Speculation and land-jobbing carried to such a pitch cannot but be deemed great evils in the community; and to prevent them from extending into Canada appears to be an object well worthy the attention of government; but it seems unnecessary to have recourse for that purpose to the very exceptionable measure of withholding a good title to all lands granted by the crown, a measure disabling the landholder from taking the proper steps to improve his estate, which gives rise to distrust and suspicion, and materially impedes the growing prosperity of the country. It appears to me, that land-jobbing could never arrive at such a height in Canada as to be productive of similar evils to those already sprung up from it in the United States, or similar to those further ones with which the country is threatened, if no more land were granted by the crown, to any one individual, than a township of ten thousand acres; or should it be thought that grants of such an extent even opened too wide a field for speculation, certain restrictions might be laid upon the grantee; he might be bound to improve his township by a clause in the patent, invalidating the sale of more than a fourth or fifth of it unless to actual settlers, until a certain number of people should be resident thereon[38]. Such a clause would effectually prevent the evil; for it is the granting of very extensive tracts of waste lands to individuals, without binding them in any way to improve them, which gives rise to speculation and land-jobbing. Footnote 38: The plan of binding every person that should take up a township to improve it, by providing a certain number of settlers, has not wholly escaped the notice of government; for in the licences of occupation, by which each township is allotted, it is stipulated, that every person shall provide forty settlers for his township; but as no given time is mentioned for the procuring of these settlers, the stipulation becomes nugatory. By others it is imagined, that the withholding of clear titles to the lands is a measure adopted merely for the purpose of preventing a diminution of the inhabitants from taking place by emigration. [Sidenote: EMIGRATION.] Not only townships have been granted by certificates of occupation, but also numberless small portions of land, from one hundred acres upwards, particularly in Upper Canada, to royalists and others, who have at different periods emigrated from the United States. These people have all of them improved their several allotments. By withholding any better title, therefore, than that of a certificate, they are completely tied down to their farms, unless, indeed, they think proper to abandon them, together with the fruits of many years labour, without receiving any compensation whatsoever for so doing.