Land Question (Prince Edward Island)

The Land Question was a major issue in the history of Prince Edward Island, now part of Canada. It was about who should own the land on the island. The land was divided into lots by the British government in 1767 and given to private landowners called proprietors. These proprietors wanted to rent the land to settlers, known as tenants, but the tenants wanted to own the land themselves through freehold ownership.

The plan didn’t work well. There weren’t enough tenants, so the proprietors didn’t make much money from rent. Because of this, many of them couldn’t pay the government their required land tax, called a quitrent. In 1781, the island's government tried to take back the land from proprietors who weren’t paying, but the Colonial Office in Britain stepped in and stopped it in 1783. The governor who led this plan, Walter Patterson, was removed from office in 1786.

In 1797, a political movement called the Escheat Movement began. Its goal was to convince the British Crown to take back land from the proprietors and sell it to the tenants. In 1803, supporters of this idea were elected to the General Assembly of Prince Edward Island, but the British government blocked their plans. Over the next few decades, the Assembly kept trying to buy land from the proprietors for the tenants, but these efforts kept failing.

From 1864 to 1865, tenants tried a civil disobedience campaign, but it didn’t succeed. Eventually, many proprietors gave up and sold their land piece by piece to the local government, which then sold it to the people living on it. Finally, in 1873, Prince Edward Island joined the Canadian Confederation—but only if the landlord system was ended. This agreement solved the Land Question once and for all.