Ohio History Journal

OHIO

Archaeological and Historical

QUARTERLY.

 

 

DECEMBER, 1887.

 

 

THE WESTERN LAND POLICY OF THE BRITISH

GOVERNMENT FROM 1763 TO 1775.

 

THE ink with which the treaty of Paris was written was

hardly dry when Great Britain took a very important step in

the line of a new land policy. Just how much this step

meant at the time, is a matter of dispute, but the conse-

quences flowing from it were such as to mark it a distinct

new departure.

Previous to the French and Indian war, England had vir-

tually affirmed the principle that the discoverer and occupant

of a coast was entitled to all the country back of it; she had

carried her colonial boundaries through the continent from sea

to sea; and, as against France, had maintained the original

chartered limits of her colonies. Moreover, the grant to the

Ohio Company in 1748 proves that she had then no thought

of preventing over-mountain settlements, or of limiting the

expansion of the colonies in that direction. But now that

France had retired from the field vanquished, and the war had

left her in undisputed possession of the eastern half of the

Mississippi Valley, England began to see things in new re-

lations.  In fact, the situation was materially changed.

Canada and Florida were now British dependencies, and

governments must be provided for them. The Indians of

207

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208    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

the West were discontented and angry; and, strange to say,

at the very moment that they lost the support of France,

they formed, under Pontiac, the most widespread combina-

tion that they ever formed against the British power. Then

the strength and resource that the Colonies had shown in

the war had both pleased and disturbed the Mother Country;

pleased her because they contributed materially to the defeat

of France, and disturbed her because they portended a still

larger growth of that spirit of independence which had already

become somewhat embarrassing. The eagerness with which

the Virginians and Pennsylvanians were preparing to enter

the Ohio Valley, in the years 1748-1754, told England what

might be expected, now that France had withdrawn, and the

whole country lay open to the Mississippi. The home gov-

ernment undertook to meet the occasion with the royal

proclamation of October 7, 1763.

After congratulating his subjects upon the great advan-

tages that must accrue to their trade, manufactures, and nav-

igation from the new acquisitions of territory, His Majesty

proceeded to constitute four new governments, three of them

on the Continent and one in the West Indies. His new pos-

sessions on the Gulf he divided into East Florida and West

Florida, by the Appalachicola River, and separated them

from his possessions to the north by the thirty-first parallel

from the Mississippi River to the Chattahooche, by that

stream to its confluence with the Flint, by a straight line

drawn from this point to the source of the St. Marys, and

then by the St. Marys to the Atlantic Ocean. The next

year, in consequence of representations made to him that

there were considerable settlements north of the thirty-first

parallel that should be included in West Florida, he drew

the northern boundary of that province through the mouth

of the Yazoo. The territory lying between the Altamaha

and St. Marys Rivers, so long the subject of dispute be-

tween Spain and England, as well as between South Carolina

and Georgia, was given to Georgia. It was the proclamation

of 1763 that first defined what afterwards became the south-

ern boundary of the United States. As I shall have occa-

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Western Land Policy of the British.             209

sion to refer to them again, it will be well to give the limits

of Quebec in the words of the proclamation.

"The Government of Quebec, bounded on the Labrador coast by the

River St. John, and from thence to a line drawn from the head of that river,

through the Lake St. John, to the south end of the Lake Nipissim; from

whence the said line crossing the River St. Lawrence and the Lake Champ-

lain, in forty-five degrees of north latitude, passes along the highlands

which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the said river St. Law-

rence, from those which fall into the sea; and also along the north coast of

the Baie des Chaleurs, and the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape

Rosieres, and from thence crossing the mouth of the River St. Lawrence by

the west end of the Island of Anticosti, terminates at the aforesaid River

St. John."l

The King gives directions for constituting the governments

of the new provinces. He also instructs the royal governors

to grant lands to the officers and men who have served in the

army and navy in the war, according to a prescribed schedule.

His Majesty then comes to the new departure.

"We do, therefore, with the advice of our privy council, declare it to be

our royal will and pleasure, that no governor or commander-in-chief, in any

of our Colonies of Quebec, East Florida, or West Florida, do presume, up-

on any pretense whatever, to grant warrants of survey, or pass any patents

for lands beyond the bounds of their respective governments, as described

in their commissions; as also that no governor or commander-in-chief of

our other colonies or plantations in America, do presume, for the present,

and until our further pleasure be known, to grant warrants of survey, or pass

patents for any lands beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers

which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest; or upon

any lands whatever, which not having been ceded or purchased by us," etc.2

Just what was the meaning of this prohibition has been a

matter of dispute from that day to this; the opinions of the

disputants depending, often at least, upon the relation of

those opinions to other matters of interest. Solicitude for

the Indians, and anxiety for the peace and safety of the

colonies, are the reasons alleged in the proclamation itself.

The "whereas" introducing the proclamation says it is essen-

tial to the royal interest and the security of the colonies that

the tribes of Indians living under the King's protection shall

not be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts

 

1The Annual Register, 1763.

