Introduction

Abstract

20 The Court of Common Pleas in Toronto later freed Anderson on a technicality (The Times, 19 February 1861, p. 7; 27 February 1861, p. 12), rendering the intervention of the Westminster court unnecessary. By then, the English Law Officers had given an opinion that he could not be extradited under the Webster-Ashburton treaty, since it could not be murder for a person to kill someone attempting to enslave them: