Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/480

464 of the colony, determined to accept a moderate commutation. Leniency or favor was invariably shown proprietors who had complied in any degree with the conditions of their tenure. Yet this liberal measure was unavailing—the commuted arrears were not paid. Up to 1833 but £6,000 had been received for quit-rents, whereas the total due under the grants was £145,000. Meanwhile agitation on the subject among the islanders constantly increased, until the British Government was again urged to quiet its perturbed little colony.

Lord Goderich, Colonial Minister in 1832, made a thorough examination of the complaints of the islanders, embodying the result in a lengthy dispatch. He found large tracts unimproved, in expectation that their value would ultimately be raised by the exertions of those colonists who were busy cultivating their property. Vast areas of wild land separated farms from one another, the injustice being heightened by absenteeism of the landlords. Lord Goderich proposed that the quitrents due by the proprietors be exacted, and, as a concession, should be redeemable at fifteen years' purchase. His proposal was not acted upon, and the agitation on the island rose to an extreme. All this, too, with peculiar political conditions. The local Government, in the immediate presence of its governed population, was extremely sensitive to popular discontent. Agriculture was the main and almost the sole industry; the tenants were not mingled with any manufacturing or mercantile class, and the preponderant pressure of their interests was very manifest in a legislative hall which stood within an easy drive of the average island farm. The arm of law was enfeebled. Rents were usually allowed to fall into long arrears before resort was taken to legal measures of collection. It was common for a tenant to owe five to ten years' rent. Arrears, accumulated through sixteen and even eighteen years, were sometimes brought before the courts. Usually, in suits for rent, the landlord paid the costs himself, and did not exact interest. Frequently proprietary rights were disposed of to speculators for nominal sums. Every indulgence by landlord to tenant was interpreted by the latter as a just concession from the possessor of a faulty title. The cost of collecting such rents as were paid was commonly about one fourth.

For twenty-one years after Lord Goderich's vain recommendations, the agrarian history of Prince Edward Island was one of ceaseless turmoil. In 1853 an act was passed by the Provincial Legislature for the purchase of the estates of proprietors who might be disposed to sell. Between 1854 and 1871 thirteen estates, aggregating 457,260 acres, were bought at the moderate average price of $1.31 per acre. Of this area, 403,050 acres have been sold to 5,704 tenants, who have paid, for their average holdings of 70 acres, prices ranging from 94 cents to $3.40, and averaging $1.76. This act of 1853, which depended on the voluntary sale by proprietors of their lands, was too slow in operation for the discontented islanders. They obtained the