2The Annual Register, 1763.

 

9The Annual Registers I763.

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210    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

of his dominions and territories as, not having been ceded to

or purchased by him, are reserved to them as their hunting

grounds; and a declaration follows the prohibition that it is

his royal will and pleasure, for the present, to reserve under

his sovereign protection and dominion, for the use of the said

Indians, all the lands within the new governments, within the

limits of the Hudson Bay Company, and lying beyond the

sources of the rivers falling into the sea from the west and

northwest. The King strictly forbids his loving subjects

making any purchases or settlements whatever, or taking pos-

session of any of the lands described, without his special

leave and license; and he further enjoins all persons who

have seated themselves upon any of the lands so reserved to

the Indians, forthwith to abandon them. If at any time the

Indians are inclined to dispose of their lands, they shall be

purchased only in the King's name, by the governor or com-

mander-in-chief of the colony within which the lands lie. The

proclamation winds up with some wholesome regulations re-

specting the Indian trade.

No doubt a desire to conciliate the Indians was one of the

motives that led to the prohibition of 1763. But was it the

only motive? Was it also the royal intention permanently to

sever the lands beyond the sources of the rivers flowing into

the Atlantic from the old colonies within whose charter lim-

its they lay? and when the time should come to cut them up

into new and independent governments?

"The Annual Register" for 1763 says many reasons may

be assigned for the prohibition. It states the necessity of

quieting the Indians, and then presents the desirability of

limiting the from-sea-to-sea boundaries. Obviously, Edmund

Burke, or whoever else wrote the "Register's" review for

that year, thought the prohibition meant something more

than simply to guard the rights of the Indians.¹ Washing-

ton, on the other hand, wrote to his Western land agent,

Col. Crawford, in 1767: "I can never look upon that pro-

clamation in any other light (but this I say between ourselves)

 

¹Annual Register, 1763, 20.

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Western Land Policy of the British.   211

than a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the In-

dians. It must fall, of course, in a few years, especially

when those Indians consent to our occupying the lands."1

The authors of the Report on the Territorial Limits of the

United States, made to Congress January 2, 1782, examined

the proclamation very thoroughly, and came to the same con-

clusion that Washington had arrived at fifteen years before.

They declare the king's object to have been "to keep the

Indians in peace, not to relinquish the rights accruing under

the charters, and especially that of pre-emption."² Dr.

Franklin held the same view, as we shall soon see. Mr.

Bancroft says the West "was shut against the emigrant from

fear that colonies in so remote a region could not be held in

dependence. England, by war, had conquered the West,

and a ministry had come which dared not make use of the

conquest."3 No matter what the proclamation meant, it was

a great disappointment to the colonies. "Wherein are we

better off, as respects the Western country," they said in

substance, "than we were before the war?"

No man of his time more thoroughly comprehended the

Western question than Dr. Franklin. He wrote the Plan of

Union adopted by the Albany Congress in 1754, and an

exposition of the same. This "plan" placed the regulation

of the Indian trade, the purchasing of Indian lands, and the

planting of new settlements under the control of the Union.

Franklin supported this part of the scheme with the obvious

arguments. A single colony could not be expected to ex-

tend itself into the West; but the Union might establish a

new colony or two, greatly to the security of the frontiers,

to increase of population and trade, and to breaking the

French connections between Canada and Louisiana.4

Soon after the Albany Congress, Franklin wrote his " Plan

for Settling two Western Colonies in North America, with

Reasons for the Plan." He says the country back of the

 

¹Butterfield: Washington-Crawford Letters, 3.

²Secret Journals of Congress, III, 154.

³Bancroft, III, 32, (1885.)

⁴Sparks: Writings of Franklin, III, 32-55.

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212      Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

Appalachian mountains must become, perhaps in another

century, a populous and powerful dominion, and a great ac-

cession of power to either England or France. If the Eng-

lish delay to settle that country, great inconveniences and

mischiefs will arise. Confined to the region between the sea

and the mountains, they can not much more increase in num-

bers owing to lack of room and subsistence. The French

will increase much more, and become a great people in the

rear of the English. He therefore recommends that the

English take immediate possession of the country, and pro-

ceed at once to plant two strong colonies, one on the Ohio

and one on Lake Erie. The new colonies will soon be full

of people; they will prevent the disasters sure to follow if the

French are allowed to have their way in the West; the Ohio

country will be a good base for operations against Canada and

Louisiana in case of war; the new colonies will promote the

increase of Englishmen, of English trade, and of English

power. Franklin assumes that the from-sea-to-sea charters

are still in force, and argues that they must be limited by

the Western mountains. The tract closes with a plea for

urgency.¹ War with the French had now begun, and new

colonies were necessarily postponed until the sword should

decide the destiny of the West. But Franklin still kept the

subject in mind. In 1756 he wrote to Rev. George Whit-

field:

"I sometimes wish that you and I were jointly employed by the Crown

to settle a colony on the Ohio. I imagine that we could do it effectually,

and without putting the nation to much expense; but I fear we shall never

be called upon for such a service. What a glorious thing it would be to

settle in that fine country a large, strong body of religious and industrious

people! What a security to the other colonies and advantage to Britain, by

increasing her people, territory, strength, and commerce! Might it not

greatly facilitate the introduction of pure religion among the heathen, if we

could, by such a colony, show them a better sample of Christians than they

commonly see in our Indian traders?-the most vicious and abandoned

wretches of our nation!"²

Immediately after Wolfe's victory in 1759, men on both

 

1Sparks, III, 69-77.

