of the New England grants, and referring to the settlement of the line from the mouth of Mamavo nak river to be the western bounds of Connecticut, says: "Being clearly of opinion for these and many other reasons that the present claim made by your Government of any lands westward of the Province of New York is without the least foundation, you cannot reasonably expect that I should accept of the proposal of settling and ascertaining the boundaries between the Colony of Connecticut and the Province,' or enter with you into a negociation on that subject, nor can I with any propriety agree to the alternative proposed in the Act of Assembly of your Colony which you have laid be fore me, namely: That if we cannot agree amicably to ascertain these boundaries, then to join in an application to his majesty to appoint commissioners for that purpose.'

Several communications afterwards passed between the Commissioners and Gov. Penn, calculated on their part to pursuade to a negociation and on the part of the Governor to prevent it. To give the whole of this correspondence would swell this chapter beyond its intended size, and would form perhaps, to many persons, an uninteresting detail; but as this was an early and sincere attempt on the part of the Colony and actual settlers, to adjust and settle all disputes amicably, an extract from it is given that the reader may see the manner and spirit with which the correspondence was conducted. The Commissioners, in a long letter to the Governor, dated Dec. 18, 1773, in which the

subject of the controversy is extensively embraced, say:

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"There is a clear distinction between a claim and a right, and however ill founded the claim of the Colony may by you be imagined to be, yet that it is an existing claim cannot be denied and how the admission of such claim, so far as to negociate upon it, to attempt to settle it, or to join in an application to his majesty for an adjudication upon it, can in any respect prejudice the right, we can. not comprehend,

"We apprehend that your honor is much mistaken in imagining that the settlement of the line between the Colony of Connecticut and the grant to the duke of York in 1664, was in any degree occasioned by the uncertainty of the bounds and extent of the Charter to Connecticut and the other New England grants. That determination had another and a very different foundation, viz: the possession on the part of the Dutch of that territcry which was afterwards granted to the duke of York; a possession which occasioned its being excepted out of the original grant to the Council of Plymouth, and in fact prevented its being ever vested in the crown until the conquest thereof by Col.. Nichols in August 1664. As that territory there-fore was not in 1662 in the crown to grant, no part of it could pass by the Patent to Connecticut, and it became absolutely necessary after the conquest and the grant to the duke of York, to ascertain what extent of territory had been so possessed by the Dutch and excepted out of the ancient grant

of the crown. The settlement by that Court was therefore" only to determine what part of the country the duke of York was entitled to in virtue of the Dutch possessions." In the same letter the Commissioners go on to propose that a temporary line of jurisdiction shall be agreed upon, which shall leave the settlers at Wyoming under the Government of Connecticut, during the continuance of the war then subsisting with Great Britain; and the settlers on the West branch of the Susquehanna river, who were then under the Government of Pennsylvania, they proposed should remain so, until the termination of the war, when further measures might be adopted to effect a settlement of the Controversy.

Gov. Penn, in his answer to this letter of the Commissioners dated Dec. 23, among other things, says: "As I cannot for reasons assigned accede to your proposal of a temporary line of jurisdiction, so neither can I foresee any means that appear to me likely to effectuate peace and order, and to prevent for the future such violent outrages as have been lately perpetrated in that part of the country where the people of Connecticut are now settled, but their entirely evacuating the lands in their possession until a legal decision of our controversy can be obtained."

He then in the same letter proposes that the Colony of Connecticut shall apply to the King, and assures them that the Proprietaries will meet the subject in presence of his majesty, but that if they do not think proper to do so, the Proprietaries of

Pennsylvania will apply to him for a decision on their claims. In their answer to this part of Gov. Penn's letter, the Commissioners advert to their proposal of applying jointly to the King; but object to apply separately because that on so important a subject they do not think that his majesty would come to a decision without first directing a board of Commissioners to examine the facts in America which would produce much delay and expense, and probably be postponed until after the war, &c. The Governor, in his letter, had alluded to some former sales of the Susquehanna lands to the Proprietaries by certain Indians, and in answer to this the Commissioners say, "It were easy to observe that the purchases from the Indians by the Proprietaries, and the sales by them made, were they even more ancient than they are, could add no strength to the Proprietary title, since the right of pre-emption of the natives was by the royal grant exclusively vested in the Colony of Connecticut, and consequently those purchases and sales were equally without any legal foundation. They could neither acquire any right by the one, nor transfer any title by the other, but that both the one and the other have been too recent to be the ground of any argument, since we are advised that the Proprietaries made no purchase of the natives of any consequence to this dispute prior to the treaty of Fort Stanwix," (A. D. 1768.) The Governor had also suggested an objection to the Connecticut claim, upon the ground of an impracticability in the Colony to exercise jurisdiction J

over a country extending from the Atlantic to t Pacific ocean. To this objection the Commissioners reply that it is a question of policy, not a question of right, and should not be agitated at this time; but that the Connecticut grant even under that view appears no more objectionable than the grant of so large a territory as Pennsylvania to one person. They conclude by saying that both here and in Europe they had offered, and they now repeat the offer, to submit all matters in dispute to a com petent tribunal and to be concluded by the decision. These offers however, proved unavailing and the Commissioners returned to Connecticut without having effected the object of their mission. The particulars of this Conference were laid before the General Assembly of Pennsylvania on the 29th. of Dec. 1773, and on the 18th. of January following, the Assembly passed an address to the Governor, in which, among other things, they say :"To prevent the mischievous effects of this unkind and unneighborly disposition in the Government of Connecticut, we beg leave earnestly to request that you will pursue every effectual measure to call the claimants before his majesty in Council and to bring their claim to an immediate decision."

Measures were accordingly taken for that purpose, but his majesty had now claims of a different and more important nature to decide with his American subjects, all of which were eventually settled by his acknowledgement of their independence.

After the Connecticut Commissioners had made report of the failure of the negociation with the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna