88 HISTORY OF PKINCE EDWARD ISLAND. were members, showed that the local expenditure of the government for the last twelve years had been £107,643, of whicdi £27,50G had been expended on roads and bridges, to the great advantage of the property of the memorialists ; £13,556 on public buildings and wharfs ; and £66,562 for other local purposes. And of these large sums, the whole amount contributed by the proprietors of the soil had been only £7,413, leaving the balance of £100,000 to be borne by the resident consumers of dutiable articles. The com¬ mittee fortified their position by extracts from despatches sent by Lords Stanley and Glenelg , and completely justified the imposition of a tax of four shillings currency on wilder¬ ness lands. The report, when printed, occupied upwards of five newspaper columns, set in minion type, and bore striking evidence of the industry and ability of its framers. It appears from a despatch from Lord Durham , then governor general of British , which we found at Government House in Charlottetown , and which was not published either at the time or subsequently, that Lord Glenelg forwarded this able report, along with other docu¬ ments bearing on the subject of escheat, in September, 1838, to his lordship, for the purpose of obtaining his special opinion on the subject, for the guidance of the home government. It is scarcely necessary to premise, before giving this impor¬ tant state document, that Lord Durham is considered the highest authority on those colonial subjects of which he treats in his celebrated report,—a document which will stand for successive generations as a lasting monument of his ability as a statesman, and which has been and is now recognized as embodying the most masterly exposition of colonial questions which has ever been published.