Robert Thorpe (1773 – May 11, 1836) was a judge and political figure in

Upper Canada The Province of Upper Canada (french: link=no, province du Haut-Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of t ...

and was later chief justice of

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...

Early life

Thorpe was born in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

in 1773. He was the second son of Robert T. Thorpe and Bonna Debrisay. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1788 and a degree in law in 1789 from

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

. He was admitted to the bar in 1790. At some point before 1815 he was given a

Legum Doctor Legum Doctor (Latin: “teacher of the laws”) (LL.D.) or, in English, Doctor of Laws, is a doctorate-level academic degree in law or an honorary degree, depending on the jurisdiction. The double “L” in the abbreviation refers to the ear ...

In Canada

In 1801, he was appointed as

Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island The Court of Appeal of Prince Edward Island (also known as the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal, and as PECA in legal abbreviation) is the appellate court for the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island, and thus the senior provincial court be ...

, arriving in the colony in November 1802. He encouraged the attorney general Peter Magowan to prosecute minor crimes that were annoying to the population. Since he was not paid on time, he sailed to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

in 1804 with a plan to unite Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton and

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

. He was captured by a

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

privateer and taken to Spain. Thorpe later escaped and was appointed a puisne judge of the Court of King's Bench in Upper Canada on 5 July 1805. In 1806 William Weekes was killed in a duel and Thorpe was elected as his replacement to the

4th Parliament of Upper Canada The 4th Parliament of Upper Canada was opened 1 February 1805. Elections in Upper Canada had been held in May 1804. All sessions were held at Parliament Buildings of Upper Canada in York, Upper Canada. This parliament was dissolved 21 May ...

. He advocated that the executive council should be responsible to the elected representatives. He advocated for ideas that would be later called

responsible government Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments (the equivalent of the executive bra ...

and

home rule Home rule is government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance wit ...

. Lieutenant Governor Francis Gore suspended Thorpe from the legislature in July 1807 for advocating against the powers of the Lieutenant Governor. He left Upper Canada in 1807 when he believed he would be removed from his role as a judge due to his reform ideas.

Sierra Leone

In 1808, Thorpe was appointed the first chief justice in Sierra Leone (chief justice and judge of the

Vice-Admiralty Court Vice Admiralty Courts were juryless courts located in British colonies that were granted jurisdiction over local legal matters related to maritime activities, such as disputes between merchants and seamen. American Colonies American maritime a ...

). He arrived in Sierra Leone in 1811. He presided over the cases of

Samuel Samo Samuel Samo was a Dutch slave trader who was the first person to be prosecuted under the British Slave Trade Felony Act 1811. Samuel Samo was the uncle of John Samo, a Dutch shopkeeper who served as King's Advocate and Member of His Majesty's ...

(7-10 April 1812), Joseph Peters (11 June 1812) and William Tufft (12 June 1812). Thorpe left Sierra Leone in 1813 after he was given a health leave by the governor of Sierra Leone. He was ordered to pay £630 for a surrogate who presided as a judge for him. In 1815 Thorpe brought charges against Charles William Maxwell and supposedly tried to blackmail the colonial secretary Lord Bathurst. Thorpe was dismissed from his judgeship for not bringing the charges to Bathurst sooner.

Personal life

Thorpe was married and had seven children.

Later life

In 1815 he published ''A Letter to William Wilberforce, Esq. M. P., Vice-President of the

African Institution The African Institution was founded in 1807 after British abolitionists succeeded in ending the slave trade based in the United Kingdom. The Institution was formed to succeed where the former Sierra Leone Company had failed—to create a viab ...

'' which was critical of the Sierra Leone Company and the African Institution which succeeded it. :"After sixteen years experiment, trade having failed; cultivation being retarded, civilization unattempted; religion and morality debased, and the slave trade nourished; every plan defeated, every artifice exposed; the company desirous of relieving themselves from the enormous expense prevailed on government to accept a surrender of the colony, and formed (to uphold their old influence) a society called the African Institution: having taken leave of the expense, they demanded to be paid for their buildings, and did accordingly receive a large sum from the treasury, although they had before obtained (by pleading poverty) one hundred thousand pounds from the government for the improvement of the colony: their books and agents were removed; while many of the settlers who had toiled for them for years were left unpaid." He died in London on May 11, 1836.

Published works

''A Reply "Point by Point" to the Special Report of the Directors of the African Institution ...''
(1815) London: F. C. and J. Rivington. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
''A commentary on the treatises entered into between his Britannic majesty, and his most faithful majesty ... his catholic majesty ... and ... the king of the Netherlands ... for the purpose of preventing their subjects from engaging in any illicit traffic in slaves''
(1819) London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Browne

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorpe, Robert 1760s births 1836 deaths Members of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada Upper Canada judges Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate judges Judges in Prince Edward Island Colony of Prince Edward Island judges Chief justices of Sierra Leone Expatriate judges from Ireland