78 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
have a proposal approved in Council that none of the Irish settlers, 
who might thereafter be brought into the Province, should be entitled 
to more than five or six acres of land. This they considered as further 
proof that the Lieut. Governor was disposed to throw every obstacle in 
the way of McNutt’s undertakings. The correspondents proceed to 
argue that settlers of the class introduced by Colonel McNutt were 
essential to the development of the province. Their remarks on 
this head are worthy of being quoted:— 
“That people of ability and in easy circumstances only should be 
encouraged to come and settle here will be found a very impracticable 
scheme, and had the other American Colonies received such only, they 
would to this day have been a wilderness inhabited by savages. The 
labouring people, who work and live frugal, are in general not the 
people of Ability, but they are the real riches of all countries, the 
foundation of all husbandry and manufactures. We could give many 
instances of people who have brought wealth into this country and 
who, having by various means consumed it, have quitted the Province, 
while labouring people with some little help at the beginning are now 
able to support themselves, remain settled in the Province and are very 
usefull members of it. We don’t imagine that such assistance as is 
now requisite need be continued a long time, or that it should be advanced 
on any other account than by way of a Loan, for the payment of which 
their lands should be the security, for these people will be in a capacity 
in two or three years to repay it. We are ‘of opinion that a sum of 
two thousand pounds a year for three or four years would be a fund 
sufficient to answer the designs of settling the Province so effectually 
as to save an infinitely greater sum, which may hereafter be expended 
to preserve it if not settled.” 
Alexander McNutt’s troubles were not by any means confined 
to Nova Scotia; opposition to his plans for promoting Irish immigration 
developed in government circles in England. Here again we turn to 
official documents for information. On the 16th March, 1762, the 
Lords of Trade took into consideration a memorial from McNutt in 
which he asked their approval of his plan of transporting several thousand 
Irish families to Nova Scotia there to become settlers. He says that 
he had entered into contracts to the amount of £26,000 sterling and 
upwards in connection with this enterprise. He hoped that their lord- 
ships would not rate him among the “Schemers who may have without 
foundation or abilities undertaken such a work,” but hoped the proof 
he had given the previous year will be an earnest of his future success. 
In his petition he requests the grant of “a charter to erect a City by the 
name of Jerusalem at Port Rosea [Roseway], on the Cape Sable shore 
of Nova Scotia, that being the best Harbour for carrying on the Fishery 
in all its branches and most aptly situated for extending the settlement 
of the Province.” He also asks for grants of large tracts of land for 
