for His Majesty's Royal consideration.

Several points of Enquiry will arise

upon those Grants, concerning which the Committee chuse

not to decide, on account of their singular Importance and Delicacy.

Whether a Title, if good under the French Government will by the Surrender be valid by our Laws, without the Royal Confirmation ; or in other Words whether the Capitulation gives more to the French Grantee, than an Equitable Right to be preferred before others in the Application

1 st .

for a new Grant ]

Whether those Lands were not forfeited to the Crown of France by the Conditions in the Grants before the Surrender, and so became thereby transferred to his Majesty 1 And

2ndi y

.

Whether they were not within the Antient British Claim and consequently never Grantable by the Crown of France 1 And upon this last Question the Committee beg Leave to remark that the British Claim of Dominion before the last War, extended to the Southerly Bank of the River St. Lawrence, and by Treaty to all the Country of the Six Nations in particular, of which the controverted Grants are a part, and we 3rd y i

find that so early as the 3 rd of September, 1696, a patent did pass to Godfrey Dellius, under the Seal of this Province, for Lands including some of those now claimed under the Canadian Grants, greatly to the Northward of Crown Point, of which the

French were not possessed till nearly forty years

afterwards, to wit about the year 1731 , and whether it is imputable to the Consciousness in the French