run LAND COMMISSION or 1860. 137

thousand five hundred pounds had been paid by the tenants on the Selkirk estate in the first year after it was purchased. Guided by the experience thus gained of the disposition and of the resources of the tenantry, it was deemed by the com- missioners air to conclude that if such a sum could be promptly realized from sales of land, admitted to be among the poorest in the island, the local government might fairly count upon the command of such an increase, from the rc-sale of the estates they might purchase, as would enable them to keep faith with the public creditor, without any risk of embarrassment.

In considering the remedies to be applied, three conclu— sions forced themselves on the commissioners: that the original grants were improvident and ought never to have been sanctioned; that all the grants were liable to forfeit- ure for breach of the conditions with respect to settlement, and might have been justly eseheated; and that all the grants might have been practically annulled by the enforce- ment of quitrents, and the lands seized and sold by the Crown, at various times, without the slightest impeachment of its honor. But whilst this opinion was firmly held, still, the Sovereign having repeatedly confirmed the original grants, it was impossible to 'treat the grantees in any other manner than as the lawful possessors of the soil.

Assuming, then, the sufficiency of the original grants, and the binding authority of the leases, the commissioners were clearly of opinion that the leasehold tenure should be con- verted into freehold. It was, they said, equally the interest of the imperial and local governments that this should be done, that agrarian questions should be swept from the field of controversy, that Her Majesty’s ministers might be no longer assailed by remonstrance and complaint, and that the public men in the island might turn their attention to the development of its resources.