Ohio History Journal

  • 1
  •  
  • 2
  •  
  • 3
  •  
  • 4
  •  
  • 5
  •  
  • 6
  •  
  • 7
  •  
  • 8
  •  
  • 9
  •  
  • 10
  •  
  • 11
  •  
  • 12
  •  
  • 13
  •  
  • 14
  •  
  • 15
  •  
  • 16
  •  
  • 17
  •  
  • 18
  •  
  • 19
  •  
  • 20
  •  
  • 21
  •  
  • 22
  •  
  • 23
  •  

OHIO

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