REMARKS ON THE AWARD or 1860. 143

property, and the duty of obedience to imperial edicts relating .to the soil,—cdicts of which any civilized country might 'Well be ashamed, and to which no parallel can be found in the voluminous annals of the colonial possessions of an em- :pire on which the sun never sets. \Vhile immigrants to other ‘portions'of America obtained good land in fee-simple for the merest trifle, and were working their way to competence and independence, the farmers of Prince Edward Island, weighed down by rent, were doomed to clear the forest and improve the land. finding themselves in many ~ases, in their old age, n0 richer than on their arrival in the country, with no prospect before their families but hard work, and with no hope of a permanent or adequate return. Happily, the fearful difficulties encountered by the early settlers do not exist

at least. in the same degree—now; and by dint of economy, hard work, and selfldcnial, not a few have attained to comparative comfort and independence. The commissioners say: “the grievances of the island have sprung from the injndicious mode in which the lands were originally given away.” That is only half the truth. The Crown had the abstract right to grant the land in blocks of twenty thousand acres each; but the Crown had not the right, after the conditions on which the land had been allotted were published, and its good faith had been com- mitted to the fulfilment of these conditions by the owners on pain of forfeiture, to permit their violation without the infliction of the penalty. Thousands, on the faith of these conditions being honestly implemented, had staked their prospects in life. The original immigrants would not have come to Prince Edward Island as tenants while they might have obtained free land elsewhere, unless compen- satory advantages had been offered. These advantages were implied in the conditions of settlement attached to the