Criticisms of the Land Grant System, Lord Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America

Durham, John George Lambton, Earl of

[Lord Durhom admitted the faults of the land grant system.]

. . . More or less in all the colonies, and in some of them to an extent which would not be credited, if the fact were not established by unquestionable testimony, the surveys have been inaccurate, and the boundaries, or even the situation of estates, are proportionably uncertain. Everywhere needless delays have harassed and exasperated applicants; and everywhere, more or less, I am sorry, but compelled to add, gross favouritism has occurred in the disposal of public lands. I have mentioned but a part of the evils, grievances, and abuses, of which Your Majesty’s subjects in the colonies justly complain, as having arisen from maladministration in this department. Those evils remain wholly unremedied, most of those grievances are unredressed, and not a few of those abuses are unreformed at this hour. Their present existence has been forced on my conviction by indisputable evidence. . . .

. . . Under the term "Protestant Clergy" the clergy of the Church of England have always claimed the sole enjoyment of these funds. The members of the Church of Scotland have claimed to be put entirely on a level with the Church of England, and have demanded that these funds should be equally divided between both. The various denominations of Protestant Dissenters have asserted that the term includes them, and that out of these funds an equal provision should be made for all Christians who do not belong to the Church of Rome. But a great body of all Protestant denominations, and the numerous Catholics who inhabit the province, have maintained that any such favour towards any one, or even all of the Protestant sects, would be most unadvisable, and have either demanded equal application of those funds to the purposes of all religious creeds whatsoever, or have urged the propriety of leaving each body of religionists to maintain its own establishment, to repeal or disregard the law, and to apply the clergy funds to the general purposes of government, or to the support of a general system of education. . . .

The great objection to reserves for the clergy is, that those for whom the land is set apart never have attempted, and never could successfully attempt, to cultivate or settle the property, and that, by that special appropriation, so much land is withheld from settlers, and kept in a state of waste, to the serious injury of all settlers in the neighbourhood. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that this is the only practice by which such injury has been, and is still inflicted on actual settlers. In the two Canadas especially, the practice of rewarding, or attempting to reward public services by grants of public land, has produced, and it still producing, a degree of injury to actual settlers which it is difficult to conceive without having witnessed it. The very principle of such grants is bad, inasmuch as, under any circumstances, they must lead to an amount of appropriation beyond the wants of the community, and greatly beyond the proprietor’s means of cultivation and settlement. . . .