In 1836, the year before the breaking out of Mackenzie's rebellion, Mr. Burton, then a youth of eighteen, came over to Upper Canada and repaired to Ingersoll, in the county of Oxford, where he began the study of the law in the office of his paternal uncle, the late Mr. Edmund Burton, who then carried on a legal business there. The gentleman last named had formerly held an office in connection with the Admiralty, and had been stationed at the mouth of the Grand River during the War of 1812, '13, and '14. After the close of the war he devoted himself to the law, and spent the rest of his life in Upper Canada. His presence in this country was doubtless to some extent the cause of his nephew's emigration from England. The latter spent the regular term of five years in his uncle's office in Ingersoll. Upon the expiration of his articles, he was called to the Bar, in Easter Term, 1842, and settled down to the practice of his profession in Hamilton, where he was not long in acquiring a large and lucrative business. He identified himself with the Reform Party in politics, and took an active part in various local elections. He was frequently importuned to enter Parliament, but he preferred to confine his best energies to his professional duties, and, as the years passed by, his business assumed such dimensions that he had full occupation for his time. He formed various partnerships, but was always the guiding spirit of the firm, and became known from one end of the Province to the other as a sound and learned lawyer. His connexion with Mr. Charles A. Sadleir lasted for many years, and the firm of "Burton & Sadleir" was one of the best known in the western part of the Province. On the 9th of June, 1850, Mr. Burton married Miss Elizabeth Perkins, daughter of the late Dr. F. Perkins, of Kingston, in the Island of Jamaica, and niece and adopted daughter of the late Colonel Charles Cranston Dixon, of the 90th Regiment. The life of an industrious lawyer, though interesting to himself and his clients, is uneventful, and there is not much to be said about Mr. Burton's professional career, except that it was a remarkably successful one. He had many wealthy merchants and corporations for his clients, and was regarded as an adept in the law relating to railway companies. He was for many years Solicitor for the City of Hamilton; also for the Canada Life Assurance Company, of which he is at present a Director, having been elected to that position soon after his elevation to the Judicial Bench. In 1856 he was nominated a Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada, and when that body became elective by the profession at large, under the Ontario Act of 1871, he was elected to the position. In 1863 he was invested with a silk gown.