2Bigelow: Works of Franklin, II, 467.

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Western Land Policy of the British.  213

sides of the Ocean began to speculate upon the terms of the

peace that they saw must soon come. It seemed inevitable

that England would be able to dictate her own terms to her

old enemy; and the question arose what territorial indemni-

ties and securities she should exact. More specifically, the

question arose whether Canada should be retained or returned

to France in exchange for Gaudaloupe.  Two or three

pamphlets discussing this question appeared in London. To

one of them, published without a name, but sometimes as-

cribed to Edmund Burke, that advocated the surrender of

Canada, Franklin wrote a reply that he entitled "The Inter-

est of Great Britain Considered with Regard to the Colonies

and the Acquisition of Canada and Gaudaloupe," but that is

commonly called "The Canada Pamphlet." A rapid review

of this exceedingly vigorous production will throw much

light upon the state of opinion touching the West both in

America and in Europe.

Franklin holds, in opposition to his antagonist, that Eng-

land may properly demand Canada as an indemnification,

although she had not, in the outset, put forward such an

acquisition as one of the objects of the war. He argues that

the relations of England and France in America are such as

to prevent a lasting peace, declaring that such a peace can

come only when the whole country is subject to the English

government. Disputes arising in America will be the occa-

sion of European wars. Wars between the two powers orig-

inating in Europe will extend to America, and give oppor-

tunities for third powers to interfere. The boundaries be-

tween the English and French in North America can not be

so drawn as to prevent quarrels. The frontier must neces-

sarily be more than fifteen hundred miles in length. Happy

was it for both Holland and England that the Dutch, in 1674,

ceded New Netherlands to the English; since that time

peace between them had continued unbroken, which would

have been impossible if the Dutch had continued to hold that

province, separating, as it did, the eastern and middle British

colonies.

Franklin next contends that erecting forts in the back set-

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214    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

tlements will not prove a sufficient security against the French

and Indians, but the possession of Canada implies every

security. The possession of that province, and that alone,

can give the English colonies in America peace.

He then devotes several pages to the proposition that the

blood and treasure spent in the war were not spent in the

cause of the colonies alone. This is in reply to the argument

that the interests at stake in the war were rather colonial than

British or imperial. The retention of Canada will widen the

landed opportunities of the colonists, and will tend to keep

them agricultural and to prevent manufactures.  Franklin

then enunciates a proposition that would make Pennsylvania

economists of to-day stare and gasp.  "Manufactures are

founded in poverty. It is the multitude of poor without land

in a country, and who must work for others at low wages or

starve, that enable undertakers to carry on a manufacture,

and afford it cheap enough to prevent the importation of the

same kind from abroad, and to bear the expense of its own

exportation." He contends that the North American col-

onies are the western frontier of the British Empire; that

they must be defended by the Empire for that reason, and

that Canada will be a conquest for the whole, the advantage

of which will come in increase of trade and ease of taxes.

To the argument that the colonies are large and numerous

enough, and that the French ought to be left in North

America to keep them in check, Franklin replies that, in

time of peace, the colonists double by natural generation

once in twenty-five years, and that they will probably con-

tinue to do so for a century to come; but that they

will not cease to be useful to the Mother Country. On this

point he accumulates a variety of information relating to the

industrial and commercial possibilities of the country east of

the Mississippi River that is as interesting as curious. One

hundred millions of people can subsist in the agricultural

condition east of that river and south of the Lakes and the

St. Lawrence. The facilities for inland navigation are dwelt

upon with admiration. Franklin dwells at much length upon

the improbability of the people taking up manufactures,

• 8
 

Western Land Policy of the British.    215

and upon the vast quantities of British goods that they will

be sure to buy and consume.

Having striven at such length to prove that the colonies

would not be useless to the Mother Country, he now takes up

the proposition that they will not be dangerous to her. This

is the most delicate subject handled in the whole pamphlet,

and one that attracted attention before the war began. Kalm,

the Swedish naturalist who visited the Colonies in 1748, and

who saw so much more than natural objects in the course of

his travels, reports that in New York he found much doubt

whether the King of England, if he had the power, would

wish to drive the French out of Canada. Kalm thus expresses

his own opinion: "As this whole country is toward the sea

unguarded, and on the frontier is kept uneasy by the French,

these dangerous neighbors are the reason why the love of these

colonies for their metropolis does not utterly decline.  The

English government has, therefore, reason to regard the

French in North America as the chief power that urges their

colonies to submission."¹ It is well known Choiseul warned

Stanley when the two ministers were discussing the treaty of

1763, that the English colonies in America "would not fail

to shake off their dependence the moment Canada should be

ceded."² This feeling was shared by many people in Eng-

land, and it probably influenced those who said "Gaudaloupe,

not Canada" quite as much as the superiority of the sugar

trade to the fur trade. Such is a fair statement of the argu-

ment that Franklin sets himself to answer.

