This first revision of the statutes in the new Province of Upper Canada was made in 1818. It consisted of a collection of the Acts of the Province of Upper Canada in force at that date, together with such Acts of the Imperial Parliament and ordinances of the former Province of Quebec as they affected Upper Canada. The volume appears to be the personal copy of Colonel Sir James Buchanan Macaulay (1793-1859), a lawyer and judge born at Newark, now Niagara-on-the-Lake. After fighting in the War of 1812 at the battles of Ogdensburg, Oswego, and Lundy's Lane, he chose to study law and was admitted to the Canadian bar in 1822. Macaulay rose rapidly in his profession and was an executive councillor during the administration of Sir Peregrine Maitland. He was first appointed a temporary judge of the Court of Queen's Bench and a permanent judge in 1829. On the first establishment of the Court of Common Pleas in December 1849, he was appointed the Chief Justice and presided there until he retired in 1856. As chair of the commission appointed to revise and consolidate the statutes of Canada and Upper Canada, Macaulay helped to reduce the whole statutory law of the country into three volumes, a work of great labour and value. William Lyon Mackenzie considered Macaulay a member of the Family Compact and referred to him as "a stink-trap of government" in his Colonial Advocate. No admirer of Mackenzie, Macaulay directed the militia in the defence of Toronto during the Rebellion of 1837. Despite Mackenzie's criticism, JBM was known as a hard worker and a fair, cautious judge. Being sensitive to social considerations, he tended towards clemency in cases of murder. His concern for prison conditions was evident in his advocacy of provincial supervision of district jails in 1835. At his 1856 retirement dinner, the young attorney general, John A. Macdonald, paid tribute to his "untiring assiduity." The amount of marginalia in this volume is perhaps a testimony to his thoroughness and professionalism.
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