From the very beginning of a regular system of government in Nova Scotia the legislature appears to have practically controlled the administration of local affairs except so far as it gave, from time to time, powers to the courts of quarter sessions to regulate taxation and carry out certain small public works and improvements. In the first session of the legislature a joint committee of the council and assembly chose the town officers for Halifax. We have abundant evidence that at this time the authorities viewed with disfavour any attempt to establish a system of town government similar to that so long in operation in New England. The town meeting was considered the nursery of sedition in New England, and it is no wonder that the British authorities in Halifax frowned upon all attempts to reproduce it in their province. Soon after his arrival in Nova Scotia, Governor Cornwallis established courts of law to try and determine civil and criminal cases in accordance with the laws of England. In 1774 there were in the province courts of general session, similar to the courts of the same name in England; courts of common pleas, formed on the practice of New England and the mother country, and a supreme court, court of assize and general gaol delivery, composed of a chief justice and two assistant judges. The governor-in-council constituted a court of error in certain cases, and from its decisions an appeal could be made to the king-in-council. Justices of peace were also appointed in the counties and townships, with jurisdiction over the collection of small debts. We must now leave the province of Nova Scotia and follow the revolutionary movement, which commenced, soon after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, in the old British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, and ended in the acknowledgement of their independence in 1783, and in the forced migration of a large body of loyal people who found their way to the British provinces. CHAPTER III. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS (1763--1784). SECTION I.--The successful Revolution of the Thirteen Colonies in America.