Ten or more years after the trial, it became known that the court agreed beforehand "that the reasons for the determination should never be given," and "that the minority should concede the determination as the unanimous opinion of the court." The first of the two rules suggests at once, what, indeed, has always been understood to be true, that the court did not consider the points of law involved at all, but that the case, as lawyers say, "went off on State reasons."

The Trenton decision, while final and conclusive as to the public corporate rights of Connecticut, in no way touched the land-owners, who, the war over, began to find their way back to their old homes. These were left to the justice or mercy of Pennsylvania; and it is to be feared that the treatment they received sometimes made them think more kindly of Butler and of Brandt. The Trenton judges all commended the unfortunate holders to the favorable consideration of the victor State, urging that they should be quieted in all their claims by an act of the Assembly, and that the right of soil, as derived from Connecticut, should be held sacred. There now ensued that generation of legislation and litigation, "Yankee claims," and "accommodation" and "intrusion" acts, of Ethan Allen and his Vermont methods, of plans to organize a new State and to force its recognition upon Pennsylvania and Congress, and reckless agitation which together make up the third "Pennamite and Yankee War." The "Accommodation Act," once repealed and then re-enacted, put an end to the - strife.

Had the court of 1782 decided this issue the other way, Connecticut could not permanently have retained the country; a State of Westmoreland would have been the almost certain result. The conviction that one State within the present limits of Pennsylvania would be better than two was probably one of the State reasons that led the court to its conclusion. However, when the third "Pennamite and Yankee War” was in progress, and still more when it was over, Connecticut men flowed into the Northern belt of Pennsylvania, where

their presence is seen to-day in New England names, towns, and manners.

The decision of 1782 was wider than the case submitted, applying as it did to the whole Connecticut claim within the charter-limits of Pennsylvania; but Connecticut made no objection on that score. Fortunately for her, Pennsylvania had a definite boundary on the west. Carrying her stake westward, she resolutely drove it into the ground five degrees west of the Delaware; that is, she asserted her right to the strip of land lying between 41° and 42° 2′ west of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River, which, by the treaties of 1763 and 1783, had taken the place of the South Sea as the western boundary. In 1783 Governor Trumbull issued a proclamation forbidding all persons to settle on those lands without permission first obtained of the General Assembly.

The good grace with which Connecticut submitted to the Trenton decision has excited the surprise of historians, who have cast about for the cause. Governor Hoyt supposes "that Connecticut had prearranged the case with Pennsylvania and Congress, and that out of the arrangement she was to get the Western Reserve," and refers for proof to a congressional report on finance, made a month after the decision, which says: "Virginia and Connecticut have also made cessions, the acceptance of which, for particular reasons, have been delayed." Mr. Johnston also supposes" that Connecticut had reasons apart from the justice of the decision," and he finds. them in the relation of the Western lands to the question of American nationality. The suggestion is ventured that if Connecticut was actuated by any reason other than deference to the authority of the Trenton tribunal, it was a desire to strengthen her position west of the Pennsylvania line. She would evidently be better able to deal with the new dispute if the old one was off her hands.

1

The Pennsylvania construction of the charter of 1681 was

1 Brief of Title, etc., 46, 47.

2 Connecticut, 280, 281.

wholly satisfactory to New York, when the time came for her to look after the country west of the Delaware. That construction saved her a dispute, and, possibly, a large extent of her present territory as well.' Commissioners appointed by the two colonies fixed the northeastern boundary of Pennsylvania on an island in the Delaware in 1774; the line west of that point was surveyed in 1786-87, and ratified in 1789.

The northern boundary of Connecticut is 42° 2′, the southern boundary of New York 42°; and the overlapping tract, called at the time "the Gore," led to a controversy between the two States. In 1795 Connecticut, for the consideration of $40,000, quit-claimed to Ward and Halsey all her right and title to the said strip of land. Those to whom they sold the lands found settlers with New York titles already in possession. In 1796 suits were brought in the United States Circuit Court to eject the New York claimants. Before the cases were heard, Connecticut wholly renounced her right and title to land or jurisdiction west of the line of 1733, which threw the suitors out of court. This act of renunciation led to long and bitter murmuring on the part of those holding the Ward and Halsey titles, which was finally quieted, partly by time and partly by a compensation voted from the State treasury.

Massachusetts fared much better than Connecticut in maintaining her Western title. Her cession of 1785 to the nation will be treated in another place; but here it is important to remark that that cession did not touch her contest with New York for the lands within her charter-limits west of the Delaware and east of the north and south cession-line. That issue was compromised in 1786. Massachusetts surrendered to New York all her claim to the jurisdiction over said tract; and New York surrendered to Massachusetts all claim to the lands within the Massachusetts limits lying west of a line

1 Maps of the middle of the last century often bound Pennsylvania north by parallel 43°.

running from the eighty-second mile-post west of the northeast corner of Pennsylvania north to Sodus Bay in Lake Ontario. This tract, the southeast corner of which is a little southwest of Elmira, embraced several million acres of land, including the famous Genesee Valley.

In June, 1788, Congress instructed the Geographer to run the meridian by which New York and Massachusetts had limited themselves on the west, and to ascertain the quantity of land in the triangular tract lying west of said meridian and north of parallel 42° north. This tract was sold to the State of Pennsylvania the same year. The act of Congress authorizing the President to issue the letters patent bears date, January 3, 1792.

Mr. H. G. Stevens writes: "Dear fussy old Richard Hakluyt, the most learned geographer of his age, but with certain crude and warped notions of the South Sea 'down the back of Florida,' which became worked into many of King James's and King Charles's charters, and the many grants that grew out of them, was the unconscious parent of many geographical puzzles." Puzzles there are in abundance, whether Hakluyt was the parent of them or not. The principal of these puzzles on the Atlantic slope we have sought to solve. In future chapters we shall consider the similar ones found in the Northwest.2

1

1 Narrative and Critical History of America, V., 180.

2 Sidney George Fisher: The Making of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1896, chap. x, gives a very satisfactory account of the Pennsylvania-Connecticut controversy.

VIII.

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 consequences flowing from it were such as to mark it a distinct new departure.

Previous to the war, England had virtually 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 then had 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, England began to see things in new relations. In fact, the situation was materially changed. She was left in undisputed possession of the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley. Canada and Florida were British dependencies, and governments must be provided for them. The Indians of 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, a widespread combination 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;