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Meanwhile, over in British North America, the colonists, too, were acutely aware of the issue of judicial independence.

By 1700, there are approximately 28,000 black people in British North America, about 11 percent of the total population, then estimated around 250,000.

“Elections, especially of representatives and counsellors, should be annual, there not being in the whole circle of the sciences a maxim more infallible than this, ‘where annual elections end, there slavery begins,’” John Adams wrote in 1776 as British North America erupted into open conflict.

A little over 3.5 percent of the total, about 389,000 people, arrived on the shores of British North America and the Gulf Coast during those centuries when slave ships could find port.

In 1867, Britain’s Parliament passed, and Queen Victoria signed, the British North America Act creating the Dominion of Canada, which came into being the following July.