CANADIAN LAND SYSTEM.

Kumara Times, Issue 1142, 27 May 1880, Page 3

CANADIAN LAND SYSTEM.

■The following interesting sketch of the Canadian land system occurs in a letter to the New Zealand Times, by a Mr George Sain :—** I will proceed to show what the land law of the latest of all British settlements is, merely premising that it is founded upon the combined experience of Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward’s Island, British Columbia, and the vast territories formerly under the Hudson Bay Company, collectively known as the Dominion of Canada. By the Dominion Lands Act . free grants of land are made to every m&l6 or female head of family, on condition that they at once erect a residence on the land and live on it six months in the year, and that year by year they bring an increased area under cultivation. Manitoba is the last offshoot of that enormous territory, and was admitted into the Confederacy in 1870. By its land law every child of eighteen Can take up ICO acres on the Same conditions. At Ihe end of three years, if these conditions Lave been compiled with, a Crown patent is issued and then the settler can deal with his land as he likes. On receiving his grant the settlor may preempt a further 160 acres, for Which he must pay at the end of three years 4s per acre, and then he may purchase for cash 320 acres more, or 640 acres in all. : More'than this he cannot buy, as no person in Manitoba can own more than €4.0. acres, or one square mile. In 1872 the Legislature of Manitoba , passed in its first session a Homestead •Bill, which enacts that the, farm of 160 acreas, the house, stables, barns, fences, furniture, tools, farm one cow, two oXen, ’one horse, four sheep, t&o pigs, and forty days’ provender for the above live stock, are exempt from seizure for debt. Under such liberal terms the new province is -rapidly filling up, upwards of 20,000 souls having arrived that year-”