In December, 1822, the acting receiver general posted up another notice, intimating that payments must be made by the fourteenth of January; but no steps were taken to give due publicity to the notice throughout the island, neither was any warning given to the proprietors as to the consequences of nonpayment. In January a distress was taken on the lands of two of the principal proprietors on townships thirty-six and thirty-seven. Immediately after doing this, the officers proceeded to the eastern district of King’s County, which was one of the most populous on the island, and astonished the people by demanding instant payment, or promissory notes payable in ten days, on pain of having their land and stock disposed of by public sale. This district was inhabited by highlanders, who spoke no other language than their native Gaelic. Men who would have faced an open foe in the field, with the courage characteristic of the Celtic race, had a profound respect for law, and dread and horror of the bailiff; and, in order to pay the demand so suddenly and unexpectedly made, many of the poor fellows loaded their carts with such produce as they could collect, and began a journey of from fifty to sixty miles to Charlottetown, in the depth of winter, in order to redeem the notes which they had given to the heartless myrmidons of the law. The sudden influx of grain into the market thus produced, caused a great decline in prices. This, with the suffering occasioned by the long journey, roused public indignation, and the people resolved to hold meetings in the respective counties, and take measures for their own protection against the tyranny to which they were subjected. At this time, John McGregor, subsequently Secretary to the Board of Trade in London, and M.P. for Glasgow, was high sheriff of the island, and a requisition was immediately drawn up and presented to him. It began in the following terms: “We, His Majesty’s loyal subjects, freeholders and householders in different parts of this island, in the present alarming and distressing state thereof,—threatened at this time with proceedings on the part of the acting receiver general of quitrents, the immediate effect whereof cannot fail to involve a great part of the community in absolute ruin,—feel ourselves irresistably impelled—when the island has been nearly three years deprived of that constitutional protection and support which might be expected from our colonial legislature—to call upon you, as high sheriff of the island, to appoint general meetings of the inhabitants to be held in the three counties into which this island is divided, that they may have an opportunity, according to the accustomed practice of the parent country, of consulting together for the general benefit, and joining in laying such a state of the colony at the foot of the Throne, for the information of our most gracious Sovereign, as the present circumstances thereof require.” The requisition was signed by forty individuals, and