His reply is "that the colonies can not be dangerous to

England without union, and that union is impossible." To

prove that union is impossible, he sets forth the jealousies of

the colonies, and the failure of all attempts hitherto made to

bring them to act together. "There are now fourteen sepa-

rate governments on the sea coast, and there will probably

be as many more behind them on the inland side. These

have different governors, different laws, different forms of

 

 

1 Bancroft: History, II, 310-311.

2 Parkman: Montcalm and Wolfe, II, 403.

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216    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

government, different interests, different religious persuasions,

and different manners. If they could not agree to unite for

their defense against the French and Indians, who were per-

petually harrassing their settlements, burning their villages,

and murdering their people, can it reasonably be supposed

there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation,

which protects and encourages them, with which they have

many connections and ties of blood, interest, and affection,

and which, it is well known, they all love more than they love

one another? " And yet Franklin was careful to leave an open

door through which he could have escaped the charge of in-

consistency if such charge had been preferred a dozen years

later. " When I say such a union is impossible, I mean with-

out the most grievous tyranny and oppression."  "The

waves do not rise," he says, "but when the winds blow."

What such an administration as the Duke of Alva's might

bring about he does not know; but he has a right to deem

that impossible. Under this head he answers the argument

"that the remoteness of the Western territories will bring

about their separation from the mother country."  "While

our strength at sea continues, the banks of the Ohio, in point

of easy and expeditious conveyance of troops, are nearer to

London than the remote parts of France and Spain to their

respective capitals, and much nearer than Connought and

Ulster were in the days of Queen Elizabeth." Of the two the

presence of the French in Canada will engender disaffection

in the colonies rather than prevent it. The only check on

their growth that the French could possibly be, is the check

furnished by blood and carnage.

Franklin then argues that Canada can be easily peopled

without draining Great Britain of any of her inhabitants.

Last of all comes the proposition that the value of Gauda-

loupe to Great Britain is much overestimated by those who

prefer that island to Canada.

Many of the arguments contained in this famous pamphlet

would now be set aside by an economist as fallacious; but,

fallacious as they may be, they have that plain directness which,

along with other qualities, rendered Franklin's political tracts

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Western Land Policy of the British.   217

so convincing to the common mind. The pamphlet attracted

great attention at the time, and "was believed," according

to Dr. Sparks, "to have had great weight in the ministerial

councils, and to have been mainly instrumental in causing

Canada to be held at the peace."1

We come now to two series of transactions in which Frank-

lin figured prominently, that relate more intimately to the

matter in hand. Before entering upon them, however, it is

necessary to state that at Fort Stanwix, in 1768, Sir William

Johnson negotiated a treaty with the Six Nations, in which he

secured a new boundary line between the lands that the

Nations claimed in the West and the lands of the whites on

the east, as follows: The Ohio and Allegheny Rivers from

the mouth of the Cherokee, as the Tennessee was then

called, to Kittanning, above Fort Pitt; thence by a direct line

east to the west branch of the Susquehanna; thence through

the mountains to the east branch, and on to the Delaware,

and finally by the Delaware, the Tianaderher, and Canada

Creek to Wood Creek, above Fort Stanwix. While this line

left nearly one half of the State of New York in the hands of

the Six Nations, it gave to the whites the whole southeastern

half of the Ohio valley as far as the Tennessee. This line

itself shows that the Nations regarded their Western posses-

sions but lightly.  It should be observed, also, that the

alienation of their claim still left the English to deal with the

Indians actually on the Western soil.

In 1765, Sir William Johnson, Governor Franklin, and

other influential persons formed a project for establishing a

new colony in the Illinois country. They applied to Dr.

Franklin, then in London, acting as agent for Pennsylvania

for assistance, and he entered warmly into the enterprise,

in which he also had an interest. For a time the application

for a grant of lands was regarded with much favor, but was

finally rejected. The Doctor's letters to his son, in the years

1765-1767, report the progress of the negotiation, and throw

a good deal of light on English opinion touching Western

 

1 Sparks, IV, 1-53.

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218    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

settlements.  He found the following objections urged

against the plan: (1) The distance would render such a

colony of little use to England, as the expense of the car-

riage of goods would urge the people to manufacture for

themselves; (2) The distance would also render it difficult

to defend and govern the colony; (3) Such a colony might,

in time, become troublesome and prejudicial to the British

government; (4) There are no people to spare, either in

England or the other colonies, to settle a new colony. Lord

Hillsborough was terribly afraid of "dispeopling Ireland."

