"2

mine many of the particulars concerning the form of government determined upon in this constitution. Three years before, Thomas Pownall, a member of the Company and brother of the secretary of the Board of Trade, had proposed to take the Massachusetts Bay charter for a model,' and it seems likely that that plan was followed. The governor and other officers of the colony were to be appointed by, and hold "their several commissions during the pleasure of the King. These officers, moreover, were to be quite independent of everyone except the King in regard to their salaries. They were to be paid by the Company, to be sure, but the Company was compelled to give bonds for £10,000 to secure them, and later actually did give such security for the payment of £3,000 annually for officers' salaries. Beginning with the date of the governor's commission, the Company was to have paid that amount regularly in half yearly payments for the support of the governmental establishment. Walpole and his as sociates were to have been held responsible for such pay ment "until provision should have been made by some act of General Assembly, to be approved of by his said Majesty, for the support of the said establishment." " The salaries of the new colonial officers were fixed by Lord Dartmouth's report as follows:

3

It is from "Mr. John Ballendine to his friend in Virginia," dated London, March 23, 1773. He says: "I can inform you for certain that the new province on the Ohio is confirmed to the proprietors by the name of Pittsylvania, in honor of Lord Chatham. Mr. Wharton, from Philadelphia, will be appointed governor in a few days; all other appointments to be made by the King. The seat of government is to be fixed at the fork of the Great Kanawa and Ohio rivers, as I expected from the situation of the country." Pa. Journal, June 9, 1773. The Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept. 8, 1773, published a rumor that Col. George Mercer, who had been agent for the old Ohio Company, was "to be governor of the new colony on the Ohio, which should be called Pittsylvania."

1 Thos. Pownall to Sir William Johnson, April, 1770. Writings of Washington (Sparks), 448.

II.,

2 Considerations on the Agreement, et cetera, p. 36.

3 Franklin's Works, X., 362.

* Considerations on the Agreement, et cetera, p. 36, citing Register "in the provincial rolls office."

"Franklin's Works, X., 362.

Loc. cit. The italics are mine.

Besides this the Company was responsible for the payment of the contingent expenses to an amount not to exceed £500.1

In view of these facts concerning the form of government, and the farther fact (to be shown presently) that the colony was to have embraced a considerably larger territory than the grant to the Company, it can hardly be asserted that a proprietary colony, in the ordinary meaning of that term, was contemplated. Indeed, none of the thirteen colonies were more dependent on the crown than it was intended that Vandalia should be. Speculation was, of course, indulged in as to who was to receive appointments to the new colonial offices, and there is little doubt that George Mercer, former agent for the Ohio Company, expected to be appointed governor.3

But to return to Lord Dartmouth's report. It goes on to recommend "that the grantees should, upon the day of the date of the grant, pay into the receipt of his said Majesty's exchequer, the sum of £10,460: 7s: 3d., pursuant to the agreement made with his Majesty's treasury on the 4th of January, 1770," and that all prior claims upon the lands "should be saved and reserved to the respective occupiers and pos

3 See his letter to William Fairfax, Dec. 2, 1773. Rowland's George Mason, I., 157.

4 This would secure the titles of the so-called Indiana Co. (Traders graut), George Washington (see his advertisement in Pa. Chronicle of June 28, 1773) and other officers of the French and Indian War. As for the Ohio Company the facts seem to be as follows: When the Walpole company petitioned for a large grant early in 1770, it was found that not only was Arthur Lee's petition of 1768 for 2,500,000 acres of the same land being pressed in

In regard to the boundaries, the land grant to the company was to be bounded by the following lines: "Beginning at the south side of the river Ohio, opposite to the mouth of Scioto; then southerly through the pass of the Ouassioto Mountains, to the south side of the said mountains; then along the side of the said mountains northeastly to the fork of the Great Kenhawa, made by the junction of Green Briar River and New River; thence along the said Green Briar River, on the easterly side of the same, unto the head or termination of the northeasterly branch thereof; opposition, but also the Ohio Company, represented by Colonel George Mercer, was suing for a completion of their grant which also conflicted. (Franklin's Works, X., 350). The latter was bought off by the following written agreement, made May 7, 1770. "We, the Committee of the Purchasers of a Tract of Country for a new Province on the Ohio in America, do hereby admit the Ohio Company as a Company purchaser with us, for two Shares of the said Purchase in Consideration of the engagement of their Agent, Col. Mercer, to withdraw the application of the said Company for a separate Grant within the Limits of the said Purchase. Witness our Hands," et cetera.-Christopher Gist's Journal, p. 244. "This action of Mercer without authority was not approved by the Ohio Company, and while the subject was still in agitation the Revolutionary War came on and put an end to the existence of both Companies."-Dinwiddie Papers, I., 18. This is not strictly true, as will be shown. See George Mason's account of the Ohio Company's action in Rowland's George Mason, I., 414.

