THE. LAND COMMISSION or 1860. 131

his sense of the promptitude and completeness with which the house of assembly had. given its support to the plan devised in the hope of terminating the differences on the question of land, by which the island had been so long agitated, and intimating that a commission would be for- warded, under the royal sign manual, containing the appointment of the Honorable Joseph Howe, Mr. John Hamilton Gray, and Mr. John \Villiam Ritchie, as com- missioners,——Mr. Howe being the representative of the tenants, l\Ir. Gray of the Crown, and Mr. Ritchie ot' the proprietors. The commissioners accordingly opened their court at the Colonial Building, on the fifth of September, 1860,——Mr. Gray presiding. There appeared at the court, as counsel for the government of the colony, on behalf of the tcnantry, Mr. Samuel Thomson, of Saint John, N. 13., and BIr. Joseph Hensley; and for the proprietors, Mr. R. Gr. Haliburton and Mr. Charles Palmer. Mr. Benjamin Des- Brisay was appointed clerk to the commissioners. On the first day, the court was addressed by counsel representing the various interests, and on the succeeding days, a very large number of witnesses were examined, for the purpose of eliciting information for the guidance of the court in coming to a decision. After the evidence had been heard, the court was addressed by counsel.

The report of the commissioners was dated the eighteenth of July, 1861; and, as any history of the island would be incomplete without an outline of its contents, the writer will now proceed to give such outline, which, whilst it presents leading facts and arguments adduced, will not, it is hoped, be open to the charge of undue prolixity.

As we have, in the course of the narrative, given an incidental sketch of the history of the land question, we shall pass over that portion of the connnissioners’ report~