people met in masses and prayed for relief. Verily, there was no lack of importunity; but the official ear—always open to the complaints and representations of many landholders and their satellites, who were ever sensitive to the imaginary rights, but totally oblivious of the real duties of property—was conveniently deaf to the groans of an oppressed people. Year after year passed without any effectual remedy being applied, and the original proprietors either died or transferred their property to others; and for a long period, before the appointment of the commission, the answer to all applications to the colonial office for escheat was the melancholy chant of _too late_! _too late_! Father Time and his progeny proscription now presented barriers which were deemed insuperable. Every successive minister for the colonies became expert at counting on his fingers the number of years that had elapsed since the British government broke faith with the people of Prince Edward Island, and re-echoed the chant, “Too late! too late!” It must be conceded that, after the lapse of so long a period, it was impossible, without positive injury to proprietors who were in no way responsible for existing evils, to escheat the land, and the views taken by the commissioners on this point must commend themselves to every unprejudiced mind; but, admitting all this, the question occurs, was it too late _to fix blame in the proper quarter_, and to repair the damage sustained by the island? Certainly not. We think it must be regarded as a radical defect in the report of the commissioners that no pointed answer was given to that question. It was unfortunately too late to make compensation to those who first came to the country on the faith of imperial pledges which were not redeemed, and who, after a life of toil, had passed the bourne whence no traveller returns, leaving an inheritance of difficulty and trouble to their sons and daughters; but it was not too late to make honorable compensation to the latter, and, at the same time, justice to the present owners of the soil, by buying the land with money out of the public treasury of the mother country, and giving it to those whose just claims had been so long criminally disregarded. Whilst in the plainest terms the commissioners admitted that the island grievances sprung from the injudicious mode in which the lands were originally given away, they did not press for due compensation being made by the country whose rulers had produced these grievances, but recommended that the imperial government should guarantee a loan for the purchase of the land of one hundred thousand pounds, on the production, by the island authorities, of most satisfactory security for the payment of principal and interest. In plain English, the aggrieved parties were made practically responsible for oppression in the production of which they had no hand, and for which, therefore, they could in no legitimate sense be held responsible.