LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN CANADA. 67 
township of early English times—itself developed from the mark communities of the 
Teutonic tribes.’ 
The Island of Prince Edward, originally known as St. John’s, formed part of the 
province of Nova Scotia until 1769, when it was created a separate province, with a 
lieutenant-governor, a combined executive and legislative council, and in 1773 a legislative 
assembly of eighteen members.” The history of this island is interesting from the fact that it 
gives an instance of a land system which kept the province in a state of agitation for many 
years, until it was finally settled soon after the union with the Dominion. The island was 
surveyed by Captain Holland in 1765, and in 1767 divided into sixty-seven townships, 
containing in the aggregate 1,360,600 acres.’ This extensive tract was conveyed by ballot 
with some reservations, to officers and other individuals who had claims or supposed 
claims on the crown, and a landed monopoly was in this way established in the island. 
The grantees were to settle in the province or establish a certain number of settlers within 
ten years, but these proper conditions were practically laid aside and an absentee owner- 
ship allowed to grow up, to the great injury of the tenants who farmed the lands. In 
those days the crown availed itself lavishly of its prerogatives with very little regard to 
future settlement on the public lands of the country over which it exercised dominion. 
Previous to the arrangement just mentioned, a British nobleman had applied to the king 
for a grant of the whole island. His proposition was to divide it into hundreds* as in 
England, or baronies as in Ireland. These hundreds or baronies were to be divided into 
manors over which would preside a court baron, in accordance with the old English system. 
Townships were to be carved out of hundreds; courts leet and courts baron were also 
to be established under the direction of the lord paramount. A local historian has clearly 
epitomised the whole proposition as follows: “ There was to be a lord paramount of the 
whole island, forty capital lords of forty hundreds, four hundred lords of manors, and eight 
hundred freeholders. For assurance of the said tenures, eight hundred thousand acres 
were to be set apart for establishments for trade and commerce in the most suitable parts 
of the island, including one county town, forty market towns, and four hundred villages.” 

1“ Primarily the parish is merely the old township in its ecclesiastical aspect. We can, therefore, trace the 
descent of the modern civil parish through the ecclesiastical parish, up to the old Saxon township. It may be safely 
said that the English parish is the legitimate descendant of the Teutonic mark, and that the English parish, the 
New England township, the French or Belgian commune, and the village community of Northern India, are but 
variations of one common type which reproduces itself wherever the Aryan race is found. Whether the Teutonic 
mark system was ever introduced into England by our Saxon forefathers is an open question, but the Saxon town- 
ship owed many of its distinguishing characteristics to the mark system. The township was so called from the 
tun or hedge which surrounded the group of homesteads.” Chalmers’ Local Government in England, p. 36. 
* Bourinot, p. 69. 8ee also copy of commission of the first lieutenant-governor, Captain W. Paterson. Canada 
Sessional Papers, 1883, No. 70, p. 2. 
* Campbell’s History, pp. 3,19. Colonial Office List, 1885, p. 38. 
* It does not appear that ‘‘ hundreds” were ever established in Canada. The union of a number of townships 
for the purpose of judicial administration, peace and defence, formed what is known as the hundred or wapentake, 
in Anglo-Saxon times. “It is very probable,” writes Stubbs (i. 96, 97) “that the colonists of Britain arranged 
themselves in hundreds of warriors ; it is not probable that the country was carved into equal districts. The only 
conclusion that seems reasonable is that, under the name of geographical hundreds, we have the variously sized 
pagi or districts in which the hundred warriors settled.” The first civil divisions of the infant settlement of Mary- 
land were called “hundreds,” and the election district of “Bay Hundred” on the eastern shore of the state, is a 
memorial of those old times. Local Institutions of Maryland, by L. W. Wilhelm, p. 39. A similar division was 
also known in the early history of Virginia. Ingle, pp. 40-47. 
