FEUDALISM. 173 



money into their own pockets than of attending to the 

 interests either of landlord or tenant. Consequently rents 

 fell in arrear to an almost incalculable amount. Squatters 

 sprung up who held adversely to proprietors. In short 

 the land tenure of the island became an Augean stable 

 which required a strong broom to cleanse it. 



It is true that the grievance of the tenants was in most 

 cases a sentimental rather than a matter-of-fact one. 

 Many of them held their lands at rents varying from Qd. 

 to Is. an acre on leases of 999 years a tenure which, to 

 an old-country farmer would, no doubt, be vastly satis- 

 factory. But a grievance is none the less a grievance 

 because it happens to be one of sentiment. On the 

 American continent there is a firm and ineradicable objec- 

 tion to the landlord-and-tenant system, and many Prince 

 Edward Island farmers, sooner than clear and improve 

 land for which they were obliged to pay the trifling rent 

 of Qd. or Is. an acre, emigrated to other provinces where 

 land when cleared and laboured would be absolutely and 

 entirely their own. 



The method at first adopted by the local government 

 to check this evil was to buy land from such proprietors 

 as could be induced to sell, and then resell on favourable 

 terms of payment to the occupiers of the soil. By this 

 means two-thirds of the proprietors were disposed of. The 

 other third, however, could not be tempted to part with 

 their seignorial rights, for the desire to be a landlord, 

 even of a barren inheritance, is as strong in the Old World 

 as the desire to escape from landlordism appears to be in 

 the New. So matters stood at the confederation of the 

 colonies. 



