REMARKS ON THE AWARD OF 18G0- 141 entrusted to them, and without feeling that they were in¬ spired with the desire to do justice to all the interests involved. They condemned—and most justly—the imperial government, which had originally granted the land in such enormous quantity to eacli grantee, on the ground of public services, the merits of which it was most difficult for the commissioners to estimate. To say the truth, in the case of many of the grantees, it would require a microscope of no- ordinary power to detect their existence. The conditions attached to the grants were deliberately disregarded by the bulk of the proprietors, who, up to the time the commission was appointed, continued to wield an amount of influence in the councils of successive Sovereigns, which successfully frustrated every effort made by the people to obtain justice. The emigrants who left their native laud were under the impression that they were to be conducted to a country where they might speedily attain, by moderate industry, to independence ; where advantages were to be obtained which could not be got in other portions of the vast continent of America. In four years from the date of the original grants a third of the land was to be actually settled ; within ten years there was to be a settler to every hundred acres of land ; as evidence that there was to be no lack of protestant clergy¬ men, one hundred acres were allotted for a church and glebe ; and as a guaranty that the schoolmaster would be found at home, thirty acres were allotted to him in this prospectively populous and happy island. The honor of the British gov¬ ernment was committed as a guaranty for the realization of these brilliant promises. But during the first ten years the terms, as to population, were complied with in ten townships only, _nine being partially settled, and forty-eight utterly neglected. The proprietors, knowing that they could get the British government to do what they pleased, petitioned,