s Majesty, under any Act
passed prior to the eighteenth year of his late Majesty, George III.
This exception is important for the purpose of illustrating the
pernicious system under which duties had been collected. Even so late as
the year 1833, Messrs. Simonds and Chandler, the New Brunswick delegates
to the imperial government, were complaining that duties were collected
at the several custom-houses in New Brunswick upon wine, molasses,
coffee and pimento under the provisions of the Acts of parliament, 6th
George II, Chapter 13; 4th George III, Chapter 15, and 6th George III,
Chapter 52, amounting to upwards of one thousand pounds sterling
annually, which duties were not accounted for to the legislature, and
that it was not known to the House of Assembly by whom and to what
purpose these duties were applied. The reply to this on the part of the
imperial government was, that in pursuance of the directions contained
in the statutes themselves, the duties levied under them were remitted
to the exchequer in England in aid of the expenses incurred for the
defence of the British colonies in North America. Thus ten years after
the British government had undertaken to remit the duties collected in
the colonies to the exchequers of the colonies in which the money was
collected, there still remained a considerable revenue, obtained under
old and obscure Acts of parliament, which was held back, and the
destination of which was not known, until disclosed to the delegates
sent to England to obtain the redress of New Brunswick's grievances.

But the grievance which caused the greatest amount of dissatisfaction in
New Brunswick was that which arose from the management of the Crown
lands. It was bad enough that the revenues arising from the public
domain should be disposed of without the consent of the legislature; but
it was still worse when such regulations were made by the
surveyor-general as hindered the settlement of the country and
interfered with one of its leading industries. One great abuse was that
large areas of the best land in the province were locked up as reserves
for the production of masts for His Majesty's navy. Another grievance
was the imposition of a duty of a shilling a ton on all pine timber cut
in the province. This was done by the authority of the surveyor-general,
and its effect was seriously to injure many of those who were engaged in
lumbering. This tax was remitted for a time after the panic of the year
1