To overturn these objections, Franklin brought forward the

arguments with which we are now familiar. The London

merchants, who were called upon for testimony, gave the

unanimous opinion that colonies in the Illinois and at Detroit

would enlarge British commerce. Franklin "reckoned" that

there would be 63,000,000 acres of land in the proposed

colony. He also reported an inclination on the part of min-

isters to abandon the Western posts as more expensive than

useful, unless the colonies should see fit to keep them up at

their own expense.¹ Fort Pitt was actually abandoned soon

after.

In 1769 the proposition to establish a new colony was re-

vived, but in a new form. Thomas Walpole, Samuel Whar-

ton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Pownal, and others petitioned

the King for the right to purchase 2,400,000 acres of land

on the south side of the Ohio River, on which to found a

new government. After the delays incident to such business,

this petition was granted by the King in council in 1772.

Slow progress was made in perfecting the details; but the

price of the land was finally fixed, the plan of government

agreed upon, and the patent actually made ready for the

seals, when the Revolution broke out, and dashed the new

colony forever. Walpole, the leading promoter of the scheme,

was an eminent London banker, and the company and

grant were commonly called by his name. The company

called itself the "Grand Company," and proposed to name

 

1Sparks, IV., 233-241.

• 12
 

Western Land Policy of the British.    219

the  colony  "Vandalia."  Although the project finally

failed, its history presents some exceedingly interesting feat-

ures. It should be observed that the Ohio Company of

1748, that had been kept alive thus far, although thwarted

in its original purposes by the French war, was absorbed in

this new enterprise.

In May, 1770, the Privy Council referred the Walpole pe-

tition to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations;

and two years later their Lordships made an elaborate report,

drawn by their president, Lord Hillsborough. This report

objected to the petition, that the tract of land prayed for lay

partly within the dominion of Virginia south of the Ohio;

that it extended several degrees of longitude westward from

the mountains; and that a considerable part of it lay beyond

the line that had been drawn between His Majesty's territories

and the hunting grounds of the Six Nations and the Chero-

kees. Besides, to grant the petition would be to abandon

the principle adopted by the Board of Trade, and approved

by His Majesty at the close of the war. "Confining the

Western extent of settlements to such a distance from the

sea coast as that those settlements should be within the reach

of the trade and commerce of this Kingdom, upon which

the strength and riches of it depend," and also within "the ex-

ercise of that authority and jurisdiction which was conceived

to be necessary for the preservation of the colonies in due sub-

ordination to, and dependence upon, the Mother Country,"-

are declared the "two capital objects" of the proclamation

of 1763, Lord Hillsborough indeed admits that the line

agreed upon at Fort Stanwix, in 1768, is, in the southwest,

far beyond the sources of the rivers that flow into the At-

lantic; but since this Stanwix line still further restricts the

Indians' hunting grounds, he sees in it a new reason for ad-

hering closely to the restrictive policy. His Lordship de-

clares the proposition to form inland colonies in America

"entirely new;" he says the great object of the North

American colonies is to improve and extend the commerce,

navigation, and manufactures of England; shore colonies

he approves because they fulfill this condition, and inland

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220    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

colonies he condemns because they will not fulfill it. To the

argument that settlers are flowing westward, and that West-

ern settlements are inevitable, Lord Hillsborough replies that

His Majesty should take every method to check the progress

of such settlements, and should not make grants of land that

will have an immediate tendency to encourage them. The

report closes with a recommendation that the Crown imme-

diately issue a new proclamation forbidding all persons taking

up or settling on lands west of the line of 1763.

It would be hard to say whether this report won for its

author the wider fame by reason of its odious application of

the doctrines of the colonial system to the question of West-

ern settlements, or by reason of the crushing reply that it

called out from Dr. Franklin. Before taking up that reply,

however, the remark is pertinent that Lord Hillsborough's

notion that royal proclamations were going to keep the ad-

venturous people of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas

out of the Western country, is one of a multitude of proofs of

the incapacity of the British mind, at that time, to understand

American questions. It was only less absurd than Dean

Tucker's famous plan for guarding the frontier against the in-

cursions of the Indians, viz: that the trees and bushes be cut

away from a strip of land a mile in breadth along the back

of the colonies from Maine to Georgia.1

Franklin begins his reply with correcting the noble Lord's

ideas of American geography. The land asked for lies be-

tween the Allegheny mountains and the Ohio River, which

are separated, "on a medium," by not more than a degree

and a half. The grant will not be an invasion of the domin-

ion of Virginia, because that colony is bounded on the west

by the mountains. The country west of the Alleghanies was

in the possession of the Indians previous to the Stanwix

treaty, and since that time the King has not given it to Vir-

ginia. To support the proposition that Virginia does not

extend beyond the mountains, which is absolutely essential

to his argument, he draws out a territorial history of the re-

 

1Sparks: Writings of Franklin, III, 48, 49.

• 14
 

Western Land Policy of the British.   221

gion within which the grant will fall, entirely ignoring the

Virginia charter of 1609.

1. The country southward of the Great Kanawha, as far

as the Tennessee River, originally belonged to the Shawanese

Indians.

