apprehension, adopt measures and proceedings, that Manifest a spirit so adverse to the real and true Interests both, of this Kingdom and its Colonies.

What steps it may be proper to take in consequence of the Resolve for excluding the Judges. of the supreme Court from sitting and voting in the Lower House of Assembly will require to be further considered; but I must not omit to acquaint you, that His Maj" looks upon this as an innovation of a very dangerous nature, implying a claim in the Assembly that can not be allow'd without violation of the fundamental principles of the Constitution.

The reasons you give for having contrary to your own opinion, assented to the Bills for regulating sales by public vendue, for enlarging the Jurisdiction of County Courts, for limiting that of the Superior Court, and for explaining the Election Act, must remain for consideration, when the Laws themselves are received; and therefore I can only say for the present, that the objections you state yourself to these Laws are too strong to warrant that approbation of your conduct which I most sincerely wish, upon all occasions to be justified in expressing to you.

What you say of the distresses of the Colony for want of a currency, is very material, and therefore it would have been a great satisfaction to me to have been enabled to have sent you by this conveyance such Instructions as his Maj'* might have thought proper to have given respecting the Bill for emitting £120000 in paper Bills of Credit, proposed in the last Assembly, and to which, you very properly refused your assent, until His Majesty's permission could be obtained; but your not having transmitted the Bill itself, puts this out of my power and must necessarily create a delay that I am extremely concerned for. As to the other Bill for confirming Estates claimed by Aliens, to which you resused1 your assent, it will be proper that it should be submitted to the consideration of His Maj' at the Council Board, and I shall loose no time in taking the necessary steps for that purpose.

Just as this letter was finished a Mail arrived from New York, by which, I had the satisfaction to receive your Dispatches Nos 45, 46, 47 and 4S. and have laid them before the King but have nothing in Command from His Maj" to signify to you thereupon.

The Acts mentioned in your letter N° 4S. to be transmitted by the Clerk of the Council have not yet been received at my office.

Your Lordp's circular letter inclosing His Majty's most gracious speech to His Parliament at the close of the Session, was immediately upon its being received, communicated to His Majesty's Council of this Province; the general satisfaction with which it was received by all then present, left me no room to doubt of the impression it had made, and I am persuaded

that they will most readily joyn in removing all those unfortunate prejudices which have too long prevailed here. No assiduity on my part shall be wanting in the execution of this necessary part of my duty, and I shall be extremely happy to contribute in the smallest degree to that great work of reestablishing a mutual confidence and affection between Great Brittain and her Colonies, by bringing back to a true sense of their duty the Province His Maj' has been pleased to entrust to my care,

I have the honor to be with the greatest Respect, My Lord,

If I thought it incumbent on me to make an apology to your Lordp in my last letter at the time I transmitted two petitions, concerning the Lands on the Connecticut River, with much greater reason should I do it now in offering any thing more on the same subject. The inclosed petitions were preparing at the time the last Pacquet sailed, and notwithstanding I have informed the persons concerned in it, of what your Lord was pleased to mention in your letter by this last Pacquet concerning those lands, they still think it an injustice done to them not to forward their case to your Lord, if their grants are refused to be made out by me on their application for them. So much, has already been said on this head, that I shall only beg leave to submit the following observation to your Lordp. When His Maj^^ order in Council was first sent over by the Earl of Shelburne, forbidding any further grants to be made of the Lands in question it was the general opinion here, that the restriction was only intended to be laid on the granting of any patents which could possibly affect the particular Townships, set forth in Robinson's Petition; I took His Maj'' order in a greater latitude, & notwithstanding the repeated attacks made upon me, as well by reduced officers and disbanded Soldiers, as by the Inhabitants of this Province, I have constantly refused to comply with their demands although the Lands for which they applyed had never been granted by the Govern' of N. Hampshire, or included in the above mentioned Petition; as some Townships were supposed to be laid out on the west side of Lake Champlain (altho' there was no other foundation for such a supposition than a Map printed in the Province of Connecticut). I observed the same rule in regard to that part of the Country, notwithstanding there was not the least appearance upon Earth of a survey having been made there; it is now above two years since I wrote my first letter to the Earl of Shelburne, in answer to the Petitions of Robinson and the Society for propagating the Gospel, during which time, I have used every means in my power to carry into execution the plan I had formed for making such a communication with the Provce of Quebec, as I have already had the honor of laying before your Lordp, but in our present situation every endeavour of mine will be rendered ineffectual, if the Lands on the side of the

Lake are not permitted to be granted, for those Tracts which are now in the possession of Officers and Soldiers, not being charged with any Quit Rent for the first ten years, remain still in the same uncultivated state, as when they [were] first granted, and of course will be always an obstruction to the making of Roads on the side of the Lake till some settlers can be fixed there. Our precarious communication with the province of Quebec at certain seasons of the year, requires that the advantage of a public Road should be procured as soon as possible, but it is not in the power of Man to engage those who proposed settling in those parts in any such undertaking till they have proper titles to their Lands.

The accounts which have been given to me of the falls on the Connecticut River vary so much, as these objects are seen in different lights by different people, that I was determined to see them myself, and in expectation of receiving His Maj'*'* commands relative to that part of the Country had made the necessary preparation for my expedition, by ordering, some Boats to be built in the uppermost inhabited Township on that River. My intention was to have taken a view of the whole stream from Newberry to the Massachusets Line, and to have made an attempt to render those falls and rapids (if possible) less dangerous and inconvenient for the floating of Timber down, for, I have been informed, that several Masts have been so far shattered either by the mismanagement of the Conductors, or by choosing improper seasons for such a work, as to be totally unfit for service. As the Province of New Hampshire is equally interested in the improvement of this Navigation, Mr Wentworth has declared his readiness to co-operate with me in any plan which could make it a public benefit, and I only waited for your Lord's orders to empower me to proceed in this undertaking. I have the honor to be with the greatest respect, My Lord,

On my way from the Country of the Senecas whither in my letter of the 24th June (N° 9) I informed your Lordship I was then destined, I had the honour to receive your Lordship's of the 13th of May (N° 10) and I herewith inclose a seperate letter on the Issue of my journey, and proceedings humbly requesting that your Lordship will so far indulge me as to allow the subject of this to be a farther explanation of the Transactions at the Fort Stanwix Treaty which from what I have heard seems necessary for the justification of my conduct; I even persuade myself that under these circumstances your Lordship will rather approve than condemn me for endeavouring (as every man of honor & integrity ought) to remove any the least misinformation on that head, and to set the whole in as clear a light as the bounds of a letter will admit of, and I have some hopes that in so doing your Lordship will be still farther enabled to judge of the propriety of future measures respecting the objects of that Treaty,

and tho I may be oblidged to extract in some places the substance of former letters yet I hope the placing the whole in one view will attone for it.—In order to this permit me to remind your Lordship that in former letters I shewed that between the first mention of a Boundary Line (which was soon heard of throughout the Colonies) and my receiving orders for concluding it, so much time had elapsed as gave our enemies opertunity to misrepresent our intentions to the Indians, so that after procuring and transporting a large valuable present to the place appointed for the Congress, I found the Indians sentiments so much altered, as to render the success of my negociations verry doubtfull, under these disadvantagious Circumstances I was oblidged to act as the exigency of the affairs required, and the apprehension of being oblidged in some measure to deviate from my Instructions gave me great uneasiness. My health already reduced to a verry low state from severe fatigues in his Majesty's service, was on this occasion rendered much worse by being oblidged to set whole nights generally in the open woods in private conferences with the leading men. As here the principal matters are first agitated, and the sentiments of the rest best known, I found that their jealousy was not to be removed but by permitting them to make mention of their claim extending to the Cherokee River, At this time I had suggested nothing to them on that subject but as from the circumstances of time & place the greatest part of the Transactions at these private conferences can never be committed to writing, & if they were, their enormous bulk would render them unfit to be transmitted.—These conversations & previous transactions did not make their appearance in the copy I transmitted, which according to the custom hitherto observed contained only the public Treaty, and therefore it might have been imagined that this was of my first suggesting, whereas I was oblidged to admit the mention of their claim thro necessity, in consequence of what had passed, and as that was the case I could not I am certain have given them a more favourable idea of His Majesty's goodness than His declining so fine a Tract to remove the possibility of dispute, rather than from a doubt of their title, & I have since repeatedly found that this was highly pleasing to them, but as they came with fixed resolutions on that head, which I have already observed, & as I could not put off or wait the farther sense of Government thereon, without consequences for which I could never make atonement, I was compelled to act as I did, and I thought my conduct farther justified on the following principles. First, That in Transactions with such a People at such a Distance from Court, some latitude was often given to His Majesty's servants, and that the same was never more necessary than on that occasion, Second, That my Orders on that Head seemed to be founded on a beleif that the Cherokees claimed a right to that Country, if this could be made to appear otherwise of which I was certain, it removed that objection.— Third, that the Inhabitants of Virginia laid claims thereto in virtue of old purchases some of which had been formerly countenanced by the Crown, & that the back Inhabitants of that Colony who are a verry encreasing & enterprising people had a strong desire to establish themselves in that Country, had already made many advances thereto, and in case the Indians had not ceded it would soon begin settlements thereon which would certainly be productive of a war, at the same time I was but too sensible of the inefficacy of any measures of the Colony to prevent such settlements, and of the Interest that many persons of Consequence had in wishing them to be extended.—Fourth, That the removing the claims of the Northern Confederacy by a Cession to His Majesty at a time when they were so much disposed for it, would be gaining a great point, the only means of carrying on the Treaty & the least productive of any ill consequences, when I considered all these points, & that whatever might have of

