“SIR,—The situation of the old settlers in the Province of Upper Canada, is truly deplorable. These people settled in the wilds of Canada, then the Province of Quebec, under the surveys made by the acting Surveyor-General. Landmarks being established for the guidance of their improvements: no deeds were given them until the Parliament of Great Britain altered the Quebec bill, arranged a new constitution, similar to that they had lost during the rebellion, in the Province of New York, from whence they chiefly came to settle at Frontenac, now Kingston. After cultivating the country agreeably to those surveys for twenty years or more, deeds are issued to cover those lots, drawn and cultivated as above mentioned. The Surveyor-General, David William Smith, Speaker of the House of Assembly, knowing that these deeds were filled up by guess, the survey never having been made complete, wisely provided an Act of the Legislature to prevent the deeds from moving the old land-marks. This Act provides that when thirty freeholders apply to the Magistrates in session they shall make an assessment and collect the money to enable the Surveyor-General to erect monuments, in order to preserve their ancient land-marks and boundaries. What is the reason that this Act has not been complied with? Are the Magistrates all landholders and their sons Lawyers? “An order from the Governor has lain in the Surveyor-General’s office ever since the year 1801 for monuments to be erected in the Township of Kingston, agreeable to the intention of that Act. Why will not the Magistrates do their duty? The consequence is, that the licensed Surveyor, John Ryder, is running new lines every day, and moving the land-marks of the old settlers. People who have come into the country from the States, marry into a family, and obtain a lot of wild land, get John Ryder to move the land-marks, and instead of a wild lot, take by force a fine house and barn and orchard, and a well cultured farm, and turn the old Tory, (as he is called) out of his house, and all his labor for thirty years. “These old settlers have suffered all that men could suffer; first in a seven years’ rebellion in the revolutionized colonies; then came to a remote wilderness, some hundred miles from any inhabitant—not a road, not a cow, or an ox, or a horse to assist them; no bread during the winter, they wintered first at Cataraqui. A little pease and pork was all they could get until the ice gave way in the spring of 1785. “The King, as an acknowledgment and mark of his approbation for the loyalty and sufferings of his faithful subjects, ordered lands to be granted them free from expense, and marked each man’s name with the letters U. E., with a grant annexed to each child as it became of age, of two hundred acres of the waste lands of the crown.