116 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
House and rejected by the Council. A committee, also appointed in 
1841, to deal with the question of Loyalist relief, gathered together all 
these bills with the reasons given for their rejection. They showed 
that the objections of the Colonial Minister, which had not been com- 
pletely refuted in the report of 1840, were removed by the omission from 
the bill of 1840 of the objectionable parts of the bill of 1839; that the 
bill of 1840 did not in fact infringe the rights of either the proprietors 
or the Crown. They reviewed the reasons given by the Legislative 
Council for rejecting the bills, namely, that it was similar to that of 
1839, and that it amounted to an assumption by the Legislature of 
the right to dispose of the waste lands of the Crown, and showed that 
both statements were unfounded. They called attention to the fact 
that the “anxious desire” professed by the Legislative Council to afford 
relief to the Loyalists did not facilitate the comprehension by that body 
of what was the evident intention and meaning of the bill of 1840. 
They made it clear also that through the objections raised in various 
quarters on the part of the Crown, governors, and Legislative Councils, 
all bills for Loyalist relief for forty years had been prevented; and they 
urged the House not to relinquish a cause which after mature considera- 
tion it had declared to be well founded, but that it publish the list of 
Loyalist claimants along with extracts from certain letters of Lord 
Liverpool and William Fauknor, and appoint a committee at the next 
session to investigate how many claimants had been satisfied to the end 
of securing redress for those who had not. ' 
What was the outcome of this agitation we are unable to say, for 
the records at our disposal are incomplete; but it should be noted that 
as late as 1860 a Land Commission was appointed which again reported 
that the Loyalists had claims on the local government, and recommended 
that free grants be made to such as could prove that their fathers had 
been attracted to the island under promises which had never been ful- 
filled. Thus we see that for three-quarters of a century after the settle- 
ment of the Loyalists in Prince Edward Island, their grievances had been 
periodically urged with vigour and had proved to be an abundant source 
of agitation and concern to the island authorities. 
Concerning the real significance of the Loyalist settlement in Prince 
Edward Island, it is not easy to generalize. It seems probable that 
at the end of the year 1784 the American refugees formed from a fifth 
to a sixth part of the island population, which some fifteen years later 
amounted only to 4,372. As their habitations were fixed mostly in 
the southern part of the island, that section, which already had the 

! Report quoted entire in the Journal of the House of Assembly of Prince Edward 
Island, April 20, 1841. 