late been said of ye pretensions of the Cherokees, the Northern Confederacy were more powerfull & more inclined to dispute, & their dispute of more dangerous consequence, I could no longer hesitate as to the part I had to act. And I fully persuade myself that on due consideration of the premises the motives on which I acted will appear strongly in justification of my measures. — For the rest I have only to say that besides some private sales ratified by the Governour and made according to the usual mode with which I had nothing to do, there were two Grants or Indian Deeds against which I was not aware any objection would be made. The one to Mr Croghan was only a confirmation of two former grants which the Indians particularly desired to make, & beleive they did without any influence, I am certain it was without mine, & which as he told me he took for the satisfaction of the Proprietaries of Pensilvania in order to the obtaining a grant in the usual way, He farther assuring me that he had mentioned his old pretensions to your Lordship. The other Grant was to the Traders who suffered losses in the year 1763, it was made an article of the peace with them afterwards and was judged a verry prudent measure by obtaining from them a Retribution in the only way in their power & thereby furnishing a precedent that might be of use hereafter should they commit depredations, it was well known to Government, & chearfully agreed to by the Indians who were disposed to give the sufferers a greater extent of land than is in the grant, had I not interposed, thro' an apprehension that there were not wanting malicious persons, who thro' envy or ill nature might take occasion to lessen the importance of the Transactions of that Treaty by remarks on the extent of a private Grant, tho' such grant could not prove any loss to the Crown, as it must be subject to the same Quit Rent of any other, and tho it was an act of Justice & policy, & did not reach within one hundred miles. of the great Kanhawa. Some of the Indians thro' principle, and all of them from an inclination. to shew their regard to Treatys, made particular mention of these grants in their speeches recommending them to His Majesty, as they did everry thing that seemed necessary to their Interest, & this I can safely assure your Lordship they did of their own meer motion, they observed to me that from what they knew of the present price of lands here, they were sensible they could not receive the 10th part of the value of the Cession, that therefore they had the stronger reliance on His Majesty's attention to their humble requests, I have upon all occasions given as nearly as possible the litteral sense of the Indians as delivered in their speeches, but in this case I softened them without deviating from their meaning, because I found them rather more animated than they often are, or than I desired, & altho this could not surprise any man acquainted with the particular mode of expression of that confederacy in matters of much moment, I was aware that it might be liable to misconstruction unless due allowance be made for them as savages who have the most extravigant notions of freedom, property and independance, & who cannot as yet be persuaded to give up their hopes & expectations from the Crown, and any person who well understands & impartially represents them must admit that in all such treaties they endeavour to maintain their own importance by the most forcible expressions, to which 1 may with truth add, that, as their words for fear of offence have been often glossed over before they were committed to writing by many others, I was the first that in the most critical period took upon me to check them in their sallys of that nature, whilst at the same time I took care so to conduct myself as to point out their [error]1 without driving them to extremitys, I know there are too many people within these few years past that either think it necessary to their importance, y" Interests of their party, or to the gratification of private

1 Johnson Manuscripts, XVII. — Ed.