in a single day to officers of the army and navy who had served in the
preceding war, and to other persons who were ambitious to be great
landowners, on the easy condition of paying certain quit-rents--a
condition constantly broken. This ill-advised measure led to many
troublesome complications for a hundred years, until at last they were
removed by the terms of the arrangement which brought the island into
the federal union of British North America in 1873. In 1769 the island
was separated from Nova Scotia and granted a distinct government,
although its total population at the time did not exceed one hundred and
fifty families. An assembly of eighteen representatives was called so
early as 1773, when the first governor, Captain Walter Paterson, still
administered public affairs. The assembly was not allowed to meet with
regularity during many years of the early history of the island. During
one administration it was practically without parliamentary government
for ten years. The land question always dominated public affairs in the
island for a hundred years.

From the very beginning of a regular system of government in Nova Scotia
the legislature appears to have practically controlled the
administration of local affairs except so far as it gave, from time to
time, powers to the courts of quarter sessions to regulate taxation and
carry out certain small public works and improvements. In the first
session of the legislature a joint committee of the council and assembly
chose the town officers for Halifax. We have abundant evidence that at
this time the authorities viewed with disfavour any attempt to establish
a system of town government similar to that so long in operation in New
England. The town meeting was considered the nursery of sedition in New
England, and it is no wonder that the British authorities in Halifax
frowned upon all attempts to reproduce it in their province.

Soon after his arrival in Nova Scotia, Governor Cornwallis established
courts of law to try and determine civil and criminal cases in
accordance with the laws of England. In 1774 there were in the province
courts of general session, similar to the courts of the same name in
England; courts of common pleas, formed on the practice of New England
and the mother country, and a supreme court, court of assize and general
gaol delivery, composed of a chief justice and two assistant judges. The
governor-in-council constituted a court of error in certa