OUR ISLAND STORY 27

the Quit Rent Fund. But the quit-rents were not paid!i Neither were the townships settled in terms of the grants to the propri- etorsr About one hundred and fifty families only were resident on the Island when the Government was instituted. The Acadian French people who escaped the deportation were scattered along the shore of Richmond Bay, on Lot 17. In 1770 or 1772, the proprietor of Lot 18, brought a number of families from Argyle- shire in Scotland. In 1775 several shipments of immigrants settled in New London and Rustico. Covehead and Three Rivers were about the same time occupied by tenants of Sir James Mont- gomery; and about three hundred Highlanders were landed at Tracadie under the auspices of Captain McDonald. Later a number of refugee Loyalists—men and women, who refused to live in the Republic formed after the Revolutionary Warwcame from New England, Via Nova Scotia, and added somewhat to the number, as well as' to the quality, of the early settlers. But the progress of settlement was, upon the whole, very slow. The proprietors of the lands failed to settle the country as they were bound to do. The larger number made no effort to fulfil the terms on which they obtained their estates. According to a census taken-in. 1805 the population of the Island at that time, numbered only 6,957 of whom 3682 were men and boys and 5275 women and girls. _

The failure of the proprietors to pay the quit-rents agreed upon caused Governor Patterson and his subordinates much distress. VA sum of £5000 sent to him by the Imperial Govern- ment to pay for the erection of a courthouse, jail, church "and other public buildings was, on the principle that “necessity knows no law,” used to pay the salaries—of the officials for whom the promised fund had not been provided. Thenceforward, for many years, the government of the Mother Country was com- pelled to maintain the Civil Establishment of the Colony.

. For the same cause there was for nearly a hundred years a continual agitation of the Land-Question. The proprietors were influential in London. Though they neither paid the quit-rents they promised to pay, nor settled the land according to the terms of. the grants, they were yet permitted to cling to the possession