our own; and this will make the whole of their importations four millions per annum."

This is arguing the riches of a people from their extravagance; the very thing that keeps them poor.

"The inhabitants of Great Britain pay above thirteen millions sterling every year, including turnpikes and the poor's rates, two articles which the colonists are exempt from."

A turnpike tax is no burden, as the turnpike gives more benefit than it takes. And ought the rich in Britain, who have made such numbers of poor by engrossing all the small divisions of land, and who keep the laborers and working people poor by limiting their wages,―ought those gentry to complain of the burden of maintaining the poor that have worked for them at unreasonably low rates all their lives? As well might the planter complain of his being obliged to maintain his poor negroes, when they grow old, are sick, or lame, and unable to provide for themselves.

"For though all pay by the same law, yet none can be required to pay beyond his ability; and the fund from whence the tax is raised, is, in the colonies that are least inhabited, just as able to bear the burden imposed, as in the most populous county of Great Britain."

The colonies are almost always considered by these ignorant, flimsy writers, as unwilling to contribute to the general exigencies of the state; which is not true. They are always willing, but will have the granting of their own money themselves; in which they are right for various reasons.

66

They would be content to take land from us gratuitously."

What land have they ever taken from you? The lands did not belong to the crown, but to the Indians,

of whom the colonists either purchased them at their own expense, or conquered them without assistance from Britain. The engagement to settle the American lands, and the expense of settlement, are more than equivalent for what was of no value to Britain without a first settlement.

"The rental of the lands in Great Britain and Ireland amounts to about twenty-two millions; but the rental of the same extent of lands in America is not probably one million sterling."

What signifies extent of unsettled lands, that produce nothing?

"I beg to know if the returns of any traffic on earth ever produced so many per cent, as the returns of agriculture in a fertile soil and favorable climate."

How little this politician knows of agriculture! Is there any county where ten bushels of grain are generally got in for one sown? And are all the charges and advances for labor to be nothing? No farmer of America in fact makes five per cent of his money. His profit is only being paid for his own labor, and that of his children. The opulence of one English or Dutch merchant would make the opulence of a hundred American farmers.

"It may, I think, be safely concluded, that the riches of the colonists would not increase so fast, were the inhabitants to leave off enlarging their settlements and plantations, and run eagerly upon manufactures."

There is no necessity of leaving their plantations; they can manufacture in their families at spare times. Depend upon it, the Americans are not so impolitic, as to neglect settlements for unprofitable manufactures; but some manufactures may be more advantageous to some persons, than the cultivation of land, and these will prosecute such manufactures notwithstanding your oratory.

SETTLEMENT ON THE OHIO RIVER.

This paper relates to what has been commonly called Walpole's Grant, heretofore mentioned, (p. 233.) A petition had been presented to the King in Council by a company of gentlemen, at the head of whom was Thomas Walpole, for a tract of land on the Ohio River, where it was proposed to form a new settlement. The petition met with delay in the Council, and was at length referred to the Board of Trade. The following "Report of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations" on the subject was drawn up by Lord Hillsborough, at that time president of the Board of Trade, who strenuously opposed the petition. Dr. Franklin answered that Report, and in so able and convincing a manner, that, when the subject was again brought before the Council, July 1st, 1772, and his answer was read, the petition was granted.

Alluding to this circumstance, in a letter to Joseph Galloway, dated August 22d, 1772, Dr. Franklin said; "Lord Hillsborough, mortified by the Committee of Council's approbation of our grant, in opposition to his Report, has resigned. I believe when he offered to do so he had such an opinion of his importance, that he did not think it would be accepted; and that it would be thought prudent rather to set our grant aside than to part with him. His colleagues in the ministry were all glad to get rid of him, and perhaps for this reason joined more readily in giving him that mortification. Lord Dartmouth succeeds him, who has much more favorable dispositions towards the colonies."

Again, in a letter to his son, dated July 14th, 1773, he wrote; "Mr. Todd, who has some attachment to Lord Hillsborough, told me, as a secret, that Lord Hillsborough was much chagrined at being out of place, and could never forgive me for writing that pamphlet against his Report about the Ohio. Of all the men I ever met with, he is surely the most unequal in his treatment of people, the most insincere, and the most wrongheaded. Witness, besides his various behaviour to me, his duplicity in encouraging us to ask for more land. Ask for enough to make a province,' (when we at first asked only for two millions five hundred thousand acres,) were his words, pretending to befriend our application; then doing every

thing to defeat it, and reconciling the first to the last by saying to a friend, that he meant to defeat it from the beginning, and that his putting us upon asking so much was with that very view, supposing it too much to be granted. Thus, by the way, his mortification becomes double. He has served us by the very means he meant to destroy us, and tripped up his own heels into the bargain."

Lord Hillsborough's Report and Dr. Franklin's Answer were published, in the year 1797, in the second volume of a work, entitled "Biographical, Literary, and Political Anecdotes of Several of the most eminent Persons of the present Age." The author of that work remarks on the subject as follows.

"Lord Hillsborough was so much offended by the decision of the Privy Council, that he resigned upon it. He resigned for that reason only. He 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 colonies between that line and the ocean, similar to the scheme of the French after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which brought on the war of 1756. His favorite project being thus defeated, he quitted the ministry. Dr. Franklin's answer to the Report of the Board of Trade was intended to have been published; but, Lord Hillsborough resigning, Dr. Franklin stopped the sale on the morning of the publication, when not above five copies had been disposed of."— EDITOR.

REPORT

Or the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, on the Petition of the Honorable Thomas Walpole and his Associates, for a Grant of Lands on the River Ohio, in North America.

"Pursuant to your Lordships' order of the 25th May, 1770, we have taken into our consideration the humble memorial of the Honorable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, in behalf of themselves and their associates, setting forth among other things, 'That they presented a

petition to his Majesty in Council, for a grant of lands in America (parcel of the lands purchased by government of the Indians) in consideration of a price to be paid in purchase of the same; that, in pursuance of a suggestion which arose when the said petition was under consideration of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, the memorialists presented a petition to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, proposing to purchase a larger tract of land on the River Ohio in America, sufficient for a separate government; whereupon their Lordships were pleased to acquaint the memorialists, they had no objection to accepting the proposals made by them, with respect to the purchase money and quitrent to be paid for the said tract of land, if it should be thought advisable by those departments of government, to whom it belonged to judge of the propriety of the grant, both in point of policy and justice, that the grant should be made; in consequence whereof the memorialists humbly renew their application, that a grant of said lands may be made to them, reserving therein to all persons their just and legal rights to any parts or parcels of said lands, which may be comprehended within the tract prayed for by the memorialists;' whereupon we beg leave to report to your Lordships,

"I. That, according to the description of the tract of land prayed for by the memorialists, which description is annexed to their memorial, it appears to us to contain part of the dominion of Virginia, to the south of the River Ohio, and to extend several degrees of longitude westward from the western ridge of the Appalachian Mountains, as will more fully appear to your Lordships from the annexed sketch of the said tract, which we have since caused to be delineated with as much exactness as possible, and herewith submit to