The commissioners regarded the land purchase act as embodying the most simple and efficacious remedy for existing evils. Under that act the Worrell and Selkirk estates had been purchased,—covering about one hundred and forty thousand acres, by which signal advantages were secured, the proprietors being dispossessed by their own consent, the tenants being enabled to purchase their holdings and improvements, not necessarily at a price so high as to represent the rents stipulated to be paid, but at the lowest price which the expenses of management, added to the aggregate cost of the estate, would warrant; and the wild lands were at once rescued from the leasehold system, and were subjected to the wholesome control of the local government, to be hereafter disposed of in fee simple, at moderate prices, as they are in all the other North American provinces. The commissioners unanimously recommended the application to the whole island of the principles embodied in the land purchase act, under modifications which appeared to be essential to their more extended adoption. With respect to escheat, the commissioners reported that there was no light in which the present escheat of the titles, on the ground of the conditions of the original grants having been broken, could be viewed, which would not exhibit consequences most disastrous to the island. They therefore reported that there should be no escheat of the original grants for non-performance of conditions as to settlement. The commissioners recommended that the imperial parliament should guarantee a loan of one hundred thousand pounds, so that the money could be borrowed at a low rate of interest. With the command of such a fund, the government would be in a condition to enter the market, and to purchase, from time to time, such estates as could be obtained at reasonable prices. They did not doubt that many of the proprietors would be glad to sell, and the competition for the funds at the disposal of the government would so adjust the prices that judicious purchases could be made without any arbitrary proceedings or compulsory interference with private rights. The commissioners felt that it might be beyond their duty to make such a suggestion, but they hoped Her Majesty’s government would regard the case of Prince Edward Island as exceptional, its grievances having sprung from the injudicious mode in which its lands were originally given away.