134 HISTORY or PRINCE EDWARD ISLAM).

opened until it closed. The commissioners, therefore, thought it comported with their duty to express the con- clusions at which they had arrived.

In considering the best mode of quieting the disputes between the proprietors and their tenants, and of converting the leasehold into freehold tenures, the commissioners re- marked that the granting of a whole colony in a single day, in huge blocks of twenty thousand acres each, was an improvi- dent and unwise exercise of the prerogative of the Crown. There was no co-operation on the part of the proprietors in peopling the island. Each acted on his own responsibility, and while a few showed energy in the work, the great body of the grantees did nothing. The emigrants sent out by the few were disheartened by the surrounding wilderness owned by the many, who made no effort to reclaim it, or were tempted to roam about or disregard the terms of settlement by the quantity of wild land, with no visible owner to guard it from intrusion. By mutual co—operation and a common policy, the proprietors might have redeemed the grants of the imperial government from the charge of improvidence. The want of these indispensible elements of success laid the foundation of all the grievances which subsequently afflicted the colony.

The commissioners regarded the land purchase act as embodying the most simple and efficacious remedy for ex— isting evils. Under that act the \Vorrell and Selkirk estates had been purchased,—co\'ering about one hundred and forty thousand acres7 by which signal advantages were se- cured, the proprietors being dispossessed by their own con- sent, the tenants being enabled to purchase their holdings and improvements, not necessarily at a price so high as to represent the rents stipulated to be paid, but at the lowest price which the expenses of management, added to the ag-