The number of colonists
required was made proportionate to the extent of territory to be
settled. This offer was taken advantage of by ten different individuals.
The grants were not actually made, but the respective townships were
allocated in the official books to the various persons concerned. Upon
the faith of the pledge of the Executive, several of the ten assignees
proceeded to carry out the conditions imposed. Among them was Mr.
William Berczy, who, having obtained an assignment of the township of
Markham, went to great expense in bringing over a number of German
families, whom he settled according to the conditions of the
contemplated grant. After he had spent a sum of money variously stated
at from twenty to thirty thousand pounds sterling, the Executive coolly
announced that they had determined to abandon the township system, and
that they did not even intend to carry out the grants to those who had
complied with the conditions. The compensation offered for this
unparalleled breach of faith was a grant of twelve hundred acres to each
assignee. Nine of the individuals concerned assented to those terms, but
Mr. Berczy refused to accept any such inadequate recompense, and he
remained for the rest of his life a ruined man. He shook the dust of
Upper Canada from his feet, and took up his abode in Montreal, whence he
subsequently repaired to New York, where he died in the year 1813.

[39] See Appendix B. to Lord Durham's _Report_, folio edition, p. 99.
Mr. Charles Rankin, Deputy-Surveyor in the Western District, in his
evidence before the Commission (_ib._ pp. 120, 121), says:--"The system
of making large grants to individuals who had no intention of settling
them has tended to retard the prosperity of the colony by separating the
actual settlers, and rendering it so much more difficult, and in some
cases impossible, for them to make the necessary roads. It has also made
the markets more distant and more precarious. To such an extent have
these difficulties been experienced as to occasion the abandonment of
settlements which had been formed. I may mention, as an instance of
this, the township of Rama, where after a trial of three years, the
settlers were compelled to abandon their improvements. It should be
noticed that the settlers in this instance were not of a class fitted to
encounter the privations of the wilderness, being half-pay officers. In
the township of St. Vincent almost all the most valuable settlers hav