A CANADIAN CHAPTER IN AGRARIAN AGITATION. 463 



during the early days of British colonization. With the exception of 

 three small reservations, intended for county towns, the island was 

 divided into sixty-seven lots or townships of 20,000 acres. In one day 

 sixty-five of these lots were disposed of by lottery before the Board 

 of Trade and Plantations in London ! The grants issued to the vari- 

 ous allottees contained these among other conditions : 



1. That the grantee of each township should place on the same, 

 within ten years from the date of the grant, one person for every 200 

 acres, the settlers to be foreign Protestants, or persons who had re- 

 sided in British America for two years previous to 1767. 



2. That such portions of the land, where one third of the acreage 

 was not so settled within four years of the date of the grants, should 

 be forfeited. 



3. That payment of quit-rent, varying from two to six shillings 

 sterling per 100 acres, should be made by the allottees at the expira- 

 tion of five years, payable annually on one half the grant ; and, five 

 years after that, payable on the whole. 



On these terms the original proprietors took possession, and in the 

 following year petitioned the British Government that the island might 

 be given a separate government. To defray its expenses they proposed 

 that a moiety of quit-rents due in five years should become payable in 

 two during May, 1769 payment of the remaining half to be post- 

 poned for twenty years. Trusting to the good faith and responsi- 

 bility of the proprietors, a local government was accordingly estab- 

 lished. This trust w T as disappointed. The quit-rents were not paid 

 as agreed, and ten years after the grants had been conveyed the con- 

 ditions of settlement had been complied with in but ten townships of 

 the sixty-five. Nine others were settled in part, and all the remainder 

 neglected. In no case were the settlers the foreign Protestants bar- 

 gained for. 



As time passed, the proprietors continued their disrespect for the 

 conditions of tenure. The Legislature of the island constantly di- 

 rected the attention of the Government at Westminster to the facts, 

 and urged the escheat of the grants ; holding, perhaps not very war- 

 rantably, that after escheat the tenants would enjoy their lands on 

 better terms. Indulgence, however, was from time to time sought 

 and received by the proprietors. Nevertheless, in 1802, the Colonial 

 Secretary, in a dispatch to the governor of the island, ordered that 

 such lands as were held by proprietors who had failed to perform 

 their conditions of grant be escheated. Accordingly, the Legislature 

 passed an act, the result of which would have been to revest in the 

 crown nearly every acre in the colony. What became of this law is a 

 mystery ; it was sent from Charlottetown, the colonial capital, to Lon- 

 don, for the royal allowance, and was never afterward heard of. In 

 this same year (1802), the arrears of quit-rents had accumulated to 

 60,000 ; and the British Government, wishing to encourage the set- 



