[Raymond] PRE-LOYALIST SETTLEMENTS OF NOVA SCOTIA 85 
yet, strange to say, he had been charged by the Lords of Trade to exercise 
the utmost carefulness in such matters.! An extract will suffice to show 
the general tenor of their letter:—‘ The good effect of your Instructions, 
or of any others that can be given in cases of this nature . . . does 
principally depend upon a just and faithfull execution of them upon 
the spot . . . and it is our particular duty to express to you the sense 
we have of this matter and the light in which we view it, having found 
that in most of the Colonies this duty has been either greatly neglected, 
or the powers given to the Governor grossly and shamefully abused; 
fraudulent pretences have been set up, and artful constructions in- 
vented to evade the limitations as to the quantity of land to be granted 
to each person or family; the grossest abuses have been committed 
in making the surveys; and the regulations prescribed in order to 
secure to the Crown its revenue of quit rents have been either not 
observed at all in making the grants, or defeated by the want of proper 
methods for their collection. We expect therefore that you will be 
particularly careful that the directions with respect to these points 
contained in your Instructions are most faithfully and exactly obeyed.” 
Having spent some months in England promoting his scheme for 
sending French Protestants to America, Colonel McNutt decided to 
recross the ocean, having been informed that his agents in the several 
colonies had engaged many thousand families to settle in Nova Scotia, 
and hoping doubtless to get on better with Governor Wilmot than he 
had done with his predecessor. He arrived at Philadelphia in Septem- 
ber, 1764, and at once found a field for his energies among the Germans 
and Quakers of Pennsylvania. In March of the next year he came 
to Nova Scotia with a number of families as settlers, accompanied by 
several gentlemen of wealth and influence in their respective provinces. 
They were appointed, he says, to represent many thousand families 
that had engaged to settle in Nova Scotia, provided the agents could 
procure good and sufficient lands on reasonable terms together with 
some civil and religious privileges they desired. 
Colonel McNutt seems to have favorably impressed the new 
Governor, who wrote to the Lords of Trade, April 30, 1765, “By the 
late arrival of several persons from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and 
some of the Neighboring colonies we have the prospect of having the 
Province soon Peopled by the accesion of many settlers from those 
parts. These persons are come in behalf of several Associations of 
Commercial people and others in good circumstances to view the country 
and examine what advantages the settlement and cultivation of it 
! Their letter, which is dated March 20th, 1764, fills 32 pages in the transcripts 
of the Archives at Ottawa. 
