usually chose young men, as being less encumbered and more manageable than their seniors, and less likely to be imbued with prejudices derived from the dark ages of our earlier administration. With these young officers he kept up constant private intercourse, and thus instilled into them his own views, and animated them by his own hearty temperament. Where he reposed his confidence, he did so without reserve. He received the opinions of those employed under him with respect; looked after their interests, defended their proceedings, and fought their battles as if they had been his own. The result was that in eight years after the enactment of Regulation IX. of 1833, he was able to report to the Government that the Settlement, with some immaterial exceptions, was completed; and that he was at liberty to return to that native land, from which he had been thirty-three years separated.'
There is something pathetic in the closing paragraph of his final report in the beginning of 1842. After stating the contrast between that date and 1830 in 'the administration of the land revenue — the condition of the agricultural population — the feeling of the people — the toil, effort, and anxious care with which this change has been effected;' — he concludes thus, 'I am now about to quit the service, and my only desire is that the good which has been effected may be maintained.' He is evidently apprehensive, but his forebodings would have vanished could he have foreseen that in Thomason's hands the work would be even more than maintained, till it reached its complete fulfilment.
In this Settlement, while the tax-payers were to
