On a tour of the provincial parliament building at Victoria, British Columbia, the guide called our attention to two large stone statues at the front entrance. One was of James Douglas, the Scotsman who first (in 1843) established a Hudson’s Bay Company post at the island site of this picturesque city and later was appointed the first governor of the colony. The other represented Matthew Begbie who, at Douglas’ request in 1858 was brought in from England to become the colony’s first judge. Those statues are appropriate, for it is safe to say that no men have taken larger roles in the founding and development of the province than these two.

The ‘49 gold rush which had brought multitudes across the continent to California soon began to ebb as. some miners became wealthy but most were disappointed. As the lure of quick wealth in California faded, news began to come in of rich strikes in Cariboo country of British Columbia, sending a flood of Yankees into the great, empty north land. Governor Douglas, seeing the threat of an American takeover and determined that there would be no repetition of California’s gold–rush lawlessness in his domain, asked the British government to send him a judge, and more, a representative on the mainland who could advise him on making and administering law.

The colonial secretary, Edward Bulwer–Lytton (also a famous novelist) sent an almost fictional character in Begbie, who left with the secretary’s instruction that the required judge must be one who could “truss a murderer and hang him from the nearest tree.”

When the handsome, 39-year-old giant with his pointed mustache and greying beard arrived he was promptly taken to Fort Langley on the mainland where Douglas proclaimed the new colony of British Columbia. Douglas administered the oath of allegiance to Begbie as judge and Begbie did the same for Douglas as governor, who now headed two colonies. During the next 36 years Begbie introduced his version of British law to an area larger than many nations. Travelling with a string of twelve horses, he would don his robes and wig and hold court wherever trouble in the province required it, himself acting as prosecutor, defence counsel and judge, and where necessary impanelling anyone who happened to be available as jury. Carrying no law books “and little law even in his head,” he proceeded on the assumption that if a crime had occurred someone must suffer for it. “He cared nothing for law, everything for justice.” Since the country had no lawyers, appeals must be made to England, where no man could go, so that his decisions were final.

Juries, by their miscarriage of justice, sometimes incurred his wrath. When one let off a murderer with a verdict of manslaughter, the judge screeched at them: “Prisoner, it is far from a pleasant duty for me to have to sentence you only to imprisonment for life. . . . Your crime was unmitigated, diabolical murder. You deserve to be hanged! Had the jury performed their duty I might now have the painful satisfaction of condemning you to death, and you, gentlemen of the jury, you are a pack of Dallas horse thieves, and permit me to say it would give me great pleasure to see you hanged, each and every one of you, for declaring a murderer guilty only of manslaughter.”

On another occasion when a jury pronounced a man who had sandbagged a companion not guilty, Begbie snarled “Prisoner at the bar, the jury have said you are not guilty. You can go, and I devoutly hope the next man you sandbag will be one of the jury.”

Although he achieved a reputation for stern and speedy justice as “the hanging judge,” there were few hangings. “Begbie’s methods achieved precisely the result that Lytton and Douglas wanted.”

“Actually little violence of any sort occurred” after his arrival. Begbie could report after some time of service

“It is clear . . . that the inhabitants almost universally respect and obey the laws, and voluntarily prefer good order and peaceful industry to the violence and bloodshed to which other gold mining regions have been subjected: and with such dispositions the police force, scanty and scattered as it is, appears to have been hitherto sufficient not only to restrain from crime those who might otherwise have committed deeds of violence, but in general to bring to justice the few persons who have been actually guilty.

He could report only three criminals who had escaped justice in a year of the gold rush—a “record surely . . . without parallel on the frontiers of America . . . and almost solely the work of Begbie, government and law riding in one saddle.”

Begbie was eventually knighted by the king and re.tired in Victoria, where he sang in the church choir. When he died of cancer he ordered that his grave be marked with a wooden cross bearing only the inscription, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.”¹

The fabulous career of British Columbia’s first judge illustrates unusually well t he way in which the Biblical principles, “Whoso shedeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Gen. 9:6), and “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. . . . For he is the minister of God to thee for good . . . a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:1–4) are fundamental to the establishment of a sound government and the development of a healthy and peaceful society. Thanks to some of its founding leaders, early British Columbia seems to have learned that lesson better than much of our frontier west did.² In a time when all of our societies are falling a prey to violence because they and even their churches are forgetting that lesson,³ it becomes increasingly urgent that we relearn it.

Notes:

3. The high–crime state of Michigan early outlawed capital punishment. Now, after more than a hundred years a movement is afoot to restore it. The 1981 Christian Reformed Synod adopted a report on Capital Punishment which was an outstanding example of irresponsible exegesis. Although it acknowledged the permissibility of capital punishment, it based it only on pragmatic grounds after studiously attempting to demolish the Bible texts that order it, at one point even arrogantly suggesting that neither God nor man could order what Genesis 9:6 does (Acts of Synod, pp. 72, 477, 478; compare June, 1981 OUTLOOK, p. 14).