172 PEINCE EDWARD ISLAND. 



German Protestants to their lands in the proportion of at 

 least 200 to each township. Neither of these conditions 

 were complied with, and this' is a feature in the case which 

 should not be forgotten when one comes to consider the 

 treatment which the descendants of those original pro- 

 prietors have just received at the hands of the Prince 

 Edward Island Government. 



Prior to its cession to England, Prince Edward Island 

 had been settled by Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia, 

 who, driven from their old homes earlier in the century, 

 had fraternized and even intermarried with the aboriginal 

 inhabitants of the island. The Acadians are, and always 

 have been, a quiet, simple, and inoffensive people, but 

 they clung with tenacity to the soil, and thus became a 

 troublesome squatting element on the new estates. 



Lord Selkirk, the most enterprising of the original pro- 

 prietors, sent out a shipload of emigrants from his estate 

 in Scotland to his fief in the New World. But with this 

 honourable exception the first proprietors never performed 

 one of the duties of a landlord they never helped to 

 people their lands, they never lived on them, nor spent 

 money on them. 



This system of land tenure almost, if not altogether, 

 the only one of its kind in the New World has been from 

 first to last a serious drawback to the development of 

 Prince Edward Island, and it has been the unceasing task 

 of the local legislature for many years to endeavour to 

 counteract its ill effects. The descendants and represen- 

 tatives of the grantees have, with one or two exceptions, 

 always been absentees. Their affairs have been managed 

 by agents who, in many cases, thought more of putting 



