22 PAST AND PRESENT OF

made, under the seal of the province, to the Earl and his family and to each of the other memorialists, under the like regulations and conditions of cultivation and settlement, as are prescribed in His Majesty’s instructions in respect of grants of land in other parts of said province. And it was also recommended that, with the exception of the Earl and his nine children, no one person should get more, under such grants, than twenty thousand acres.

They go on to say that the Island of St. John is particularly valuable for its soil as well as situation, and that they had the de- sign to raise a higher revenue of quit rents from this Island than from other parts of Nova Scotia, and that certain merchants had agreed to accept grants at three shillings a hundred acres, being an addition of one shil- ling. They further state to His Majesty that they have been informed that there are cleared lands consisting of many thousand acres in the most fertile parts. They recom- mended that out of any grants there should be reserved all mines of gold, silver, copper, lead and coal, and a sufficient breadth on the sea-coast from high water markvfor the ac- commodation of all His Majesty’s subjects carrying on the fisheries. for which the coasts of the Island are so advantageously situated, together with proper accommoda- tion for the fishing of sea-cows, which, they understand, abounded on some parts of the coast.

In the following May, Admiral Knowles and his associates memorialized His Majes- ty, praying that, inasmuch as Lord Egmont’s proposal had not been approved, the whole Island of St. John should be granted, in lots of twenty thousand acres each, to them, and they would engage to complete the settle- ment of the Island within ten years.

7Up to this time no plan of settlement had been adopted. But now, 1764, a general sur- vey of British North America was ordered, and the northern part of it, which included Upper and lower Canada, the present mari- time provinces, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, were allotted to Captain Hol- land, Surveyor General of Canada, who was ordered to commence with the survey of this, Island, which he began the same summer and completed in 1766. The plan, already outlined, of granting the Island to persons applying, was then carried out, but owing to the number of such applicants. it was decided that the townships should be drawn in a lot- tery, which was done before the Board of Trade, in London, and in this way all the townships, except Nos. 40 and 59, were al- lotted to the different persons, and thus was foisted upon this Island that proprietory system which was the cause of continual tur— moil and agitation until it was finally abol- ished in 1877.

A term of the grants was, that quit rents of six shillings per hundred acres should be paid on some townships, four shillings on others and two shillings on the remainder, payment on half to begin in five years from the date of the grant, and on the whole at the expiration of ten years. The proprietors were also to settle their townships within ten years. in the proportion of one person for every two hundred acres, and, if one-third were not so settled within four years, then the whole was to be forfeited to His Majes- ty. In I767, a mandamus for each township or section of a township was issued to the grantee by whom it was drawn.

There were other conditions, but the two relating to quit rents and settlement were the most important, and were the ones which were the cause of trouble for the next cen-