Lord Durham's Report, on the Affairs of British North America, 1912, Vol. 1 of 3 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Lord Durham's Report, on the Affairs of British North America, 1912, Vol. 1 of 3 Constitutional Act. The 36 th section of that Act, after enabling His Majesty to authorize the Governor or Lieutenant-governor of Lower or Upper Canada to make out of the lands of the Crown, within either province, such an allotment and appropriation for the support and maintenance of a Protestant Clergy as might bear a due proportion to the lands previously granted, enacts, that whenever any grant of lands within either of the said provinces shall hereafter be made by or under the authority of his Majesty, his heirs or successors, there shall at the same time be made in respect of the same, a proportionable allotment and appropriation of lands for the above-mentioned purpose, within the township or parish to which such lands, so to be granted, shall appertain or be annexed, or as nearly adjacent thereto as circumstances will admit; and that no such grant shall be valid or effectual, unless the same shall contain a specification of the lands so allotted and appropriated in respect of the lands to be thereby granted; and that such lands so allotted and appropriated shall be, as nearly as the circumstances and nature of the case will admit, of the like quality as the lands in respect of which the same are so allotted and appropriated, and shall be, as nearly as the same can be estimated at the time of making such grant, equal in value to the seventh part of the lands so granted. By instructions issued by the British Government, addressed to the Governor and Lieutenant-governor of Lower and Upper Canada, the ungranted public lands in both provinces were directed to be laid out in townships of certain fixed dimensions, generally ten miles square, containing, after making the necessary deduction for roads, about 63, 000 acres. These townships were divided into lots of 200 acres each. With a view to supposed convenience and uniformity of appropriation, it was decided by the Provincial Government, that the land to be appropriated for the clergy in respect of all grants should be set apart at the time of the survey of the townships; and, in order to be sure that the lands appropriated for this purpose should be of equal value to the land open to be granted, it was settled, that the clergy reserves should be interspersed at equal intervals all over the township. But, instead of reserving every eighth lot, which would have been equal to the seventh part of the land to be granted, every seventh lot was set apart for this purpose. The same mode of reserving the lots, and the same amount of reservation, was pursued in both provinces. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.