9-i THE MIR A GRANT, CAPE BRETON CO., N. S. — GILl'IN. 



what extent the Crown was prepared to grant rights. It, 

 therefore, presumably could not be construed to mean that the 

 minerals were reconveyed as in the original grant, or in other 

 words to mean that it conveyed more than it expressed. 



This silence in the act of 1843, on the subject of minerals 

 w^as apparently due to the following cause. The Duke of York 

 on August 25th, 1826, received from the Crown of England a 

 grant of all minerals held by the Government of Nova Scotia. 

 By the act of 1839, repealing the Mira Grant, the land was 

 revested in the Government of Nova Scotia, which had the 

 power of re-granting it for the crown ; the minerals, when the 

 grant was repealed, fell directly into the grant of the Duke of 

 York. 



Finally in 1858, the grant to the Duke of York was sur- 

 rendered except for the reservation to the General Mining 

 Association of London, the purchasers of the Duke's grant, of 

 certain tracts valuable for coal mining. Thereupon all those 

 minerals which the action of the Crown had withdrawn from the 

 government of Nova Scotia came again under the jurisdiction of 

 the province. 



Chapter 2 of the Acts of 1858 defined the position of the 

 Government of Nova Scotia in respect to the minerals which 

 had been revested in it by the surrender of the Duke's lease. 

 It reserved out of these minerals gold, silver, lead, copper, tin, 

 iron, coal and precious stones. It would therefore appear that 

 in the lands covered by the limits of the original Mira Grant, 

 the minerals recited above belong to the crown, a reservation 

 somewhat more extended than that mentioned in the original 

 letters patent. 



