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enacted, which conferred universal suffrage on the people. Since Confederation, the Island’s history is the record of its marvellous agricultural expansion and its advancement edu- cationally and otherwise, all of which is chronicled else— where.

Th No historical sketch of Prince Edward Island eLand

Question. would be complete without reference to what is known as “The Land Question.” When in 1767 the whole Province, with the exception of three Lots and some small reservations, was alienated in one day by the Crown, there was fastened upon the country an incubus which it took over a century to get rid of. A survey was begun by Cap- tain Samuel Holland in 1764 and completed in 1766, by which the Island was divided into 67 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 oflicers 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 petitioned 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 1770 the Island was separated from Nova Scotia and a local government was formed. But the re- sults 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

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