98 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



west of Montreal, and some other benefits. In compliance with this 

 petition and Carleton's recommendation, the King in Council issued 

 an order, October 20, 1787, by which the Governor General was en- 

 abled to grant lands in free and common soccage, no grant to exceed 

 1,000 acres to any person, without royal permission being previously 

 obtained.^ 



When Governor Carleton's military secretary, Major R.' Mathews, 

 visited Niagara at the end of May, 1787, he found it to be as thriving 

 and prosperous as the new settlements to the eastward, but learned 

 from Colonel Butler that the leaven of democracy was beginning to 

 manifest itself in the "McNiff party," which was demanding the 

 rights of local self-government, or, according to Butler, the nomination 

 of their own civil officers and the holding of "committees for the choice 

 of them and other interior management of the settlement." Mathews 

 also found that the settlers were complaining of not having received 

 the same proportion of clothing and farming implements as those in 

 other parts of the province, and that they were still disturbed about 

 the tenure of their lands. That prospective colonists were still arriv- 

 ing is evident from an entry in Major Mathew's journal, under date 

 of May 31: "This day came in eight or ten men from the States to 

 see friends, and wishing a permission to settle with them." In 

 August a considerable number of the inhabitants near Niagara went 

 to Montreal to appear before the Commissioners of Loyalist Claims, 

 and in the evidence they presented one finds mention of not a few 

 of their places of residence, indicating that the settlement already 

 extended from the Ten Mile Creek to Fort Erie.^ 



In the meantime, the increase of population in Upper Canada 

 from the Niagara Peninsula to the Lake of St. Francis, 50 miles west 

 of Montreal, induced Carleton, in July, 1788, to divide the western 

 country into four districts for the administration of justice. The 

 settlement at Niagara fell within the District of Nassau, the judicial 

 and other officers of which were selected mostly from among the mem- 

 bers of the peninsular colony. John Butler, Robert Hamilton, 

 and Jesse Pawling were named justices of the Court of the Common 

 Pleas, Philip Rockwell Frey, clerk of that court, as also clerk of the 

 Peace and Sessions of the Peace, and Gilbert Tice, sheriff, John Burch, 

 Peter Tenbrook, John Warren, John Powell, Jacob Ball, and Samuel 

 Street were appointed justices of the Peace, and Niagara and Fort 

 Erie were made the headquarters of superintendents of inland naviga- 



1 Niagara Hist. Soc, No. 17, 20, 21. 



2 Ibid., 21-23. 



