Under the new legislation for the territories, only those half-breeds within the bounds of the new province were guaranteed secure possession of their land.  Under the principle that all territory not granted in specific form to individuals by the Ministers of the Crown, is the property of the Crown, each half-breed who occupied a lot of land under the Hudson Bay Company’s rule, was regarded as a squatter under the new regime.  To make such holding valid, therefore, the Government issued patents to bona fide squatters, who then found themselves on the same footing as the white immigrants.  But beyond Manitoba, and chiefly in Prince Albert, there were large numbers of half-breeds settled over the prairie.  So long as no immigrant came prying about for choice land the half-breeds had naught to complain about, but the rapid influx of population soon altered the whole face of the matter.  Several squatters who had toiled for many a long year upon holdings, were obliged to make way for strangers who had “friends at court”—­for even in the North West wilderness there is, in this sense, a court—­and who took a fancy to the particular piece of land upon which “these lazy half-breeds” were squatting.  Newspapers, whose business it is to keep the skirts of government clean in the matter, deny this altogether.  But, unfortunately, there is no use in denying it.  It is but too true, and it is with a feeling of very great regret that I myself, a Conservative, and a warm well-wisher of the administration, affirm it.  It is true that in many and many a case, in a greater number of instances than even opponents of the administration suppose, a half-breed who has toiled for a number of years upon a lot, effecting improvements and taking pride in his property, has been dispossessed by an incomer because he could not show a patent from the Interior Department.

But almost as fruitful a source of dissatisfaction as these heartless and dishonest displacements has been the difficulty which the unfortunate squatter has experienced in obtaining his patent.  The mills of the gods in the Interior Department grind very slowly.  The obtaining of a patent by a deserving squatter as a general rule is about as difficult, and as worthy of applause when achieved, as is the task which lies before a farmer’s boy who has decided to become a member of parliament, by first earning money enough to go to school to prepare for a third class teachership, by then teaching school till he has a sufficient competency to study medicine, and by then practising his profession till he finds himself able to capture the riding.  Of course there is some excuse, and we must not forget to produce it, for the Department of the Interior.  It would be undignified if it were to move with any degree of rapidity.  According to etiquette, and the rule is very proper, when the application of the half-breed comes to the office, it must remain for at least four weeks in the drawer set apart for “correspondence