2. The Six Nations, beginning about the year 1664, carried

their victorious arms over the whole country, from the Great

Lakes to the latitude of Carolina, and from the Alleghanies

to the Mississippi. They, therefore, became possessed of

the lands in question by right of conquest.

3. Much stress is laid on the English protectorate over

the Six Nations, acknowledged by the French in 1713,

and by the Indians in 1726. When the French came into

Western Pennsylvania, in 1754, the English held them in-

vaders on the express ground that the country belonged to

their allies and dependents. This was the view held by the

British court when discussing the subject with Paris in 1755.

In the French and Indian war the English had simply main-

tained their old rights; they expelled the French from the

West as intruders, and held the country not by conquest, but

by the Iroquois title. At Fort Stanwix the Iroquois sold to

the Crown all their lands southwest of the Ohio, as far down

as the Tennessee. The Crown is, therefore, vested with the

undoubted right and property of those lands, and can do

with them what it pleases.

4. The Cherokees never resided or hunted in the country

between the Kanawha and the Tennessee, and had no right

to it.  The claim that this region ever belonged to the

Cherokees is a fiction altogether new and indefensible, in-

vented in the interest of Virginia. When that government

saw that it was likely to be confined on the west by the

mountains in consequence of the Stanwix purchase, it set up

the Cherokee title in opposition to that of the Northern

Indians.

5. Nor do the Six Nations, the Shawanese, or the Dela-

wares now reside or hunt in the region where the grant will

fall.

Franklin's object is to find room for the new colony between

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222    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

the Alleghanies and the Ohio. He follows closely the facts

of history touching the matter immediately in hand.  The

Iroquois had pretended to own the whole West north of the

Cumberland Mountains, and the British and Colonial govern-

ments had humored them in that pretention. But the Iroquois

never occupied the Ohio valley, while the Indians who were

occupying it did not acknowledge the Iroquois title. The

signers to the Stanwix treaty were all Iroquois, the Delaware

and Shawanese delegates present at the council refusing, or at

least neglecting, to sign.  But granting that the British-

Iroquois title was perfectly good as against the French and

other Indians, it had no force as against Virginia. The right

that priority of discovery gave the discoverer was the right

of pre-emption, and the fact that the Indian title to the Ohio

valley was acquired long after the Virginia charter in no way

affected the rights of Virginia, if she ever had any. If the

English had waited to acquire Indian titles before sending

over colonists, America would be a wilderness at this day.

Even the humane Penn first sent over his colony, two thou-

sand strong, and then treated with the Indians. Franklin

had himself, in 1754, expressly acknowledged the binding

force of the from-sea-to-sea charters until they should be duly

limited. It is hard to see, therefore, that the Fort Stanwix

purchase affected Virginia's rights, unless it be claimed that

the purchase was made by a royal officer at the expense of

the Crown, and not by the colony at her own expense; but it

must be remembered that, at this time, the Crown had taken

Indian affairs out of the hands of the colonies, and that New

York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut never regarded the

purchase as at all easing their rights in the Northwest. At

the same time, Franklin's reasoning was admirably adapted

to his immediate purpose.

Franklin restates the old arguments in favor of interior

settlements, and after a thorough examination of the whole

subject, comes to the conclusion that the proclamation of

1763 was intended solely to pacify the Indians at a critical

time, and that the Stanwix treaty has set the proclama-

tion line effectually aside.  Looking into the West, he

• 16
 

Western Land Policy of the British.    223

reports that in the years 1765-1768 great numbers of the

King's subjects from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania

were settling over the mountains; that this emigration led to

great irritation among the Indians; that the emigrants refused

to obey the proclamations issued ordering them to return to

the other side of the King's line; that attempts to remove

them by force ended only in failure; that these frontier

troubles were among the causes that led to the Stanwix

treaty; that the said treaty, negotiated by Sir William John-

son under express orders from the home government, proves

that the permanent exclusion of settlers from the Western

country could not have been intended in 1763. The Doctor

states that Pennsylvania had made it felony to occupy Indian

lands within the limits of that colony; that the Governor of

Virginia had commanded settlers to vacate all Indian lands

within the limits of his goverement, and that General Gage

had twice sent soldiers to remove the settlers from the

country of the Monongahela, but all these efforts to enforce

the restrictive policy had proved unavailing. He asserts that

the object of the Stanwix purchase was to avert "an Indian

rupture, and give an opportunity to the King's subjects

quietly and lawfully to settle thereon."

