OUR ISLAND STORY 25

settlement and development of the Island was submitted to the British Government by the Earl of Egmont. That gentleman, in the exuberance of his benevolence, proposed that the whole Island, and other Islands adjacent, should be granted “in behalf of himself and his nine children and of a great number of land and sea officers in proportions and divisions that have been al- ready declared and agreed." These conditions were in brief that there should be one Earl over the whole country—~the Earl of Egmont, forty Lords of forty hundreds, four hundred Lords of Manors, eight hundred freeholders, upon 800,000 acres, and tenure at large for 24,800 acres held in common socage, the rent accruing to be applied as a fund to encourage and support the Earl, the Lords and their retainers. In the same proposal there was included a request that certain lands in Dominique,- a British West India Island of the Leeward group, should be an- nexed 'to the tenures of Isle St. Jean.

-Thus the over-Lords would be enabled to purchase three thousand negroes, clear and plant at least ten thousand acres with sugar, indigo, coffee, etc., in seven years, which ten thousand acres would ever after add a produce to the trade of England of at least £200,000 per annum. The Earl of Egmont, first Lord of the Admiralty was to be Lord Paramount. The Government of the Mother Country submitted this unique and remarkable ' scheme to the judgment of the Lords of Trade; and they, of course, rejected it.

While Captain Holland was conducting his survey there appeared other claimants to consideration in the division of the land. There were so many of these, and their claims were so persistently pressed, that the Board of Trade and Plantations in London decided that the whole Island, with certain specified reservations, should be allotted by ballot. All the petitioners were ordered to appear before the Board of Trade on the 17th and 24th of June and the 1st of July, 1767, respectively, to Show cause why their claims should be granted. After hearing each, the Board selected for the balloting, those whose claims seemed

to be the strongest. On the 25rd July, 1767, the ballots were drawn. Orders were at once sent to the Governorof Nova Scotia, who