New Brunswick was represented at the Charlottetown conference, where the prelimin aries of confederation were discussed. At the Quebec conference, the leading men of the op position as well as of the party in power were delegates. The 72 resolutions then agreed upon were to be submitted to the various legislatures for their approval. Before the New Brunswick assembly could vote on them, it was dissolved; and in the new House, a large majority were pledged to oppose them. This led Nova Scotia to withhold the resolutions, as no vital union could be effected with the upper provinces that left out New Brunswick. However, when the House opened in 1866, the majority committed themselves to the policy of union in the speech from the throne. The House dissolved on the issue, and, sentiment having changed, in the new election, the unionists were returned by a large majority. New Brunswick is one of the four original members of confederation. See article CONFEDERATION; also NEW BRUNSWICK.
Prince Edward Island.— The large cres cent-shaped island in the southern part of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence is supposed to have been discovered by Cabot, and afterward by Cartier, who named it Isle Saint Jean. After the conquest, it was still called Saint John's Island until 1780, when the local legislature named it New Ireland, an act disallowed by the British government. In 1794, it was renamed Prince Edward's Island in compliment to the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria. After the Treaty of Utrecht, Acadians from the main land settled at the southern central harbor and named it Port La Joie, the present Char lottetown. It was governed from Louisbourg. In 1752 the population was 1,354. Three years later, after the fall of Beausejour and the expulsion of the Acadians, many took refuge there. At the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, the population was at least 4,000 souls, in four thriving parishes. The fertile "Garden the Gulf," as the islanders love to call their little sea-girt province, was even then worthy of the name. Casgrain calls it a second Acadie: for hence also the Acadians were expelled. When Captain Holland made his survey in 1764, he found only 30 Acadian families "on the footing of prisoners," and a tiny British garrison in a miserable fort.
In 1763, the year of its cession to England, Lord Egmont proposed a plan of settlement worthy of Sir William Alexander in its feudal character. One feature was a chain of baronial castles from one end of the island to the other; but the plan was never carried out. In 1767, the entire island was divided into 67 lots or townships, of some 20,000 acres each, and granted, by lot, in one day to a number of influ ential Englishmen, on the old condition of set tling so many emigrants within a certain time; they were to pay a perpetual quit-rent, or land tax. Here began the curse of the absentee
landlord, which laid the island under a blight for more than a century. At first, it was an nexed to the government of Nova Scotia, but in 1768 it was, on the petition of a majority of the proprietors, erected into a separate province. In 1770, the first royal governor, Colonel Pat terson, arrived with his official staff, whose salaries were to be paid from the quit-rents. The formative ideas here were also high Tory. Roman Catholics were not permitted to settle; no schoolmaster from England might teach without a license from the Bishop of London. Population grew slowly; for few of the proprietors fulfilled the conditions on which they got the land. In 1773, the first House of Assembly was elected. Its first act was to con firm all the past proceedings of the governor and the council.
On the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, two American vessels, sent to cruise in the Gulf for British ordnance store ships, raided Char lottetown and carried away some prominent officials. For this Washington cashiered the delinquent officers and released the prisoners with expressions of regret. Another raiding expedition from Machias came to nothing, and the island remained free from molestation till the close of the war. In 1781, proceedings were begun in the Supreme Court against the town ships in arrears with quit-rents, and various holdings were escheated and sold, it was though; without due notice to the landholders. The unimproved waste land was an obstacle to colonization; the owners neither planted settlers nor paid the quit-rents, on which the revenue depended. The landlords argued for the de fense, that some of them were officers on active service, that the war had prevented settlement, and that the lands were sold to persons on the ground at absurdly low prices. In rebuttal, Patterson urged that in the midst of a dis astrous war, both money and purchasers were scarce; the island might have been captured or ceded back to France. He admitted that he bought up escheated lands, but held he was within his rights as a citizen in doing so; he had also, at his own risk, saved out of the sales, various lots for the absentee owners. In re sponse to various petitions from the proprietors, the home government granted them relief, and sent a draft bill to Governor Patterson, making the sales voidable. This he was to submit to the assembly, but he .,uppressed it for two years. A new assembly was elected in 1784. It resolved to complain to the King against the governor for disposing of the lands so hastily, when he dissolved it.