsibility for the bitterness arising out of the "amoval."
Judge Willis seems to have been wrong in his law, wrong in his etiquette, wrong in his temper, and wrong in his construction of judicial amenities. Henceforth the Judge's "amoval" was only a matter of time, for the entire influence of the Executive, direct and indirect, was arrayed against him.
The case of Judge Thorpe was exhumed from the dust of twenty years, and the amoval of Judge Willis was believed to be a mere re-enactment of that forgotten iniquity. As for Judge Willis himself, he determined to proceed at once to England to present his side or his case, in the form of an appeal from the order of amotion, at the Colonial Office.
As he expected that he would very soon be able to procure from the Colonial Office a reversal of his "amoval," and that he would be reinstated in his judgeship, to the great discomfiture of the Lieutenant-Governor and his satellites, he did not think it necessary that his family should accompany him to England.
Owing to the Judge's "amoval" the projected treatise was never issued, though several chapters of it had actually been written. A small portion of it was incorporated in a work published by the author in England twenty-two years afterwards.
It has been the fashion with writers who have dealt with this period of our history to represent the amoval of Justice Willis as being upon the whole the most glaring iniquity of the time. This view is not borne out by the facts.
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