me Office interfered, and in the year last
named a scale of fees proportionate to the extent of the grant was
introduced; but U. E. Loyalists, officers, soldiers, Executive
Councillors and their children were exempt even from this trifling
burden. In 1818 the performance of certain settlement duties was imposed
upon all persons receiving grants, without any exemptions, and in after
years several other scales of fees were introduced from time to time.
The public lands were committed to the care of an official called the
Surveyor-General, and it was not until 1827 that a Commissioner of Crown
Lands was appointed. During the first thirty-five years of the
Province's history grants of land were entirely subject to the
discretion of the Governor-in-Council, not merely as to the quantity and
situation of the land itself, but also as to whether the applicant
should receive any grant at all.[36] Under such a system it was
inevitable that the grossest partiality should prevail, and it was but
seldom that any one succeeded in obtaining a grant until those in
authority had satisfied themselves that he was to be relied upon to
uphold any policy which they might see fit to dictate. Official
dignitaries granted lands to their servants and other dependants, and,
as soon as certain requisite forms had been complied with, these lands
were transferred to themselves or their children. In other cases persons
were actually hired by the month to draw land and perform the settlement
duties, after which the land was conveyed to their employers. Having the
run of the official books, these cormorants contrived in one way and
another to acquire for themselves and their creatures all the best lands
in the Province, either wholly for nothing or at a price which was
merely nominal. "The keys of office," says a writer already quoted from,
"were held by themselves or friends, and no admittance to their secrets
was allowed except to the initiated, whose favourable out-of-door
statements could be relied on. Never since the Norman invasion of
England was there such a wholesale partition of plunder."[37] Many
persons owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, entire
townships.[38] Others owned thousands of acres which they had never
seen. As the taxes imposed on unsettled lands were trifling, these
immense tracts were no appreciable expense to their owners, who could
hold them from year to year, until the progress of settlement rendered
them of immense v