The land question was the most serious that faced the province.
The administration of those in power was condemned on three
distinct counts. The granting of land to individuals had been
lavish; it had been lax; and it had been marked by gross
favoritism. By 1824, when the population was only 150,000, some
11,000,000 acres had been granted; ninety years later, when the
population was 2,700,000, the total amount of improved land was
only 13,000,000 acres. Moreover the attempt to use vast areas of
the Crown Lands to endow solely the Anglican Church roused bitter
jealousies. Yet even these grievances paled in actual hardship
beside the results of holding the vast waste areas unimproved.
What with Crown Reserves, Clergy Reserves, grants to those who
had served the state, and holdings picked up by speculators from
soldiers or poorer Loyalists for a few pounds or a few gallons of
whisky, millions of acres were held untenanted and unimproved,
waiting for a rise in value as a consequence of the toil of
settlers on neighboring farms. Not one-tenth of the lands granted
were occupied by the persons to whom they had been assigned. The
province had given away almost all its vast heritage, and more
than nine-tenths of it was still in wilderness. These speculative
holdings made immensely more difficult every common neighborhood
task.
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