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proposing for your adoption a comprehensive and complete plan for the removal of the doubts which have been entertained as to the validity of numerous Crown grants, and for the general settlement of the land question, the lingering uncertainty regarding which has for so many years preyed upon serious a detriment to the interests of this Province, although inevitably neither the extent of the evil, nor the iniquities of adjusting it have been either generally known or appreciated.

Since the establishment of the Northern settlements various laws and regulations for the disposal of land have been in force, and these have been frequently altered. During this period no less a number than 1670 grants have been made. Partly from the difficulty of ascertaining what the binding rule was, and partly, apparently, from an opinion that an adherence to the rules prescribed on the subject was not essential to the validity of a grant, a large number of the grants issued have not been made in conformity with the laws and regulations. The greater number of these grants have been issued in pursuance of the provisions of the Land Claims Ordinance, yet but very few of them have been made in strict conformity with the general requirements of that ordinance, the great majority being irregular in a variety of ways, some of which will be illustrated from the returns which will be laid upon the table.

In some cases these grants convey portions of land described by exactly the same boundaries, to two or more claimants; the great majority of them contain no particular description of the specific parcel of land intended to be granted; some of them have been issued to a Commissoner who had reported that the grantee was entitled to receive the grant of land conveyed to him, when, in fact—in some of these instances—the Commissioner had recommended that no grant should be made, and in others the claim had not been heard by a Commissioner; some of these grants purport to convey quantities of land very largely in excess of that which it is stated in the recital that the grantee is entitled to receive. Many of them contain such vague descriptions of the land granted that it is difficult to tell what land is intended to be conveyed; and in the case of grants of adjoining land to several individuals, or of reservations made of certain portions of a whole tract laid out to be granted, the description given is so vague that it will be almost impossible to determine the respective rights of the various persons interested.

Moreover the Commissioner who had heard the claims to land, previously to the issue of the Crown grants alluded to, wrote to the Government stating that he had frequently regulated the extent of land he had recommended to be granted to the claimants by the quantity of land which, after making a fair allowance for the claims of opposing native rights, it appeared probable to him that the native sellers had been clearly free to dispose of—and he at the same time stated that he believed that the native title to some of the tracts of land about to be granted had never been fully extinguished—that the Commissioner could in very few instances obtain an accurate description of the boundaries claimed; and that, if the Crown grants should be issued in the manner which had been adopted, either mischief would arise to the settlers if the natives were strong, or if they were weak and isolated, then the natives would suffer injustice.

Hitherto, in the great majority of cases, the lands so granted have been either left unoccupied, or only small portions of them have been occupied; and no persons have been injured, accurately the extent or position of the lands which have been granted by the Crown, but instances have already occurred in which, when these lands have been attempted to be taken possession of, the representations made by the Commissioner who had issued the claims to which I have alluded have been fully borne out by the circumstances of the case.

Under circumstances such as I have above detailed, doubts were naturally entertained as to the expediency of allowing grants to be issued many of which were deemed to be certainly invalid, and this opinion was circulated by the home authorities.

However strong was the opinion entertained as to the illegality of many of these grants, it would, nevertheless, have been difficult, in the absence of any judicial decision, to have removed these doubts by declaring them, by means of a local ordinance, to be invalid and illegal. More than once within the last two years the expediency of issuing fresh grants to persons with a competent knowledge of the matter, specially commissioned to press upon the Home Government the necessity of dealing conclusively with the subject by Act of Parliament has been considered by the local Government. But in the absence of any judicial opinion, and especially after the instructions to try the question at law in the colony, it would probably have been said that the proper course was to refer, in the first instance, to the courts of the country as a necessary preliminary for the guidance of Parliament. It thus appearing that, without trying the validity of these grants, no hope existed of a general settlement of the question, recourse was