[SIEBERT & GILLIAM] THE LOYALISTS IN P.E.I. 115 
been tampered with.! Moreover, we find Governor Patterson taking 
advantage of the dependent condition of the Loyalists to secure for 
himself a party in the House of Assembly. These new settlers were 
dependent on him for the government donations which made the estab- 
ment of their settlements possible; in him also was vested the power of 
locating them on the lands they were to receive—hence they were ready 
to support any meausre in which he was interested. Fanning, Patter- 
son’s successor, later excused himself for withholding a grant on the 
ground that all the land had been granted by his predecessor. 
If Loyalist history in the island is full of wrongs and persecutions, 
it is also marked by attempts at Loyalist redress renewed from time to 
time. As early as 1790 the island legislature passed an act empowering 
the governor to give grants to Loyalists who had not yet received them 
from the proprietors.? The need of this act, as avowed, lay in the fact 
that the proprietors had failed to fulfil their part of the agreement, 
and many of the Loyalists had therefore remained unsupplied with 
lands. This measure was “allowed” by the King in 1793. But its 
provisions did not redress all grievances, and after the lapse of forty 
years a petition of the Loyalists led to further action in the matter. A 
committee of investigation was appointed in the House of Assembly, 
and made a report containing a review of the Loyalist movement in 
which the gross injustice of their treatment was shown. A bill to 
confirm their titles was recommended and evidence was presented in 
the form of interviews with witnesses.® The committee appointed 
to prepare a bill for the relief of the Loyalists also made an extended 
report.‘ This report quoted the royal instructions of 1783, pointed out 
the failure on the part of the proprietors and governors to regard them, 
and exposed the suppression of Loyalist applications in the Council 
Minutes. Appended to this report there was likewise a set of inter- 
views with witnesses. 
This measure seems to have fallen through, for in 1839 another bill 
for relief was reported. It did not, however, meet the approval of 
the Colonial Secretary in England, although his objections were replied 
to by the committee to whom his despatch had been referred. Another 
bill passed the House in 1840, but was rejected by the Legislative Coun- 
cil. In the same year the Loyalists sent an address to the Governor 
General of Canada; and in 1841 a bill for relief was again passed in the 

! These Minutes were originally thought to have been lost, but investigation 
revealed that they had been preserved on loose papers. 
? Revised Statutes of Prince Edward Island, 1790, 30th Geo. III, ch. 5. 
# Journal of the House of Assembly of Prince Edward Island for the year 1833. 
* Journal of the House of Assembly of Prince Edward Island, Thursday, March 
28, 1833. 
