When the townships were granted in 1767 certain conditions were agreed to by the new landowners or proprietors, which included paying quit- rents and sending out settlers. Most of them failed to keep their promis¬ es. It was not easy to persuade people to leave their homes and go to an island where they would have to pay rent for farms. In 1851 a political party called the Reformers, won Responsible Government for the Island. George Coles became the first Premier . Charles Young , Joseph Pope , James Warburton and Edward Whelan were appointed members of the Cabinet. Sir Alexander Bannerman was Lieutenant Governor at the time. The Land Purchase Act, which was passed in 1853, allowed the govern¬ ment to buy land from the proprietors and to sell it to those tenants who had taken up farms. A Land Commission was appointed by Queen Victoria in i 860 to inves¬ tigate the land troubles on the Island. Mr. John Hamilton Gray repre¬ sented the Crown, Mr. John W. Ritchie represented the proprietors and Hon. Joseph Howe of Nova Scotia was the representative of the tenants. The report of the Land Commission in 1861 recommended that the British Government should guarantee a loan of £100,000, so that the Island government could borrow this amount of money cheaply, and could gradually buy estates from the proprietors and sell farms to the ten¬ ants. The Assembly passed an Act to carry out the recommendations of the Commission, but the proprietors objected and the British Government supported them. The land question was finally settled in 1875 when the Compulsory Land Bill forced proprietors to sell their land to the Provincial Government which in turn resold it to the tenants. Roots & Branches