The large amount of wild land held by individuals and corporations, renders the disposal of the public domain a question of less urgency in this than in some other colonies.  Opinion in the Province runs strongly in favour of facilitating its acquisition in small lots by actual settlers, and of putting all possible obstacles in the way of its falling into the hands of speculators.  This opinion is founded no doubt in part on a jealousy of great landholders; but it is mainly, I apprehend, attributable to a sense of the inconvenience and damage which are experienced in young countries, when considerable tracts of land are kept out of the market in the midst of districts that are in course of settlement.  To this feeling much of the hostility to the ‘Clergy Reserves’ was originally due.  The upset price of Government wild land in Canada varies from 7_s_. 6_d_. currency to 1_s_. currency an acre, according to quality, and by the rules of the Crown Land Department now in force, it is conceded at these rates, except in special cases, in lots of not more than 200 acres, on condition of actual settlement, of erecting a dwelling-house, and clearing one-fourth of the lot before the patent can be obtained.  The price is payable in some parts of the country in ten yearly instalments; in others in five; with interest in both cases from the date of sale.

I have little faith in the efficacy of such devices to compel actual settlement.  They hinder the free circulation of capital, are easily evaded, and seem to be especially out of place where wild lands are subject to taxation for municipal purposes, as is the case in Upper Canada.[5]

[Sidenote:  Seigniorial tenure.]

A good deal of land in Lower Canada is held in seigniory, under a species of feudal tenure, with respect to the conditions of which a controversy has arisen which threatens, unless some equitable mode of adjusting it be speedily devised, to be productive of very serious consequences.  A certain class of jurists contend, that by the custom of the country, established before its conquest by Great Britain, the seigniors were bound to concede their lands in lots of about 100 acres to the first applicant, in consideration of the payment of certain dues, and of a rent which, never, as they allege, exceeded one penny an acre; and they quote edicts of the French monarchs to show that the governor and intendant, when the seignior was contumacious, could seize the land, and make the concession in spite of him, taking the rent for the Crown.  The seigniors, on the other hand, plead the decisions of the courts since the conquest in vindication of their claim to receive such rents as they can bargain for.  Independently of this controversy, the incidents of the tenure are in other respects calculated to exercise an unfavourable influence on the progress of the Province; and its abolition, if it could be effected without injustice, would,