19 @5e Garden of.’ 
     
    
   
   
    
     over a century to get rid of. A survey was begun by Captain 
     
     Samuel Holland in 1764 and completed in [766, by which 
     
     the Island was divided into sixty-seven lots or townships of 
     
     about 20,000 acres each, and granted by means of a lottery 
     
     to persons (principally ofiicers of the army and navy) who 
     
     were considered to have claims upon the British government. 
     
     The grantees were to encourage the fisheries, pay from 25. to 
     
     65. per hundred acres as quit rents, reserved for the salaries 
     
     of those ofi'icers necessary for the administration of the 
     
     colonial affairs. and to settle the land within ten years with 
     
     foreign Protestants in the proportion of at least one person 
     
     to every two hundred acres. In 1768 the proprietors peti- 
     
     tioned the Home government for the erection of the Island 
     
     into a separate government, promising to defray by their quit 
     
     rents the costs of such administration. This prayer was 
     
     granted, and in I770 the Island was separated from Nova 
     
     Scotia and a local government was formed. But the results 
     
     of this arrangement were very unsatisfactory. The landlords 
     
     failed to pay the civil list, and the conditions of settlement 
     
     were almost wholly disregarded. Very few of the original 
     
     grantees carried out the terms, their only object being to 
     
     convert the grants into cash as speedily as possible; and 
     
     many of them sold their estates to parties in England. The 
     
     inhabitants were subjected to the greatest inconvenience, the 
     
     absentee proprietors neither improving the land themselves 
     
     nor allowing others to do so. Even after an extension of the 
     
     time for settlement, and the introduction of British subjects 
     
     instead of foreigners, not a single township contained the 
     
     requisite number of settlers. The Island legislature persist- 
     
     ently directed the attention of the Home government to the 
     
     non-fulfilment by the landlords of the conditions of their 
     
     grants, and urged the forfeiture of the same. For many 
     
     decades, people, parliament and governors endeavoured to 
     
     devise a remedy; but all their efforts, owing to the influence 
     
     of the absentee landlords, were in vain. Acts for the revesting 
     
     in the Crown of the granted lands were passed by the colonial 
     
    
   
   
    
     @aquda