86 HISTORY OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

and removing any just grounds of complaint. The governor Stated to the proprietors that it was impossible for any one, unacquainted with the local circumstances of a new colony, to form a. correct estimate of the difficulties and privations which the past settlers on wilderness lands had to encounter. He said it was a long series of years before he could obtain from the soil more than a bare subsistence for himself and his family, notwithstanding the most unwearied perseverance and industry. It ought not, therefore, to be matter for sur- prise that, although he might be ready and willing to pay a fair equivalent, either in rent or otherwise, for the land occupied, he should feel dismayed at the prospect of being deprived of the hard-earned fruits of the labor of the earliest and best years of his manhood, Whether from an accumula- tion of heavy arrears of rent, which he was unable to realize from the land, or from the refusal of the proprietor to grant him a tenure of sufficient endurance to ensure to his family the profits of his industry ; and this, probably, in the decline of life, with a constitution broken, and health impaired by incessant toil. In these circumstances it could not be matter for surprise that he should be discontented with his lot, or that he should instil hostile feelings into the minds of his family, and be ready to lend a willing ear to proposals, however fallacious, which held out a hope of relief.

After alluding to the fact, that the high sheriff of King’s County had been recently resisted by a considerable body of armed men, while engaged in enforcing an execution on a judgment obtained in the supreme court for rent, and had his horses barbarously mutilated, he recommended, as a re- medy for the evil, that land-agents should have a discretion— ary power to relieve tenants of arrears of rents, in cases Where it was impossible they could ever pay them ; and that long leases should be granted at the rate customary in the