Voices of the People

Nova Scotia House of Assembly Petitions and Correspondence

November 1806

Memorial of Hugh Denoon and others on behalf of the inhabitants of the district of Pictou. "That from the increased population of the District, the established Roads and Bridges – through the Settlement are become extensive and numerous and your memorialists, from mature experience are decidedly of opinion, that the present statue mode, of making and repairing them by Laber, is quite inadequate to that important purpose. – Your Memorialists do not hesitate to assert, that the state laber, is but indifferently performed in general through the Province; and beg leave to call upon your own individual observation, to corroborate the justness of that assertion. – They, therefore, humbly conceive that it would be very salutary, at least for their District, if the Statute Laber was converted into a pecuniary proportionate Tax; as, one half the amount of the Laber prescribed by Law, collected in Cash, and judiciously expended, at a proper season of the year, by competent Commissioners, annually appointed by the Justices and Grant Jury in General Sessions, would do more, and to much better propose, than Double the whole Road Laber as it is at present performed." Asking for local law.

Reference: Nova Scotia House of Assembly Nova Scotia Archives RG 5 Series A volume 13 number 45