A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time by Rose

daughters, living. On the 30th October, 1881, he married Marie Amélie Antoinette, a daughter of the Hon. David Armstrong, member of the Legislative Council of the province of Quebec, and of Léocadie de Ligny. The fruit of his second union was one son, living. Madame Mathieu’s name is always to be found among the charity workers of the city of Montreal, and she is blessed by the poor. * * * * * =Johnston, Hon. James William=, Judge in Equity, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The late Judge Johnston was by descent a Scotchman, and by birth a West Indian. His grandfather, Dr. Lewis Johnston, was born in Scotland, and claimed to be entitled to the now long dormant title of Marquis of Annandale, but never pressed his claim in the courts. He married Laleah Peyton, a lady of Huguenot descent, and settled in Savannah, Georgia, then a British colony, where he owned an estate called Annandale. Previous to the rebellion, Dr. Johnston filled the office of president of the council and treasurer of the colony of Georgia. On the breaking out of the revolutionary war his sons all entered the British army and fought on the side of the king. His eldest son, William Martin Johnston, the father of Judge Johnston, held the rank of captain of the New York volunteers in the year 1775. He was engaged in the defence of Savannah, was at the capture of Fort Montgomery on the Hudson, and took part in various other engagements during the war. At its close Dr. Johnston returned to Scotland, and Captain Johnston, who had lost all his property in consequence of espousing the cause of Britain, studied medicine, and graduated in the University of Edinburgh. He married Elizabeth Lichtenstein, the only daughter of Captain John Lichtenstein, of the noble and ancient Austrian family of that name. Captain Johnston subsequently removed to Kingston in the island of Jamaica, where his son James was born on the 29th of August, 1792. He was early sent to Scotland for his education, and was placed under the care of the late Rev. Dr. Duncan, of Ruthwell. The family afterwards settled permanently in Nova Scotia. James William Johnston studied law in Annapolis in the office of Thomas Ritchie, afterwards one of the judges of the Common Pleas, and was admitted to the bar in 1815. He commenced the practice of his profession in Kentville, the shire town of Kings county, but shortly after removed to Halifax and entered into partnership with Simon Bradstreet Robie, at that time the leading practitioner in the province. Mr. Johnston rose rapidly in his profession, and soon attained the highest rank, which he continued to hold unchallenged until his elevation to the bench of the Supreme Court. In cross-examination he displayed peculiar tact and skill, extracting from the most reluctant and perverse witness the minutest facts within his knowledge. Among the intellectual features that marked his professional career may be noted a strong and comprehensive grasp, a memory that seemed ever obedient to his will, together with a rapidity of perception, that gave wonderful readiness at repartee, seizing like lightning on the mistakes or unwise or weak arguments of an opponent, and turning them to the disadvantage of the opposite side, and to the manifest advantage of his own. This mental superiority, aided as it was by untiring perseverance and industry, was alone sufficient to win the highest honours of the bar. Few, if any, of Mr. Johnston’s forensic efforts have been preserved; but in cases where the battle was to be fought against wrong and oppression, he was especially powerful; rising to the occasion his bursts of impassioned eloquence swept with the force of a tornado carrying all before it. In the year 1835 Mr. Johnston was appointed solicitor-general of the province, which office was then non-political; but in the year 1838, at the earnest solicitation of Sir Colin Campbell, then lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, he entered the Legislative Council and commenced his political life, and at once became the acknowledged leader of the Conservative party. On the elevation of the Hon. S. G. W. Archibald to the Court of Chancery as master of the rolls in 1843, Mr. Johnston was appointed attorney-general, and at the general election held in that year, resigned his seat in the Legislative Council, and stood for the important county of Annapolis, for which he was returned by a large majority, and which constituency he continued uninterruptedly to represent in the House of Assembly until 1863, when he took his seat on the bench. One of the first acts he placed on the statute book was the Simultaneous Polling Act, which provided for the holding of elections throughout the province on one and the same day, instead of being as theretofore held at different times, and the polls moved round in different places in each constituency, entailing large additional expense and much loss of time. He also successfully advocated the