176 REPORT OF THE No. 3 



Cost of Collecting Revenue. 



Pay of clerks, assistants, etc., as may be necessary and as tlie Governor or 

 officer administering the Government, may deem reasonable, provided that 

 the whole of such expenses do not in any year exceed one-sixth part of the 

 net amount which may in such year be paid to the Receiver General of the 

 Province in respect of such licenses." 



Mr, Robinson, simultaneously with his appointment as Surveyor General 

 of Woods and Forests, on the .19th July, 1827, was also appointed Commis- 

 sioner of Crown Lands. The system so elaborately framed by the British 

 Treasury Commissioners for his guidance was never carried out or even 

 attempted to be put into effect. 



Imperial Instruction's Ignored. 



On arriving in Canada, Mr. Robinson found Mr. Robert Shireif acting 

 as Collector of Timber Dues on the Ottawa River. Mr. Shireff was a pioneer 

 of the Ottawa lumber trade and was originally appointed Collector of Crown 

 dues on timber by Lord Dalhousie, in Lower Canada, and afterwards, on his 

 Lordship's recommendation, received the appointment for the Upper Pro- 

 vince. His son, Charles Shireff, acted conjointly with him without receiving 

 any formal appointment. Mr. Robinson fell in with the system adopted by 

 the Shireffs, who no doubt, as practical lumbermen, adopted a plan more 

 workable in its details than the method outlined by the Treasury Commis- 

 sioners. 



The Surveyor General, as Mr. Robert Shireff stated, "found my son and 

 myself acting under an arrangement made directly by the Government and 

 he did not feel called upon to interfere with it further than to give each of 

 us as his agents, authority to seize any timber that might be found cut with- 

 out license, and giving us also from time to time such instructions as appeared 

 to be necessary." 



First Receipts. 



The first receipts by the Government of Upper Canada from timber 

 licenses were in 1827, when the sum of |360 was realized from this source. 

 In 1828 the proceeds of timber licenses was |3,134 and in 1829, |2,237. 



Hon. Robert Baldwin Sullivan, in a statement as to the management 

 of the office of the Surveyor General of Woods and Forests, made in 1840 

 in connection with the investigation into the business of the Public depart- 

 ments undertaken at that time, says, respecting the system of licenses and 

 collection of dues as managed by the Messrs. Shireff: — 



"In the summer or autumn of one year the persons wishing to engage 

 in lumbering applied for a license to cut timber, stating the quantity pro- 

 posed to be cut, upon which a license issued in the form hereto annexed, 

 marked 'B,' the lumberers paid to the Collector 25 per cent, as an advance 

 upon the Crown dues, and entered into a bond, a printed copy of w^lch 

 will be found in the appendix 'C 



"In the ensuing summer the timber (having been cut and got out in 

 the winter) arrived in the Chaudiere Falls at Bytown, where it was measured 

 and an account taken of the contents of the several rafts, which then pro- 

 ceeded to Quebec. 



License for Quantity. 



"The parties cutting the timber were not required strictly to confine 

 themselves to the quantity specified in the license, and therefore as it was 



