the lord of the manor, and, in process of time, as land becomes more valuable, the raising these rents, or the exercise of these rights, may occasion frequent disputes: I think therefore, with submission to our government, that as many hundreds of Americans are now settled there, and doubtless many more may occasionally migrate from the United States, either from being disgusted with the polity of the country, or from an idea of reaping greater benefits as subjects of Great Britain, it behoves us to remove every obstacle of subserviency, and either by purchase, or any other mode Administration shall think fit to adopt, render all the lands in Canada, granted to loyalist subjects, or others who have, or may voluntarily take the oaths of allegiance, as free as those in Nova Scotia.[1]
[180] Men who have been engaged in their country's cause from the best of principles, should have every possible indulgence; and in proportion as they have been deprived of comforts by the desolation of war, they should be recompensed without any partial restrictions, and the remainder of their days rendered as happy as the government they live under can make them.
The population of these new settlements, and their
parallel situation with Fort Oswegatche, Carleton Island,
Oswego, and Niagara, evince, perhaps, more forcibly
than ever, the propriety of retaining these barriers in our
possession, which, in the former part of this work, I
have fully explained; and as the third Township alone
(which is nine miles square) contained, in the year 1787,
————
- ↑ On the land system of Canada, see Canniff, History of Settlement of Upper Canada; and Kingsford, History of Canada (London and Toronto, 1894), vii, pp. 300-313. The feudal tenure was not abolished in Quebec until 1854; but the Act of 1791, separating Upper from Lower Canada, decreed a modern system for the Loyalist settlements.—Ed.
