Lawrence River has been always acknowledged the property of

The territory southwards of

the Five Nations, subjects or allies

of Great Brittain, & as the French settlements, as well as grants within that district were made, not

under the sanction of Cession, purchase or conquest, but by intrusion, the justice of the Title of those claimants seems to rest on His Majty s generosity which will operate no doubt as powerfully in the behalf of those Officers

& Soldiers, who now hold a great part of those disputed lands under

grants from this prov ce in consequence of His Majesty's proclamation in 1763.

LORD DARTMOUTH TO GOV** TRYON. [

Lond. Doc. XLIII.] Whitehall 4 Novr 1772.

The

State of the

French Claims on Lake Champlain appears to me, as far as I am at present informed to be a consideration of great difficulty and delicacy, and by no means of a nature to admit of an hasty decision. Those Claims are now before the Board of Trade in consequence of a reference from the privy Council, and I will not fail from what you say of the State of the Colony, as well in respect to those Claims as to the increasing disorders & confusion on the Eastern Frontiers in general, to press an immediate attention to both these important considerations.

The whole of this very important business will, I am persuaded, be discussed by the Lords of Trade with that impartiality that has always distinguished their conduct ; I shall therefore avoid saying any thing more upon that subject or upon the Canadian Claims further, than, that I think it proper to observe that the proposition in your letter N° 43, that all the territory on the south side of the River St. Lawrence was the property of the five Nations, and therefore that every Canadian