land to the landlord, the only exception being trees cut down ”as the land is cleared for agricultural purposes", but even that timber was to be used ”only for building purposes on said premises”.884 Some tenants even claimed that firewood was reserved to the landlord in some leases.885 The Iandlords’ defence of such clauses before the Commission, was that it was there to prevent unscrupulous persons from leasing land solely for the purpose of ’cutting off’ the timber (in effect for lumbering, rather than for farming).886 The agents and landlords, in fact, tried to claim before the Commission that the clause was not enforced though evidence was presented by their opponents to refute this 887. It is also evident that some landlords were employing ’wood-rangers', whose job it was to look after the landlord's timber, and it is likely that these functionaries could be more officious in enforcing such clauses.888

86‘ Land Commission 1860: evidence given by James

Warburton, quoting from the lease of Robert Vincent of Lot 10, a tenant on the estate of Robert Bruce Stewart. Warburton also stated that a similar clause could be cited in a lease of the Cunard estate.

885 Land Commission 1860: evidence of John Clarke, Lot 5. However, G. W. DeBlois, the agent for the Cunard and Sulivan estates, claimed that this was not so, and that tenants who did not have firewood on their own land were even allowed to take it from unoccupied lands, as well as to cut "fence-poles and scantling for their own use". However, he was then immediately confronted with an example of a tenant who was not allowed to do so!

886 Land Commission 1860: see the statements of Charles Palmer (counsel for the proprietors), and of the agent G. W. DeBlois, for the defence of the clause. A similar defence was given by John A. MacDonald, proprietor of the Tracadie estate: “it was to prevent wood being cut off land on which no improvements were made". In fact, in the absence of such a clause, if a lumberer did indeed harvest the timber, the landlord's only recourse would have been to terminate the lease and repossess the land — which would not have been a great disincentive for the lumberer, since by then the timber would already have been harvested.

“7 Land Commission 1860: evidence of a Mr. Ramsay

concerning Lot 7, who stated that tenants “cannot cut a stick off their farms without first obtaining a permit and paying for it". He then cited the case of an unnamed tenant of R. B. Stewart who had cut saw-logs on his farm that were then seized by the agent. l note however that in the debates in the House of Assembly in 1853 concerning the imposition of an export-duty on ‘juniper‘ [i.e. tamarack] ship knees, quite a number of Assembly members take it for granted that tenant farmers on the island were able to sell knees cut on their leased farmland (House of Assembly (1853): in the extract, see the speeches of Messrs. Mooney, Whelan, Lord, and Macaulay; similar evidence (not extracted) occurs in the speeches of Messrs. MacNeill, Palmer, Fraser, Coles and the Speaker).

”5 Land Commission 1860: The agent G. w. DeBlois said that the Cunard estate "kept a wood-ranger". The Stewart estate also seems to have had wood-rangers since one is mentioned for Lot 10 (Land Commission 1860, p. 62 - not extracted).

136

Directly related to the tenants’ grievances over such 'reservations’ of timber, were grievances over what one witness called the 'permit system’s”. This was where, in return for a fee”), a landlord or his agent issued what was called a ’timber permit' to a ’lumberer’, allowing him or his men, to go onto the ‘vacant land’ in a township in order to harvest the trees.891 The problem was that such lumberers might also sometimes presumably by accident — take timber from land that had been leased to tenant farmers (and I expect also on occasion from land that been sold outright), and given the clause reserving the timber to the landlord that occurred in many leases, this would have been perfectly legal, despite the claims by landlords or their agents that the practice did not happen”. Also giving the lumbermen a ready line of defence for such action was the fact that the property lines of the wooded back ends of most farms, both leasehold and freehold, were generally unfenced and had often never been surveyed.893

“9 Land Commission 1860: Mr. Matthews of Lots 4 and Lot 5.

39° There is no mention in the records of the Land Commission (1860) of how the fee was fixed, i.e. whether it was a fixed amount for a specified area, or was related to the amount of timber harvested. However, I note that Joseph Wightman said that the agents for Lot 61 had wronged the proprietor by “allowing the timber to be cut away for the sake of the stumpage", which implies a fee related to the amount of wood taken. Thirty-four years before, the anonymous letter-writer to the Prince Edward Island Register (Anon. 1826) had also used the term ‘stumpage', giving a value for it of 3s. 6d. per ton, while the agent John Prendergast (1834) in relation to Lot 10 refers to a ‘stumpage‘ rate of 5 shillings per ton.

89‘ The agent G. W. DeBlois (Land Commission 1860) said that sometimes the boundaries were specified in a permit and that occasionally it was for a whole township. James Yeo was said to have had ‘a general permit' (comment of Commissioner Howe), as well as a permit for Lot 3 (statement of Mr. Hockin). In the Miminegash Account Book of c. 1852-1856 [PARO, Acc. 2593/12], a number of such ‘permits’ are listed under the names of specific individuals (pp. T, 18, 21, 48, 60), who, for a stated amount of money, are given permission to cut a fixed amount of timber (the amounts vary from 6 to 20 tons, and ‘pine‘ and ‘juniper’ are sometimes specified). From the payments recorded, I calculate the ‘stumpage rates‘ (though that term is not used in the account book) to be 3s. 2d. per ton for pine, and 2s. 8d. for tamarack.

892 Land Commission 1860: George w. DeBlois, the agent for the Cunard and Sulivan estates, claimed that such permits applied only to ‘vacant land‘ (i.e. unleased land); however he then had to admit that this was not so for the leases of Edward Cunard. See also the evidence of Mr. Matthews of Lots 4 and 5 who lost timber off his land "through a permit given by Mr. Yeo".

893 All that the landlord provided were the ‘offsets‘ (i.e. the boundary points along the front of the farm, usually along a road), leaving the tenant to "carry out his own lines" at his own expense. Needless to say most tenants, and probably many freehold farmers, did not go to this extra expense. (See Land Commission (1860) (p. 82 — not extracted): evidence of George W. DeBlois.)