Appel à la justice de l'Etat

Very rare first edition, printed anonymously in London in June and July 1784. Octavo. Sabin 21044. The French Catalogue collectif de France records only two copies, at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and in Rouen. The first edition collates v, 320, viii pp., with table and errata.

Nineteenth-century green half calf with corners, smooth spine slightly darkened and ruled in gilt, marbled paper boards framed with a gilt fillet and with a crowned gilt cipher within a central cartouche, lemon edges. Corners bumped, a few small abrasions to board edges. Bookplate to one pastedown. A few small spots of foxing; light dampstaining to the right-hand margin of the first flyleaf.

The Appel à la justice de l'État appeared only a few months after The Case of Peter Du Calvet, published in London in March 1784. The two books served the same cause but were fundamentally different in character. The Case, written in English and intended for the lawyers preparing Du Calvet's action against Governor Frederick Haldimand, was not properly his own work: it has traditionally been attributed to his supporters Francis Maseres, formerly Attorney General of Quebec, and Peter Livius, a former Chief Justice. The Appel, by contrast, appeared in French under Du Calvet's own name and directly conveys his voice, his grievances and his political programme.

Pierre Du Calvet (1735-1786), a Protestant from Caussade in Guyenne, travelled to New France in 1758. He remained there after the British conquest, established himself as a merchant, acquired a substantial position in Montreal and also served as a justice of the peace. An increasingly outspoken critic of the administration of justice, he publicly attacked the conduct of certain judges and aspects of colonial government.

The American Revolutionary War gave these conflicts a far more dangerous context. Suspected of sympathy with the American rebels, Du Calvet was arrested on 27 September 1780 under Frederick Haldimand's administration. He was neither brought to trial nor given a proper opportunity to answer a specific charge. He remained imprisoned until 2 May 1783, shortly after the end of hostilities. In the Appel he himself calculated that he had spent 948 days in captivity, making this prolonged detention without trial the most immediate evidence of what he regarded as arbitrary government in the province.

Once released, he travelled to London determined to sue Haldimand and obtain redress. For nearly a year petitions to the King, approaches to ministers and preparations for legal proceedings produced no result. The Case was the first printed expression of this campaign: an orderly and heavily documented legal brief adapted to the requirements of the English courts. A few months later, the Appel à la justice de l'État became its public and political counterpart.

The title-page already reveals the enlarged scope of the undertaking. The volume comprises letters to the King, the Prince of Wales and the ministers, an address to General Haldimand, a final letter to Lord Sidney, and above all a long letter "à Messieurs les Canadiens", intended to expose the acts of "violence arbitraire" committed in the colony and to consider "la forme de Gouvernement la plus propre à y faire renaître la paix & le bonheur public". Du Calvet was therefore no longer appealing solely to a court capable of hearing his individual case: he was turning that case into a debate over the government of Canada itself.

This transformation is particularly evident in the Épître aux Canadiens. Du Calvet explains that the name Canadian should henceforth encompass both the former French subjects and the newer British inhabitants of the province, whose common interests, in his view, should supersede the old distinction between them. His imprisonment thus becomes the starting point for a programme of reforms intended to protect not merely one individual against the excesses of a governor, but the inhabitants of the province as a whole.

Among these reforms he expressly calls for "L'institution de l'assemblée" [the establishment of an assembly]. Du Calvet advocates a legislative body composed of representatives of the inhabitants, precisely because such an institution could provide a counterweight to colonial authority exercised far from the sovereign power capable of restraining it. He also supports guarantees modelled on habeas corpus, so that imprisonment ordered by a governor or magistrate could be subjected to judicial examination rather than imposed arbitrarily.

There is no real contradiction in this position: Du Calvet did not frame his argument against Britain, but through what he understood to be British liberty. His indictment of government in Quebec rests upon the contrast between Haldimand's practices and the constitutional principles that the British Empire claimed to guarantee its subjects. Locke, Grotius and Pufendorf furnished part of his intellectual framework; representative government was presented not as a first step towards independence, but as a means of keeping the province within the Empire by granting its inhabitants institutions consistent with their rights.

The affair also acquired a transatlantic dimension. Du Calvet sought support beyond British legal circles and corresponded with Benjamin Franklin, then United States minister plenipotentiary in France. Franklin's papers preserve three letters from Du Calvet written in the summer and autumn of 1784. Their correspondence establishes the connection between the two men, although the surviving evidence consulted here does not substantiate the more specific claim that Du Calvet personally sent Franklin a copy of the Appel.

Du Calvet never lived to see the outcome of the case he had carried before both the courts and public opinion. After another visit to North America, he left New York in March 1786 intending to return to England. His ship was first driven back by adverse winds, sailed again on 15 March, and was subsequently lost with all hands in a violent storm. Haldimand was never brought to trial at Du Calvet's instigation.

A very rare copy of the first edition of Du Calvet's own statement of his case, distinct from the English legal brief prepared by his supporters, in which his 948 days of imprisonment without trial become the basis for a much broader demand: that Canadians should be protected by a justice system governed by law and by representative institutions capable of restraining arbitrary colonial power.