Arthur Lee and his associates failed to receive a grant. Besides Arthur Lee and two Londoners, his company comprised "thirty-three gentlemen of character and fortune in Virginia and Maryland, (several of whom were of his Majesty's council in Virginia, and many of them, members of the house of assembly, both of that colony and of the province of Maryland)." They gave themselves the name of "Mississippi Company" and proposed to increase their number to fifty. Considerations on the Agreement, et cetera, pp. 25, 26. This appears to have been a scheme distinct from that embodied in "a petition, that was presented to government in 1772, by many respectable persons, requesting the establishment of a new colony, at an expense to the crown, upon the river Mississippi." Dinwiddie Papers, I., 38. I find nothing further to show that this petition proposed a new government. Arthur Lee seems to have continued in a position of opposition to the Walpole Company. In August, 1782, he opposed in congress the doctrine that the sovereignty over the western lands devolved upon congress, urging that if congress should take that position, the claim of Franklin and others "to some of the lands in question" "will be strengthened." Rather than allow this, he thought that our ministers plenipotentiary in Paris, one of whom was Franklin himself, ought not to be allowed to claim the West in the pending peace negotiations on any other ground than the rights of the separate states. See The Thomson Papers, N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls, 1878, p. 143; Welling's The States' Rights Conflict Over the Public Lands, Am. Hist. Assn. Papers, III. No. 2, p. 174.

I An old name for the Cumberland. See "A New Map of the Western Parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina" by Thos. Hutchins, London, November 1, 1778; also a map published by Laurie and Whittle, No. 53, London, 12th May, 1794. The pass referred to is evidently Cumberland Gap.

thence easterly to the Alleghany Mountains; thence along the said Alleghany Mountains to Lord Fairfax's line; thence along the same to the spring head of the north branch of the river Potomack; thence along the western boundary line of the province of Maryland to the southern boundary line of the province of Pennsylvania; thence along the said boundary line of the Province of Pennsylvania to the end thereof; thence along the western boundary line of the said province of Pennsylvania until the same shall strike the river Ohio; thence down the said river Ohio to the place of beginning.' These are the limits of the land grant, but no restrictions were made upon settling beyond a certain Cherokee treaty line, and in fact the western limits of the Colony of Vandalia were extended beyond the line of the grant to the Louisa or Catawba, or Cuttawa river," which is now called the Kentucky river.

3

There was one other item of the report which is of interest as showing the design to establish the Episcopal church in the new colony. It provided that in each parish "there should be a tract of three hundred acres reserved for the purpose of a glebe for the support of a minister of the church of England. "6

Such, then, are the main points of Lord Dartmouth's report, drawn up by the Lord's Commissioners for trade and

1 Lord Fairfax's boundary line ran from the S. W. corner of Maryland, S. E. by S. to the headwaters of "Conway R." or "Rapid Ann." See Thos. Hutchins' Map, London, Nov. 1, 1778.

2 The language of Lord Dartmouth's report. Franklin's Works, X., 363, and Plain Facts, p. 155.

• Established at the treaty of Lochaber, Oct. 1770. Franklin's Works, X., 366. Plain Facts, p. 156. Christopher Gist (Journal, p. 243) says that the new colony "contained within its limits all the Walpole Grant, with the addition of all the country westward to the Kentucky River." Professor Turner's map of Vandalia in the Americal Historical Review, Oct., 1895, represents, not the proposed colony of Vandalia, but merely the proposed land grant to Walpole and company.

Compare the following maps: "The U. S. of N. Am. etc." by Wm. Faden, 1783; Map of Richardson and Urquhart, Lond., Apr. 26, 1780; "Carte de l'Amerique Septentrionale etc." 1790; and Hutchins' Map, Lo nd., Nov. 1, 1778, on which the river in question is called "Kentucke or Cuttawa River."