[Footnote 84: The Grand Parade as it is called, like other spaces
reserved in 1749 for public purpose, such as the old burial ground,
public landing, the common, etc., had been used for the purpose to which
it was originally appropriated but the title had been supposed not to
have passed out of the Crown. Towards the close of the last century it
was thought advisable to vest all the public property in Trustees under
several grants from the Crown for that purpose; accordingly a grant was
made of the parade ground to certain public officials and their
successors in office, to be held by them for the public purposes for
which it had been originally reserved. This grant with all the others
had been constructed under the supervision of old Attorney General
Uniacke and of Chief Justice Blowers, but it having been afterwards
discovered that none of the public officials to whom it was granted
possessed the corporate powers and therefore had no succession in law,
and the original incumbents at the time of the grant being all dead, it
was concluded that the title had lapsed to the Crown. Lord Dalhousie,
Mr. Wallace and a few others in their exuberant zeal for the erection of
a college on the Scotch model, undertook to have another grant from the
Crown passed of the whole or part of the parade ground to the Governors
of the College, reserving, it is understood, certain privileges over a
portion of the ground to the public.
The Governors of Dalhousie College claimed under this grant. The City
contends that the old grant was not forfeited and that this space among
other public property appertaining to the town was under the Act of
Incorporation turned over to the city. That in order to create a legal
forfeiture there must be process of Escheat gone through, and further,
that though the public functionaries to whom it was granted were not
possessed of corporate rights or had any succession of their offices in
law, yet the fact of their having been by Royal patent constituted
trustees of the property, by inference of law the Crown intended to make
them a corporation for that particular purpose, and that their
successors in the various offices they held, or the successor of any one
of them, would possess the power of supporting the grant. Otherwise the
object of the Crown in making the grant would be defeated, and as Crown
grants are always constituted in law most favorably for the Crown, it
might be inferred that the Crown intended to support its grant by
constituting those public officers and their successors in office a
corporation with succession for that special purpose. Later the dispute
was settled by private arrangement.]
The Province Building being now finished, the Courts of Justice and the
Public Offices were removed from Cochran's building, and the
Legislature, which met on the 11th February, took possession of the
chambers appropriated to the Council and Assembly with all due ceremony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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