THE LAND COMMISSION OF I860. 133 collected, though uot under oath,—the commissioners not being vested with power to administer oaths,—was most valuable in aiding them to form a correct estimate of the evils of which the people complained. The documentary history of the question extended over nearly a century of time, and was to be found in the journals of the Legislature, in the newspaper files of the colony, and in pamphlets more or less numerous. The amount of time and money wasted in public controversy no man could estimate; and the extent to which a vicious system of colonization had entered into the daily life of the people, and embittered their industrial and social relations, it was painful to record. The commissioners felt that as the ease of Prince Edward Island was exceptional, so must be the treatment. The appli¬ cation of the local government for a commission, and the large powers given to it by the Queen's authority, presup¬ posed the necessity of a departure from the ordinary legal modes of settling disputes between landlords and tenants, which the experience of half a century had proved to be inadequate. Finding that it was impossible to shut out of their inquiry, while on the island, the qucstious of escheat, quitrents, and fishery reserves,—the claims of the de¬ scendants of the original French inhabitants, Indians, and loyalists,—they thought it quite within the range of their obligations to express their opinion's freely upon these branches of the general subject. The question of escheat, though apparently withdrawn from the scope of their inquiry by despatches from the colonial office,—received long after the opening of the com¬ mission,—could not be put aside. The discussion of the question was forced upon them from the day the court