62 HISTORY or PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

succeeded DesBarrcs in 1813. The assembly met in No- vember of the same year. The address which the governor delivered on that occasion was such as indicated the temper of the man: it was dictatorial and insolent in its tone. He prorogued the house in January, and indicated his estimate of the utility of the popular branch of the legisla- ture by not again convening it till July, 1817. Its proceed- ings in that year were not satisfactory to the governor, who was determined to shackle the members and prevent them from adopting any measures which did not accord with his own notions of propriety. His excellency accordingly dis- solved the house, and a new one was convened in 1818, which, proving quite as refractory as the previous one, was also suddenly dissolved, and another elected in 1820. On the eighth of October, 1816, the governor had pub- lished a proclamation in which he intimated that the King had graciously resolved to extend to the proprietors of land in the island immunity from certain forfeitures to which they were liable by the conditions of their original grants, and also to grant the remission of certain arrears of quitrent, and fix a scale for future payment of quitrent. But the governor, before the amount of quitrent to be exacted had been determined by the home government, directed the acting receiver general to proceed, in January, 1818, to enforce payment of the arrears which had occurred between June, 1818, and December, 1817, on the old scale. Much distress was occasioned by these proceedings; and on the matter being represented to the home government, orders were issued to discontinue further action, and to refund the money exacted above the rate of two shillings for every hundred acres. It was at the same time intimated that the new rate would be rigidly exacted in future; but the years 1819, 1820, and 1821 passed over without any public demand