Thursday 16th August, 1759, William Cotteral, Robert Grant and Montague Wilmot, Esquires, Councillors, being absent from the Province, the Governor appointed Richard Bulkeley, Thomas Saul and Joseph Gerrish, who were this day sworn in and took their seats. February, 1760, two Indian Chiefs attended the Council, and were presented with laced blankets, laced hats, etc. They were informed that the same would be sent to the Chief of the St. John's Indians, and that the treaty of peace would be ready to be signed to-morrow, and if the wind was favourable they should embark on Sunday. In Council 11th March, 1760, the Governor appointed the Hon. Jonathan Belcher, Benjamin Green, John Collier, Charles Morris, Richard Bulkeley, Thomas Saul and Joseph Gerrish, Esquires, and William Nesbitt, John Duport, Joseph Scott, John Creighton, Sebastian Zouberbuhler, Edward Crawley, Charles Proctor and Benjamin Gerrish, Esquires, to be justices of the peace for the town and county of Halifax. Charles Morris, John Duport, Joseph Scott, Joseph Gerrish and Edward Crawley, Esquires, to be justices of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas for the county of Halifax, to the several of whom His Excellency then administered the oath requisite. CHAPTER IV. Notwithstanding the advantages held out by Government to the settlers at Halifax, and the repeated large grants of money by Parliament, the people were rapidly removing to the old Colonies. Little progress had been made in clearing the country. The fishery, one of the main inducements of the settlement, was almost altogether neglected, and the population was reduced to much less than half its original number. They subsisted chiefly on the money expended by the Army and Navy, and were dependent on Boston for their provisions and many other necessary supplies. In 1755, Dr. Breynton, the minister at St. Paul's, estimated the inhabitants of Halifax at 1,300, eight hundred of whom professed themselves members of the Church of England; and again in 1763, eight years later, according to the Doctor's returns to the Propagation Society, the number was still found not to exceed one thousand and three hundred souls; nine hundred and fifty of them being of the Church of England, and three hundred and fifty Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics. Up to the year 1757, the enormous sum of £560,000 sterling had been expended on the settlements, and though in some respects the Colony had been considered a failure, yet in a military point of view it was of incalculable importance to Great Britain, and to its position as a naval and military depot may be ascribed in a great measure the downfall of the French power in America.