Franklin does not fail to convict the Board of Trade of in-

consistency. In 1748 it was anxious to promote settlements

in the Ohio Valley; in 1768 it was of the opinion that the in-

habitants of the middle colonies should be permitted gradually

to extend themselves backward; in 1770 Lord Hillsborough

recommended a new colony, and then two years later he

made to the council the adverse report to which Franklin

is now replying. The promoters of the colony have no idea,

he says, of draining Great Britain or the old colonies of their

population. That will be wholly unnecessary. If the colony

is planted the colonists will not become lawless or rebellious,

because they will be subject to government; but if the

present restriction be continued the country will become the

resort of desperate characters. Moreover, there is already a

considerable population in the very district that the peti-

tioners pray for, and if these lawless people are not soon in-

• 17
 

224    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

cluded in a government, an Indian war will be the conse-

quence. They are beyond the jurisdiction of Virginia, and her

jurisdiction can not be extended over them without great dif-

ficulty, if at all. Hence, the only way to prevent the region

in question becoming the home of violence and disorder is

to establish a new government there.

Many pages of Franklin's paper are devoted to the econ-

omical bearings of the proposed colony. He does not deny

the doctrines of the colonial system; he rather assumes them;

but he contradicts Hillsborough's applications of the doctrines

to the matter in hand. On these points he presents a mass

of information concerning the Ohio country and its capabili-

ties, its relations to the commercial world, methods of reach-

ing it, etc., that makes the report exceedingly readable even

at this day.

Franklin's reply to Hillsborough, read in council July 1,

1772, immediately led to granting the Walpole petition.

His Lordship, who had considered his own report overwhelm-

ing, at once resigned his office in disgust and mortification.

Hillsborough, it is said, "had conceived an idea, and was

forming the plan of a boundary line to be drawn from the

Hudson River to the Mississippi, and thereby confining the

British colonists between that line and the Ocean, similar

to the scheme of the French after the peace of Aix-la-Cha-

pelle, which brought on the war of 1756." The fact is, the

British government had borrowed from the French their re-

strictive scheme.1

It appears from Franklin's pamphlet that the Virginia gov-

ernment was disturbed by the proceedings at Fort Stanwix in

1768. It was still more seriously disturbed by the proceed-

ings of Walpole and his associate in London in 1770-72. On

April 15, 1770, George Washington wrote a letter to Lord

Botetourt, the governor, explaining how the Walpole grant

would affect that colony. He says the boundary would run

through the pass of the Onasioto Mountains near to the lati-

tude of North Carolina; thence northeast to the Kanawha at.

1 The Hillsborough report, Franklin's reply, and the 1763 proclamation-

are in Sparks, IV, 302, et seq.

• 18
 

Western Land Policy of the British.     225

the junction of New River and the Green Briar; thence by

the Green Briar and a due east line drawn from the head of

that river to the Alleghany Mountains, after which the boun-

daries will be Lord Fairfax's line, the lines of Maryland and

Pennsylvania, and the Ohio River to the place of begin-

ning-a large surface, surely, over which t spread 2,400,000

acres of land. Washington says that many Virginians are

settled on New River and Green Briar upon lands that Vir-

ginia has already patented. He declares that the grant will

give a fatal blow to the interests of Virginia. Having thus

delivered his "sentiments as a member of the community at

large," he begs leave to address his Excellency from "a more

interested point of view," alleging that the 200,000 acres of

land promised the Virginia troops called out in 1754 lie

within these very limits. He protests earnestly against any

interference with the rights of these men, and prays his Lord-

ship's interposition with His Majesty to have these lands con-

firmed to the claimants and rightful owners.  Washington

continued to watch the new colony with a lively interest. In

a letter to Lord Dunmore, written June 15, 1771, he says the

report gains ground that the grant will be made and the col-

ony established, and declares again that the plan will essen-

tially interfere with the interests and expectations of Virginia.

He also renews his plea in behalf of the officers and soldiers

of 1754.1

The facts now presented show conclusively that in the

years following the French war the Western policy of the

British was not steady or consistent, but fitful and capricious;

prompted by a solicitude for the Indian that was partly

feigned, and partly by a growing jealously of the shore col-

onies. Vandalia was the more welcome to the Council be-

cause it would limit Virginia on the west, and so weaken her

influence.

The policy of restriction culminated in 1774 in the

Quebec Act. This act guaranteed to the Catholic Church

in the province of Quebec the possession of its vast prop-

1 The two letters are found side by side in Sparks' Writings of Washing-

ton, II, 355-361.

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226    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

erty, said to equal one-fourth of the old French grants; it

confirmed the Catholic clergy in the rights and privileges

that they had enjoyed under the old regime; it set aside the

provisions of the proclamation of 1763, creating representa-

tive government, and restored the French system of laws;

it committed taxation to a council appointed by the Crown;

it abolished trial by jury in civil cases; and, finally, it ex-

tended the province on the north to Hudson Bay, and on the

southwest and west to the Ohio and the Mississippi. Some

features of this enactment can no doubt be successfully

defended. As a whole it had two great ends. One was

to propitiate the French population of Canada, to attach

them by interest and sympathy to England, and so to pre-

vent their making common cause with the Colonies in case

worst should come to worst; the other was permanently to

sever the West from the shore colonies, and put it in train

for being cut up, when the time should come, into indepen-

dent governments that should have their affiliations with the

St. Lawrence Valley rather than with the Atlantic Slope.

