History of Prince Edward Island

by Duncan Campbell

The Indian claims were limited to Lennox Island, and to grass lands around it; and as it appeared by evidence that the Indians had been in uninterrupted occupancy of the property for more than half a century, and had built a chapel and several houses on the island, the commissioners were of opinion that their title should be confirmed, and that this very small portion of the wide territory their forefathers formerly owned should be left in the undisturbed possession of this last remnant of the race.

The commissioners closed their report by expressing their conviction that, should the general principles propounded be accepted in the spirit by which they were animated, and followed by practical legislation, the colony would start forward with renewed energy, dating a new era from the year 1861. In such an event, the British government would have nobly atoned for any errors in its past policy, the legislature would no longer be distracted with efforts to close the courts upon proprietors, or to tamper with the currency of the island; the cry of tenant-rights would cease to disguise the want of practical statesmanship, or to over-awe the local administration; men who had hated and disturbed each other would be reconciled, and pursue their common interests in mutual co-operation; roads would be levelled, breakwaters built, the river-beds dredged, new fertilizers applied to a soil annually drained of its vitality; emigration would cease, and population attracted to the wild lands would enter upon their cultivation, unembarrassed by the causes which perplexed the early settlers. Weighed down by the burden of the investigation, the commissioners had sometimes felt doubtful of any beneficial results; but they now, at the close of their labors, indulged the hope that, if their suggestions were adopted, enfranchised and disenthralled from the poisoned garments that enfolded her, Prince Edward Island would yet become the Barbadoes of the Saint Lawrence.

