Imprisonment for debt (Upper Canada)

A series of parliamentary reports describe the scope of the problem of debt in Upper Canada; as early as 1827, the eleven district jails in the province had a capacity of 298 cells, of which 264 were occupied, 159 by debtors. In the Home District, 379 of 943 prisoners between 1833 and 1835 were being held for debt. Over the province as a whole, 48% or 2304 of 4726 prisoners were being held in jail for debt in 1836. The number of debtors jailed was the result of both widespread poverty, and the small amounts for which debtors could be indefinitely detained.

Upper Canada was a cash-poor province without its own currency. As a result, the economy of the province was based upon credit-debt relationships. To be in debt was to be in danger of indefinite imprisonment. The only protection was a reputation for being able to pay those debts - "respectability" indicated a person's credit-worthiness.

Respectability encompassed both economic and political dimensions, and was not simply an expression of ‘middle class values.’ At an economic level, it signified someone with a “competence,” a secure source of income without the need to resort to charity. The economic independence signified by respectability was expressed politically also, as each farmer, each “freeholder,” was therefore entitled to a vote. Merchants could demand votes for their candidate, and effectively monitor their clients’ compliance, since voting was open at the hustings. Universal suffrage was denied and property qualifications to vote imposed precisely because, it was argued, only a man of property had the independence to vote according to his conscience; women, as dependents upon their husbands, were denied the vote for the same reason.

In truck systems, apparently “independent” farmers were reduced to dependent status through debt. They were forced to accept payment for their crops at lower prices and to accept payment in kind with store goods at inflated prices. The truck system was found widely in Britain, the Caribbean, Newfoundland, and Australia in the same period. Lt. Governor John Graves Simcoe had recognized this fact in Upper Canada as early as 1792: “At present the Farmer has no other means of obtaining such necessaries as he may want, but by bartering the produce of his Land for them with the petty Merchant, who by this means sets his own price on both commodities…” The struggle between merchant and farmer was thus one for independence; for farmers in particular, from those debts which allowed merchants to demand sole rights to surpluses, and to dictate the price paid for that surplus. Historian Donald Creighton attributed the Rebellions of 1837 to this tension. Merchants would extend credit to new farmers, but after a few years would start demanding payment of the debt in wheat - and with a captive market, they would set the price. They would have the farmer sign a promissory note for the balance, which meant that the merchant could sue the farmer at any time, and indefinitely imprison him until the debt was paid. It was to the merchant's advantage to keep the farmer producing as much as possible for as long as possible, and to pay as little as possible for it. The threat of the lawsuit was the most powerful weapon he had to do so.

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