History of Prince Edward Island

by Duncan Campbell

On the death of Governor Young, the Honorable George Wright was sworn in as administrator of the government until the appointment of a new governor. In February, 1836, Colonel Sir John Harvey was appointed governor, and arrived in the island in August, when the usual addresses of welcome were presented. There had been a popular agitation for some time for the establishment of a court of escheat, and despatches were received from the colonial secretary intimating that the prayer of certain petitions, presented to His Majesty on the subject, could not be granted. As we intend to devote, at a more advanced stage of the narrative, a chapter to the elucidation of the land question, we refrain at present from any lengthened remarks on the subject.

In January of this year the Central Academy was opened. Its first teachers were the Rev. Charles Loyd and Mr. Alexander Brown, formerly teacher of the grammar school. Mr. Loyd, having retired on account of ill health, was succeeded by the Rev. James Waddell, son of the Rev. John Waddell, of Truro, N. S.

The governor made a tour through the island for the purpose of becoming acquainted with its principal inhabitants, and observing its capabilities and resources. He was received everywhere with that degree of respect to which his position entitled him; and, in replying to the numerous addresses presented, expressed himself as highly gratified by the hospitality of the people, and the indications of progress manifested.

On the seventh of September, 1837, a frost of unprecedented severity for the season set in, by which the potato crop was greatly injured, and cereals were much damaged. Thus the prospect of a plentiful harvest was blighted in a night throughout the entire island. The loss thus sustained was referred to by the governor on opening the assembly in the spring following; and he called attention to the expediency of granting pecuniary aid for the purpose of supplying seed-grain and potatoes to such of the sufferers as required them.

In March, 1837, Colonel Sir J. Harvey, after being promoted to the rank of major general, was appointed Governor of New Brunswick, for which province he left towards the close of May. After the departure of the governor, the Honorable George Wright, as senior member of the council, took the oath of office, as administrator of the government until the arrival of Sir Charles Augustus FitzRoy, who was appointed to succeed Sir John Harvey. The new governor arrived in June.

On the twentieth of June, William the Fourth died. Intelligence of His Majesty’s death reached the island towards the close of July. On the twenty-first of July, Queen Victoria was proclaimed in London.

The first official visitor of schools was appointed this year, in the person of Mr. John McNeill, who, in his report for the year, gave the number of schools in the three counties as fifty-one, and the number of scholars as fifteen hundred and thirty-three. In his report, Mr. McNeill gives us an interesting peep at the educational condition of the country at this period, specifying the various causes to which the extreme deficiency of the educational machinery was attributable. In many of the settlements the inhabitants were poor, and having to struggle with numerous difficulties in procuring subsistence for their children, their education was regarded as a matter of secondary importance. Little encouragement was, in most cases, held out to teachers of character and qualification, and the precarious mode in which their salaries were paid operated powerfully as a bar in the way of educational advancement. Hence it not unfrequently happened, when the necessary literary attainments were wanting, that it was only persons of shipwrecked character, and blasted prospects in life, who had assumed the important office of schoolmaster. “I must also mention,” reported Mr. McNeill, “another practice which is too prevalent in the country, and which, I conceive, is exceedingly injurious to the respectability of the teacher in the eyes of his pupils, and, consequently, hurtful to his usefulness,—that is: receiving his board by going about from house to house; in which case he is regarded, both by parents and children, as little better than a common menial.” Mr. McNeill’s suggestions, by way of reformation, were judicious and well put. He held the situation of visitor for ten years, and seems to have been well qualified for the post. When he vacated the situation, in 1847, there were one hundred and twenty schools, of all grades, and over five thousand scholars.

The new governor visited all the principal districts of the island, and, as the result of his inquiries and observations, addressed a circular to the proprietors of land, in which he advocated the granting of important concessions to the tenantry, with a view of allaying the agitation for escheat, and removing any just grounds of complaint. The governor stated to the proprietors that it was impossible for any one, unacquainted with the local circumstances of a new colony, to form a correct estimate of the difficulties and privations which the past settlers on wilderness lands had to encounter. He said it was a long series of years before he could obtain from the soil more than a bare subsistence for himself and his family, notwithstanding the most unwearied perseverance and industry. It ought not, therefore, to be matter for surprise that, although he might be ready and willing to pay a fair equivalent, either in rent or otherwise, for the land occupied, he should feel dismayed at the prospect of being deprived of the hard-earned fruits of the labor of the earliest and best years of his manhood, whether from an accumulation of heavy arrears of rent, which he was unable to realize from the land, or from the refusal of the proprietor to grant him a tenure of sufficient endurance to ensure to his family the profits of his industry; and this, probably, in the decline of life, with a constitution broken, and health impaired by incessant toil. In these circumstances it could not be matter for surprise that he should be discontented with his lot, or that he should instil hostile feelings into the minds of his family, and be ready to lend a willing ear to proposals, however fallacious, which held out a hope of relief.

After alluding to the fact, that the high sheriff of King’s County had been recently resisted by a considerable body of armed men, while engaged in enforcing an execution on a judgment obtained in the supreme court for rent, and had his horses barbarously mutilated, he recommended, as a remedy for the evil, that land-agents should have a discretionary power to relieve tenants of arrears of rents, in cases where it was impossible they could ever pay them; and that long leases should be granted at the rate customary in the colony, the rent to be payable in the productions of the soil at the market prices. He also recommended that, in cases where long leases were objected to, the tenants should be allowed to purchase the fee simple at twenty years’ purchase, or that payment for their improvements, at a fair valuation, should be ensured on the expiration of their terms.

The governor forwarded a copy of the circular containing these reasonable suggestions to the secretary of state for the colonies. This mode of dealing with the tenantry, it may be here remarked, had already, in numerous instances, been acted upon with the best results, so that the efficiency of the change recommended in securing harmony between landlord and tenant had been most satisfactorily tested.