Our limits will not admit of a more extended account of the commissioners’ report, which constitutes a most important portion of the annals of the island. We hope we have succeeded in giving the kernel of it. It is impossible for any candid person to rise from the perusal of the document, as well as of the voluminous body of facts and evidence on which it is based, without the conviction that the work was committed to men whose experience and acquirements eminently fitted them for the onerous duty entrusted to them, and without feeling that they were inspired with the desire to do justice to all the interests involved. They condemned—and most justly—the imperial government, which had originally granted the land in such enormous quantity to each grantee, on the ground of public services, the merits of which it was most difficult for the commissioners to estimate. To say the truth, in the case of many of the grantees, it would require a microscope of no ordinary power to detect their existence. The conditions attached to the grants were deliberately disregarded by the bulk of the proprietors, who, up to the time the commission was appointed, continued to wield an amount of influence in the councils of successive Sovereigns, which successfully frustrated every effort made by the people to obtain justice. The emigrants who left their native land were under the impression that they were to be conducted to a country where they might speedily attain, by moderate industry, to independence; where advantages were to be obtained which could not be got in other portions of the vast continent of America. In four years from the date of the original grants a third of the land was to be actually settled; within ten years there was to be a settler to every hundred acres of land; as evidence that there was to be no lack of protestant clergymen, one hundred acres were allotted for a church and glebe; and as a guaranty that the schoolmaster would be found at home, thirty acres were allotted to him in this prospectively populous and happy island. The honor of the British government was committed as a guaranty for the realization of these brilliant promises. But during the first ten years the terms, as to population, were complied with in ten townships only, nine being partially settled, and forty-eight utterly neglected. The proprietors, knowing that they could get the British government to do what they pleased, petitioned, in the year after the grants were made, for a separate government, and the expense was to be met by the quitrents, which, however, they took good care not to pay; and as a reward for the concession of a separate government, Britain had to pay for the maintenance of the civil establishment of the island. Thirty years after the grants were made, the assembly passed resolutions which set forth clearly the extent to which the obligations under which the proprietors had come were disregarded, and petitioned that they might be compelled to fulfil the conditions on which they had obtained the land, or that it should be escheated and granted in small tracts to actual settlers. In shameful violation of the principles of national honor and justice, the representations of the people, through their representatives, were disregarded, in consequence of the influence brought to bear, by the grantees, on a weak and incompetent government; and thus there was on the part of Britain a flagrant breach of faith with the immigrants who had been tempted to leave their native country, trusting to guarantees the violation of which was never suspected. The people of the island continued for ninety years to protest against the injury under which they suffered, till at last a commission was appointed. Credit must be given to the commissioners for the thoroughness of their investigation, for the reliability of their facts, and for the impartiality and general soundness of their awards. Yet the report seems to lack necessary pungency and power in dealing with the iniquity of successive governments in failing to make compensation to the island immigrants and their successors for injuries persistently inflicted, and borne with a degree of patience that excites our wonder. Instead, however, of such injuries generating sympathy or admiration, leading to a rectification of admitted evils, the only result was a flow of official twaddle about the sacred rights of property, and the duty of obedience to imperial edicts relating to the soil,—edicts of which any civilized country might well be ashamed, and to which no parallel can be found in the voluminous annals of the colonial possessions of an empire on which the sun never sets. While immigrants to other portions of America obtained good land in fee-simple for the merest trifle, and were working their way to competence and independence, the farmers of Prince Edward Island, weighed down by rent, were doomed to clear the forest and improve the land, finding themselves in many cases, in their old age, no richer than on their arrival in the country, with no prospect before their families but hard work, and with no hope of a permanent or adequate return. Happily, the fearful difficulties encountered by the early settlers do not exist—at least in the same degree—now; and by dint of economy, hard work, and self-denial, not a few have attained to comparative comfort and independence. The commissioners say: “the grievances of the island have sprung from the injudicious mode in which the lands were originally given away.” That is only half the truth. The Crown had the abstract right to grant the land in blocks of twenty thousand acres each; but the Crown had not the right, after the conditions on which the land had been allotted were published, and its good faith had been committed to the fulfilment of these conditions by the owners on pain of forfeiture, to permit their violation without the infliction of the penalty. Thousands, on the faith of these conditions being honestly implemented, had staked their prospects in life. The original immigrants would not have come to Prince Edward Island as tenants while they might have obtained free land elsewhere, unless compensatory advantages had been offered. These advantages were implied in the conditions of settlement attached to the grants. When, therefore, the British government permitted the violation of the contract, they broke faith with the immigrants, and became morally and constitutionally responsible for the consequences of such violation. The remedy was in the hands of the Crown. The original proprietors having failed to keep their engagements, the clear and honest duty of the Crown was to declare the land of such proprietors escheated, and, as compensation to the emigrants, to make moderate free grants to them of a portion of it. Instead of adopting this manly and honest course, the Crown ignored the injury inflicted on the tenants, and allowed the proprietors to retain their land in a wilderness state, thus causing long-continued misery and bitterness in the island, and almost permanently obscuring the lustre of one of the brightest gems in the British colonial diadem. The charge of indifference to the just complaints of the people cannot be brought against the successive local legislatures and governments of the island. Law after law was enacted, and petition after petition was laid at the foot of the throne. The people met in masses and prayed for relief. Verily, there was no lack of importunity; but the official ear—always open to the complaints and representations of many landholders and their satellites, who were ever sensitive to the imaginary rights, but totally oblivious of the real duties of property—was conveniently deaf to the groans of an oppressed people. Year after year passed without any effectual remedy being applied, and the original proprietors either died or transferred their property to others; and for a long period, before the appointment of the commission, the answer to all applications to the colonial office for escheat was the melancholy chant of too late! too late! Father Time and his progeny proscription now presented barriers which were deemed insuperable. Every successive minister for the colonies became expert at counting on his fingers the number of years that had elapsed since the British government broke faith with the people of Prince Edward Island, and re-echoed the chant, “Too late! too late!” It must be conceded that, after the lapse of so long a period, it was impossible, without positive injury to proprietors who were in no way responsible for existing evils, to escheat the land, and the views taken by the commissioners on this point must commend themselves to every unprejudiced mind; but, admitting all this, the question occurs, was it too late to fix blame in the proper quarter, and to repair the damage sustained by the island? Certainly not. We think it must be regarded as a radical defect in the report of the commissioners that no pointed answer was given to that question. It was unfortunately too late to make compensation to those who first came to the country on the faith of imperial pledges which were not redeemed, and who, after a life of toil, had passed the bourne whence no traveller returns, leaving an inheritance of difficulty and trouble to their sons and daughters; but it was not too late to make honorable compensation to the latter, and, at the same time, justice to the present owners of the soil, by buying the land with money out of the public treasury of the mother country, and giving it to those whose just claims had been so long criminally disregarded. Whilst in the plainest terms the commissioners admitted that the island grievances sprung from the injudicious mode in which the lands were originally given away, they did not press for due compensation being made by the country whose rulers had produced these grievances, but recommended that the imperial government should guarantee a loan for the purchase of the land of one hundred thousand pounds, on the production, by the island authorities, of most satisfactory security for the payment of principal and interest. In plain English, the aggrieved parties were made practically responsible for oppression in the production of which they had no hand, and for which, therefore, they could in no legitimate sense be held responsible. On the assumption that the British government were not accountable, the award of the commissioners was admirable; but, assuming their responsibility, the cost of rectification was recommended to be borne by the wrong parties.

Let it not be for a moment supposed that it is intended by these remarks to foster discontent in the island, to weaken the bonds which unite it to the old country, or to generate a spirit of disloyalty to the Crown or dissatisfaction towards good landlords. Were the writer inspired by so criminal a desire, his efforts would fail in the production of any such consequences. The people have learned to put no confidence either in governments or princes; but, under Almighty favor, by economy, temperance, and hard work, to trust to their own efforts in sweeping from the island the remnants of a pernicious system, and of attaining that measure of independence and prosperity to which such formidable obstacles have been presented, but the ultimate realization of which the capabilities of the island warrant. Since the island became British property, not a petition or complaint has been laid at the foot of the throne which has not breathed the most devoted loyalty; and the people, under trials which might have tested the patience of Job, have borne them with a degree of meekness and patience to which few parallels can be produced; and at this moment the beloved Queen of Great Britain has not more sturdy, faithful, and resolute defenders of her throne and person than the inhabitants of Prince Edward Island. Loyalty must be indigenous to a soil where, under such adverse conditions, it has taken such deep root and flourishes.

In the very year when the commissioners were prosecuting their inquiries, Prince Edward Island responded to the call for a defensive force by organizing twenty companies of volunteers, mustering upwards of a thousand men, showing a degree of loyalty, zeal, and energy in that direction inferior to no other portion of the Queen’s dominions.

A general census of the island was taken in 1861. The population was then—as certified in the most accurate returns—eighty thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, including three hundred and fifteen Indians. The churches numbered one hundred and fifty-six; schoolhouses, three hundred and two; and public teachers, two hundred and eighty. There were eighty-nine fishing establishments on the island, which produced twenty-two thousand barrels of herrings and gasperaux, seven thousand barrels of mackerel, thirty-nine thousand quintals of codfish, and seventeen thousand gallons of fish-oils. There were one hundred and forty-one grist-mills, one hundred and seventy-six saw-mills, and forty-six carding-mills; fifty-five tanneries, manufacturing one hundred and forty-three thousands pounds of leather.

The executive government having, in 1861, appointed commissioners to superintend the collection of products and manufactures of the island for the London exhibition of 1862, the duty was judiciously performed, and the articles forwarded to the exhibition under the charge of Mr. Henry Haszard, the secretary to the commissioners.

A profound sensation was caused in the island by intelligence of the seizure of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, civil servants of the Southern States, when under the protection of the English flag, on their passage from Havana to England on board the steamship Trent. A remonstrance was forwarded by the British government to that of the Northern States; and the act of the commander of the San Jacinto—the American vessel by which the outrage was committed—having been disapproved of by the American government, the Southern commissioners were set at liberty, and the dispute happily terminated.

On the eighth of January, 1862, intelligence of the death of His Royal Highness Prince Albert reached the island. He died at Windsor Castle on the fourteenth of December, 1861, in the forty-second year of his age. Official intimation of his death was communicated to the lieutenant-governor by the Duke of Newcastle, and His Excellency ordered that forty-two minute-guns should be fired from Saint George’s Battery at twelve o’clock, noon; and Her Majesty’s faithful subjects were enjoined to put themselves into mourning. The life of the departed Prince was one of singular purity and usefulness, and his memory will forever stand honorably associated with that of Queen Victoria, than whom a more virtuous and beloved Sovereign never swayed a British sceptre. An address of condolence to Her Majesty was adopted by the legislature.

In answer to a despatch from the governor to the colonial secretary, requesting that he should be favored with a copy of the land commissioners’ report, His Excellency received a despatch from the Duke of Newcastle, dated the seventh of February, 1862, accompanied by a copy of the report, which was anxiously desired by the people. His Grace said that he was desirous of expressing his appreciation of the painstaking, able, and impartial report which the commissioners had furnished,—a report which would derive additional weight from its unanimity, and which was the result of an investigation so complete that it had exhausted the material for inquiry into the facts of the case. The difficulties that remained were those which were inherent in the subject, and which had, for a long course of years, baffled every attempt at solution. His Grace, at the same time, held out no hope—for reasons which he did not state—that the loan of one hundred thousand pounds, in order to buy the estates of Prince Edward Island from their present owners, would be guaranteed. Mr. Labouchere, the colonial minister, suggested such a loan in 1855, and it was warmly advocated by Lord Stanley in 1858, when he held that office; and the people of the island had fair ground for additional complaint against the home government, when that government did not condescend even to state manfully the reasons for such a point-blank refusal, more especially as the commissioners had advocated most earnestly the imperial guaranty of such a loan,—such recommendation being one of the cardinal points in their award. The duke further intimated in the despatch that there appeared to be insuperable objections to that multiplicity of separate land arbitrations which would be the effect of the alternative measure alluded to in the commissioners’ report. Shorn of the vital portions of the award, which were thus politely ignored, the report was divested, to a large extent, of its immediate practical value; and the official compliment paid to the commissioners was but very poor compensation for the rejection of incomparably the most important portions of an award which had been arrived at after a painstaking and complete investigation, in the conduct of which was enlisted an amount of patience, impartiality, discrimination, and ability which it would be difficult to match. The secret of the mild manner in which imperial delinquencies, in the treatment of Prince Edward Island, were touched upon in this production may probably be found in a due appreciation by the commissioners of governmental sensitiveness on the point, producing the conviction that to ask for more than would probably be granted would injure—rather than promote—just claims to compensation.