REVIEW OP LAND COMMISSIONERS' RErORT. 159 impartiality, but at tlic same time objected to some of the .cardinal points of their award. Whilst the proprietors objected to the award, and regarded it as not binding upon them, the house of assembly honorably .adopted it in all its provisions. Then followed the opinion of the law officers of the Crown, which was emphatically favorable to the views of the colonial secretary and the proprietors. It is, we think, impossible to review these proceedings carefully and impartially without coming to the conclusion that the colonial secretary, the proprietors, and the Crown lawyers were wrong, and the government and the legislature of Prince Edward Island right, in the view which they took of the powers and functions with which the commissioners were invested. There is a very strong presumption, it may be remarked, that the commissioners—three gentlemen of acknowledged ability and experience—could not have mis¬ taken, so completely as the rejection of their award assumed, the nature of their duties ; and during the course of the in¬ vestigation there is not the shadow of a doubt that the almost universal opinion in the island was, that the coming award of the commissioners was to be held as a final settle¬ ment of the questions at issue, so far as the parties who deliberately appointed them were concerned. That such was the opinion of the proprietors, is proved by the most important and significant fact that, in the communication they addressed to the Duke of Newcastle on the thirteenth of February, 1860, they took exception to the appointment of a commissioner or commissioners in the manner proposed by the legislature, on the specific ground that the resulting decision " would not be binding on any of the parties inter¬ ested " ; and, in order to make the anticipated award positively binding, they proposed an alteration in the con-