James Douglas Haszard was born in Charlottetown in the year 1797. He was one of the descendants of a spirited loyalist, who proved his attachment to the monarchical form of government by refusing to take his property, which had been confiscated, on the condition that he should become an American. In the year 1823 Mr. Haszard began business by publishing the Register, and successively the Royal Gazette, and Haszard’s Gazette, until the year 1858. Previous to the publication of the Register, a total issue of fifty papers sufficed for the colony. Mr. Haszard was ever ready to do good work in connection with industrial and benevolent societies. He was the first to start a cloth-dressing mill in the colony; and, as secretary and treasurer of the Royal Agricultural Society, he introduced improvements in farming implements and machinery. During the famine of 1837 he relieved many destitute families. He died in August, 1875, highly esteemed and deeply regretted.
CHAPTER XII.
Commercial Statistics—Imports—Exports—Revenue—Government Policy—Fisheries—Education—Manufactures—Charlottetown—Census of 1798.
We shall now present a few facts respecting the commerce and other prominent interests of the island. Through the courtesy of the efficient collector of customs,—Mr. Donald Currie,—a gentleman whose polite attention and hospitality to strangers visiting the island deserve a permanent record,—we have been favored with important returns. As an illustration of the wonderful progress made in the development of the agricultural resources of the island, we may state that while the quantity of oats exported in 1862 was only 943,109 bushels, it amounted, in 1872, to 1,558,322 bushels!
The following is the value in dollars of the imports and exports of the island from 1870 to 1874, inclusive. The returns represent a rate of progress to which, perhaps, no parallel can be produced in the British Empire: [J]
| YEAR. | IMPORTS. | EXPORTS. |
| 1870 | $1,928,662 | $2,154,003 |
| 1871 | 2,336,800 | 1,625,635 |
| 1872 | 2,569,878 | 1,894,173 |
| 1873-4 | 1,908,522 | 1,908,461 |
| 1874-5 | 1,960,997 | 1,940,901 |
The island revenue was formerly derived from ad valorem and specific import duties, land assessments, sales of public and Crown lands. Since confederation it comes from compensatory subsidies, and the two last named sources. The revenue of 1860, in sterling currency, was £28,742, and the expenditure £41,196; in 1865 the revenue was £45,360, and the expenditure £48,350; in 1870 the revenue was £62,230, and the expenditure £70,662,—thus the revenue has been increasing from 1860 to 1870 at the average rate of £3,400. The receipts for the year 1874 were $403,013, and the expenditure for the same year was $435,207. The reason why in this latter year the expenditure exceeds the revenue is to be found in the fact of the large amount paid as compensation for land appropriated for railway purposes. It is right, also, the statement should go forth that the expenditure, which was so much in excess of the revenue in previous years, has been owing to the judicious purchase, by successive governments of the island, of freehold estates. Indeed, from 1854 to 1870 the government bought 445,131 acres of land, at a cost, in sterling money, of £98,435, of which 345,475 acres have been resold up to the year 1870. The money thus expended in the purchase of land is now in process of indirectly yielding a profitable return to the island; so that for contracting temporary debt, successive governments deserve credit instead of condemnation. They have made bold and successful efforts to shield the people from the misery and ruin entailed by the reckless disposal of the land by the Crown, and from the gross injustice of successive home governments in not making full and honorable compensation for the evil consequences of their action.
Mr. John Ings has placed at the temporary disposal of the writer a most interesting little manuscript book containing extracts from the survey of Captain Holland, in 1765, and exhibiting penmanship and neatness of arrangement of the first order. At this period the number of acres cleared in the three counties was 11,235; houses, 391; churches, 2; mills, 11.
The number of acres of arable land held by all families in 1861 was 368,127. The number held in 1871 was 445,103,—the increase in ten years being 76,976 acres!
Prince Edward Island is the best fishing-station within the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. But this important department of industry has not been cultivated to anything like the extent it ought,—being mainly carried on with United States capital. The following table from the census of 1870 shows that there had been, from 1860 until 1870, little, if any, progress:—