the directions observed, the tone comes forth finely with the slightest pressure of the fingers imaginable, and you swell it at pleasure by adding a little more pressure, no instrument affording more shades, if one may so speak, of the Forte Piano.

One wetting with the sponge will serve for a piece of music twice as long as Handel's Water-piece, unless the air be uncommonly drying.

But a number of thin slices of sponge, placed side by side, and their ends held fast between two stripes of wood, like rulers, of a length equal to the glasses, and placed so that the loose ends of the sponges may touch the glasses behind, and by that means keep them constantly wet, is very convenient where one proposes to play a long time. The sponges being properly wetted will supply the glasses sufficiently a whole evening, and touching the glasses lightly do not in the least hurt the sound.

The powder of chalk is useful two ways.

Fingers, after much playing, sometimes begin to draw out a tone less smooth and soft, and you feel as well as hear a small degree of sharpness. In this case, if you dip the ends of your wet fingers in the chalk so as to take up a little, and rub the same well on the skin, it will immediately recover the smoothness of tone desired. And, if the glasses have been sullied by handling, or the fingers not being just washed have some little greasiness on them, so that the sounds cannot easily be produced, chalk so used will clean both glasses and fingers, and the sounds will come out to your wish.

A little practice will make all this familiar; and

you will also find by trials what part of the fingers most readily produces the sound from particular glasses, and whether they require to be touched on the edge chiefly, or a little more on the side; as different glasses require a different touch, some pretty full on the flat side of the brim, to bring out the best tone, others more on the edge and some of the largest may need the touch of two fingers at once.

CCCCLXX

I

SETTLEMENT ON THE OHIO RIVER 1

Report of 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.

MY LORDS:-Pursuant to your Lordships' order of the 25th May, 1770, we have taken into our con

I The report which follows was drawn up by Lord Hillsborough President of the Board of Trade, in opposition to the petition of a company of gentlemen, with Thomas Walpole at their head, for a grant of land on the Ohio River, already referred to in the preceding correspondence as Walpole's Grant.

It is followed by an answer prepared by Dr. Franklin, which proved so cogent and conclusive that when the subject came again before the council on the first of July, 1772, and his answer was read, the petition was granted. Hillsborough was greatly chagrined by his defeat, and shortly after resigned his seat as President of the Board of Trade. Lord Dartmouth succeeded him. In both changes Hillsborough's late colleagues, as well as the colonies, found great satisfaction. In a letter to his son, dated July 14, 1773, Franklin wrote of this matter:

"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

sideration 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 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 wrong-headed. Witness, besides his various behavior 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 the 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-laChapelle, 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."

Whatever may have been Hillsborough's other accomplishments, this report shows conclusively that he was but poorly equipped for a seat in the executive councils of a great empire.-ED.

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 quit-rent 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 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 your Lordships, to the end that your Lordships may judge, with the greater precision, of the situation of the lands prayed for in the memorial.

II. From this sketch your Lordships will observe that a very considerable part of the lands prayed for lies beyond the line which has, in consequence of his Majesty's orders for that purpose, been settled by treaty, as well with the tribes of the Six Nations and their confederates, as with the Cherokee Indians, as the boundary-line between his Majesty's territories and their hunting-grounds; and as the faith of the crown is pledged in the most solemn manner, both to the Six Nations and to the Cherokees, that, notwithstanding the former of these nations had ceded the property in the lands to his Majesty, yet no settlement shall be made beyond that line, it is our duty to report to your Lordships our opinion that it would on that account be highly improper to comply with the request of the memorial, so far as it includes any lands beyond the said line.

It remains, therefore, that we report to your Lordships our opinion, how far it may consist with good policy and with justice that his Majesty should comply with that part of the memorial which relates to those lands which are situated to the east of that line, and are part of the dominion of Virginia.

III. And, first, with regard to the policy, we take leave to remind your Lordships of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and approved and confirmed by his Majesty, immediately after the