Here it may be observed that twice the Old Northwest was

subject to a jurisdiction whose capital was on the St. Law-

rence; once in the old French days, and once in the last year

of the British control of the Colonies-a fact that shows how

thoroughly the home government had adopted French ideas

concerning the West.

The year 1774 is remarkable for odious colonial measures.

It was the year of the Boston Port Bill and the Massachusetts

Bay Bill; but no one of these measures was more odious to

the colonists than the Quebec Act. They regarded the

changes made in the government of Canada as a stroke at

their own governments, while they looked upon the new

boundaries as a final effort to wrest the West from them

forever. The Act provoked a general outcry of denun-

ciation. The youthful Hamilton made it the subject of

one of his first political papers. The Continental Congress,

enumerating "the acts of pretended legislation," to which

the King had given his assent, included in the formidable

list the act "for abolishing the free system of English laws

• 20
 

Western Land Policy of the British.            227

in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary

government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at

once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same

absolute rule into these colonies."   The Declaration of Inde-

pendence arraigned the King on another charge. "He has

endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for

that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of

foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage emigration

hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of

lands." The presence of these counts in the indictment of 1776

shows the power with which the royal land policy had taken

hold of the colonial mind. Those colonies that had definite

Western boundaries joined in the indictment, as well as those

that claimed to the Mississippi River.    There was a universal

feeling that "lands which had been rescued from the French

by the united efforts of Great Britain and America, were now

severed from their natural connections with the settlements

of the sea-board, and formed into a vast inland province like

the ancient Louisiana."1

The enlargement of the province was defended in Parlia-

ment, according to the "Annual Register," on the ground

that there were French inhabitants beyond the proclamation

limits of 1763 "who ought to have provision made for them;

and that there was one entire colony at the Illinois." The

"Register" thus sums up the objections of the opposition:

" Further they asked, why the proclamation limits were enlarged, as if

it were thought that this arbitrary government could not have too extensive

an object. If there be, which they doubted, any spots on which some

Canadians are settled, provide, said they, for them; but do not annex to

Canada immense territories now desert, but which are the best part of that

continent, and which run on the back of all your ancient colonies. That

this measure cannot fail to add to their other discontents and apprehensions,

as they can attribute the extension given to an arbitrary military govern-

ment, and to a people alien in origin, laws and religion, to nothing else but

that design, of which they see but too many proofs already, of utterly ex-

tinguishing their liberties, and bringing them, by the arms of those very

people, whom they had helped to conquer, into a state of the most abject

vassalage.²

 

1Adams: Maryland's Influence on Land Cessions, 19.

²Annual Register, 1774, 76, 77.

• 21
 

228   Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

But the Quebec Act never took effect. It was nullified by

the Revolution. By and by, when the limits of the Thirteen

Colonies, as they were after 1773, were set up as the criterion

to determine the boundaries of the United States, England,

France, and Spain, all took the position that the Royal Pro-

clamation and the Quebec Act limited the States on the west.

To this claim the replies, "The King's line of 1763 was a

temporary expedient to quiet the Indians," and "The

Quebec Act was one of the causes that brought on the war,

and that we are fighting to resist," are pressed once and

again in the American State papers of the period.

Even Lord Dunmore, that bitter enemy of the Colonies,

and steadfast upholder of the British cause, ignored the

Western policy of the home government. His personal

characteristics, love of money and of power, contributed to

this end. "His passion for land and fees," says Bancroft,

"outweighing the proclamation of the King and reiterated

most positive instructions from the Secretary of State, he

supported the claims of the colony to the West, and was a

partner in two immense purchases of land from the Indians

in Southern Illinois. In 1773, his agents, the Bullets, made

surveys at the Falls of the Ohio; and parts of Louisville and

parts of the towns opposite Cincinnati are now held under

his warrant." The Indian war, that takes its name from his

Lordship, which was brought on by his own Western policy,

was in controvention of the policy of the home government;

and the historian just quoted goes so far as to say: "The

royal Governor of Virginia, and the Virginian Army in the

Valley of the Scioto, nullified the Act of Parliament which

extended the Province of Quebec to the Ohio, and in the

name of the King of Great Britain triumphantly maintained

for Virginia the western and northwestern, jurisdiction

which she claimed as her chartered right." Virginia "ap-

plauded Dunmore when he set at naught the Quebec Act,

and kept possession of the government and right to grant

lands on the Scioto, the Wabash, and the Illinois."¹ Dun-

 

1Bancroft, IV, 82, 83, 88.

• 22
 

Western Land Policy of the British.    229

more's invasion of the Northwest, in 1774, added another

link to the Virginia chain of titles to those regions.  "From

its second charter, the discoveries of its people, the author-

ized grants of its governors since 1746, the encouragement

of its legislature to settlers in 1752-3, the promise of lands

as bounties to officers and soldiers who served in the French

war, and the continued emigration of its inhabitants, the

Ancient Dominion derived its title to occupy the Great

West. "1                            B. A. HINSDALE.

 

¹Bancroft, III, 320.

• 23