CAPTAIN MACDONALD , THE PROPRIETOR. 29 -which passed between the governor and this gentleman. ■These throw considerable light on the island history of this period. The sales of land recently made excited intense indignation against the governor on the part of those whose property had been confiscated, who were backed in their applications for redress by the general body of proprietors. The act sent to the governor, and which he failed to present to the house of assembly, was the result of these applications.. In the preamble of that portion of the act which provided for relief to the complainants, it was stated that the governor and council, on the first day of December, 1780, unanimously resolved, in order to give .absent proprietors whose lands were liable to be sold an opportunity of relieving their property, that no sales should take place until the first Monday of November following, and that in the meantime the colonial agent in London should be instructed to inform the proprietors of the pro¬ posed sale ; and " whereas," runs the act, " notwithstanding such determination and resolution, no such notice was given by the colonial agent to the proprietors, it seems reasonable that they should obtain effectual relief in the premises." It is only fair that the governor should be allowed to reply in liis own words, as contained in a letter now before us, which he addressed to his friend Stuart on the twelfth of May, 1783. In order that a portion of that letter may be under¬ stood, it is necessary to say that Captain McDonald , one of -the proprietors resilient in London, had written a pamphlet person whose name appears on the Island Statute of 30 George III , cap. 5, of <he year 1790, as Ihe owner of ten thousand acres of land; and who, I have always understood, was a personal fiiend of Governor Patterson , and if i .ot an original grantee, must have acquired his land by the instrumentality of his friend the governor, under the sale of the lands for the non-payment ■of quiticnts, so frequently alluded to in the correspondence." The writer 3ias carefully gone over the list of original grantees, in which there is one juamed John Stewart , but not one who spelt his name Stuart.