PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. 123 nists to wander free and follow their own devices. For many years the commission of any serious crime occasioned a special session of the court, as the detention of the criminal was a matter of danger and uncertainty. For the winter of 1770-1 the chief jus¬ tice obtained permission to reside in Halifax as he could obtain no suitable place of abode in Charlottetown . He was a man whose qualities were superior to his fortune. He had emigrated from England to Nova Scotia in 1749. Three years afterwards he was ap¬ pointed judge of the inferior court of com- nicm picas and later second assistant judge of the supreme court of Nova Scotia , a po¬ sition which he held at the time of his promo¬ tion to the chief justiceship of this Island. His salary on the Nova Scotia bench had been one hundred pounds per annum. This he exchanged for a promise of two hundred pounds per annum as chief justice. How wide a gulf was fixed between promise and performance is revealed by his correspondence with the Secretary of State for the Colonies. In his letter of April 23, 1871, to the Earl of Hillsborough he first complains: "The governor gave me leave to draw for my first year's salary due in May last on Mr. Smith , his agent in London, which I have accordingly done, but my bills have not been paid as Mr. Smith informs me that he had not money in his hands, occasioned by the backwardness of the proprietors in paying their quit-rents. I would humbly submit to your lordship's judgment and consideration my present salary of two hundred pounds annexed to my office and the manner of its being paid, hoping for an addition and that payment of it may be made certain and quarterly—my sole dependence for sup¬ porting myself and family is on my salary. "The failure of a regular payment must reduce us to the utmost distress in a place where ready money is expected for every ncessary of life. I have grown old in the public service, having been an assiduous and faithful servant of the crown, for upwards of twenty-two years." The reply to this appeal was that payment of his salary must de¬ pend upon the payment of the quit-rents. In the autumn of the same year from the depths of his poverty and distress he again appealed for aid to the British colonial office. "The protesting of my bills," he writes, "has brought me the greatest distress imaginahle." "I have stretched my credit to the ut¬ most in procuring salt pork and brown bis¬ cuit to support me through the winter." He again refers to his long service and thus closed his cry for relief. "I trust that I shall not be left here destitute in my old age. I am informed that there is a vacancy for a chief justice in ¬ lina, and I humbly hope that your lordship will not think me too presuming in request¬ ing that I may be appointed to that vacancy." This appeal also was unavailing. Some measure of relief probably came from the diversion made by the governor of the pub¬ lic buildings fund above referred to, and thus he struggled on, manfully trying to do his duty, burdened in the race by age and want "that ill-matched pair." But his course was soon run. "On January 29, 1774, the first chief justice of this Island died. Governor Patterson , in reporting his death to the Colonial office, requested that a successor be sent from England as there was no qualified lawyer in the Island except the attorney general and he could not be spared from his duties. In the meantime the governor issued his commission, appointing Robert Stewart , John Russel Spence , and Thomas Wright