History of Prince Edward Island

by Duncan Campbell

The report of the commissioners was dated the eighteenth of July, 1861; and, as any history of the island would be incomplete without an outline of its contents, the writer will now proceed to give such outline, which, whilst it presents leading facts and arguments adduced, will not, it is hoped, be open to the charge of undue prolixity.

As we have, in the course of the narrative, given an incidental sketch of the history of the land question, we shall pass over that portion of the commissioners’ report which is occupied with facts that have already been partially submitted, and to which we must again refer at a more advanced stage of the narrative, and give the substance of the remedies which the commissioners proposed for existing evils. The commissioners expressed the hope that they might be regarded as having entered upon the discharge of their duties, not only with a high appreciation of the honor conferred by their appointment, but also with a due sense of the grave responsibilities which they assumed. When they commenced their labors there was a general impression that the act of the provincial legislature, which made their award binding on all parties concerned, would receive the royal assent; and, although the decision of the colonial secretary—not to submit that act for Her Majesty’s approval—somewhat relieved them from the weight of responsibility necessarily involved in the preparation and delivery of a judgment beyond appeal, they still felt that, as their award was to affect the titles of a million of acres, and the rights and interests of eighty thousand people, a hasty decision would not be a wise one, and that the materials for a judgment ought to be exhausted before the report was made.

By traversing the island and mixing freely with its people, the commissioners had become familiar with its great interests and general aspects. By holding an open court in all the shire towns, they had given to every man on the island, however poor, an opportunity to explain his grievances, if he had any. By bringing the proprietors and tenants face to face before an independent tribunal, mutual misunderstandings and exaggerated statements had been tested and explained, and the real condition of society and the evils of the leasehold system had been carefully contemplated from points of view not often reached by those whose interests were involved in the controversy. The evidence collected, though not under oath,—the commissioners not being vested with power to administer oaths,—was most valuable in aiding them to form a correct estimate of the evils of which the people complained.

The documentary history of the question extended over nearly a century of time, and was to be found in the journals of the Legislature, in the newspaper files of the colony, and in pamphlets more or less numerous. The amount of time and money wasted in public controversy no man could estimate; and the extent to which a vicious system of colonization had entered into the daily life of the people, and embittered their industrial and social relations, it was painful to record.

The commissioners felt that as the case of Prince Edward Island was exceptional, so must be the treatment. The application of the local government for a commission, and the large powers given to it by the Queen’s authority, presupposed the necessity of a departure from the ordinary legal modes of settling disputes between landlords and tenants, which the experience of half a century had proved to be inadequate.

Finding that it was impossible to shut out of their inquiry, while on the island, the questions of escheat, quitrents, and fishery reserves,—the claims of the descendants of the original French inhabitants, Indians, and loyalists,—they thought it quite within the range of their obligations to express their opinions freely upon these branches of the general subject.

The question of escheat, though apparently withdrawn from the scope of their inquiry by despatches from the colonial office,—received long after the opening of the commission,—could not be put aside. The discussion of the question was forced upon them from the day the court opened until it closed. The commissioners, therefore, thought it comported with their duty to express the conclusions at which they had arrived.

In considering the best mode of quieting the disputes between the proprietors and their tenants, and of converting the leasehold into freehold tenures, the commissioners remarked that the granting of a whole colony in a single day, in huge blocks of twenty thousand acres each, was an improvident and unwise exercise of the prerogative of the Crown. There was no co-operation on the part of the proprietors in peopling the island. Each acted on his own responsibility, and while a few showed energy in the work, the great body of the grantees did nothing. The emigrants sent out by the few were disheartened by the surrounding wilderness owned by the many, who made no effort to reclaim it, or were tempted to roam about or disregard the terms of settlement by the quantity of wild land, with no visible owner to guard it from intrusion. By mutual co-operation and a common policy, the proprietors might have redeemed the grants of the imperial government from the charge of improvidence. The want of these indispensible elements of success laid the foundation of all the grievances which subsequently afflicted the colony.

The commissioners regarded the land purchase act as embodying the most simple and efficacious remedy for existing evils. Under that act the Worrell and Selkirk estates had been purchased,—covering about one hundred and forty thousand acres, by which signal advantages were secured, the proprietors being dispossessed by their own consent, the tenants being enabled to purchase their holdings and improvements, not necessarily at a price so high as to represent the rents stipulated to be paid, but at the lowest price which the expenses of management, added to the aggregate cost of the estate, would warrant; and the wild lands were at once rescued from the leasehold system, and were subjected to the wholesome control of the local government, to be hereafter disposed of in fee simple, at moderate prices, as they are in all the other North American provinces. The commissioners unanimously recommended the application to the whole island of the principles embodied in the land purchase act, under modifications which appeared to be essential to their more extended adoption.

With respect to escheat, the commissioners reported that there was no light in which the present escheat of the titles, on the ground of the conditions of the original grants having been broken, could be viewed, which would not exhibit consequences most disastrous to the island. They therefore reported that there should be no escheat of the original grants for non-performance of conditions as to settlement.