164: HISTORY OF PRINCE ED‘VARD ISLAND.

any good reason for superciliously brushing aside the whole report, and divesting it of all binding authority? \Ve must 'leave the reader to answer the question according to his judgment. Practi‘ally, the colonial secretary said to the commissioners, on the conclusion of their labors: You have conducted the investigation with ability and impartiality; you have presented a report, which has exhausted all the facts necessary to a just decision; but you, at the same time, have completely mistaken the nature of your duties, and your award, if such it can be designated, is without any binding value, and must, therefore, be treated as simply your opinion, and nothing more.

On the also being submitted to Sir Hugh Cairns, for his opinion as to its legal aspects, he stated that the commis- sioners were invested with authority to, inquire into all dif- ferences existing between landlords and their tenants, and to propose, as a remedy for the settlement of such differ- ences, any measure which they might think desirable,——- that in consequence of the unconstitutional course adopted by the colonial office in reference to the commission, there was no legal validity in any of the proceedings which had taken place. But he expressed, at the same time, the opinion that the proprietors who proposed the commission were not morally justified in rel‘nuliating the finding of the commission merely because there were certain other propri- etors who did not become parties to the proceeding. Sir Hugh Cairns might have added, that the home government were, in honor, bound to sustain the award of the commis- sioners, and to give validity to the acts of the assembly.

Impressed with the conviction that the home government, notwithstamling its treatment of the commissioners’ award, would be disposed to give effect to principles of settlement akin to those reconnnernled by the commissioners, the

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