lords of council for plantation affairs ordered, October, 28, 1773, "that His Majesty's attorney-general do prepare and lay before this committee the draft of a proper instrument, to be passed under the great seal of Great Britian, containing a grant to the Hon. Thomas Walpole, Samuel Wharton, Benjamin Franklin, and John Sargents, esqs., and their heirs and assigns, of all the lands prayed for by their memorial."

It was not until the year 1775 that the patent was prepared and ready for execution. The war of independence breaking out caused a complete and final suspension of the measure of founding a new colony so far as Great Britain was concerned. Westsylvania.-Shortly after the declaration of independence the settlers on the Monongahela, the Youghiogheny, and the head region around the Ohio petitioned Congress to found a new colony and fourteenth province of the confederacy, to embrace that section, under the name of Westsylvania. It had become apparent to the settlers that the Ohio Company, the Vandalia Company, and the Indiana Company, as well as the Walpole Company, were doomed to failure; and owing to the dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia as to the territory around the forks of the Ohio the settlers were much disturbed and apprehensive as to their property rights.

The petitioners estimated that they had a population of 25,000 families in that region west of the Alleghany Mountains, residing at a distance of from 400 to 500 miles from the capital of Pennsylvania or Virginia. They therefore appealed to the Continental Congress, as their guardians, to constitute them a distinct and independent province and government by the name of "Westsylvania." The boundary suggested by the petitioners included most of Pennsylvania beyond the Alleghany Mountains, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The boundary is described in Franklin's Works (Vol. X, pp. 348,349) as follows:

Beginning on the south side of the river Ohio opposite to the mouth of Scioto, thence southerly through the pass Quasito Mountains; thence along the side of the said mountains northwesterly to the fork of the Great Kanawha, made by the junction of Green Briar and New River; thence along said Green Briar River on the easterly side of the same into the head or termination of the northeasterly branch thereof; thence easterly to the Allegany Mountains; thence along the said Allegany 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 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.

In 1777 Virginia erected the territory of Kentucky into a county, and in 1782 a supreme court and attorney general was established in the district, and in 1785 the district was divided into counties.

Although the petition of the settlers was not granted, the project of the formation of a new state was not abandoned by the people of the Ohio region. Pennsylvania opposed the proj ect of taking any of its territory in the formation of a new state. Virginia and Pennsylvania joined in 1780 in a resolution to run temporary boundary lines, which somewhat quieted the anxious settlers. Pennsylvania in 1782 passed a law declaring any attempt to establish a separate State within its borders high treason and punishable by death. With the consent of the legislature of Virginia, the people of the Kentucky district assembled in convention at Louisville in 1785, to take preliminary steps to form an independent state. The preliminaries were not fully complied with until 1790, and its admittance to the Union was not effected until June 1, 1792.

XXVII. THE CLASSIFICATION OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENTS.

BY PROF. H. L. OSGOOD,

OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK CITY.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENTS.

By H. L. OSGOOD.

More than a century ago William Blackstone propounded his classification of English colonial governments. "With respect to their internal polity," said he, "our colonies are properly of three sorts"-provincial establishments, proprietary governments, charter1 governments. The constitution of the first class, he said, rested on commissions issued by the Crown to the governors and the instructions which accompanied them, while the proprietary grants were of the nature of feudal principalities, and the charter governments were civil corporations. This classification, I believe, has been expressly or tacitly accepted by all later writers. No serious effort has been made, at least in a public way, to improve on Blackstone's treatment of the subject. Yet one has not to look very far to perceive that there are faults in the classification which impair its usefulness and tend to conceal the true character of English colonial governments.

Blackstone was undoubtedly correct in basing his classification on the internal polity of the colonies. His inquiry was directed toward the source of power within the colony and the way in which it was there exercised; and these are the facts which, if brought out, enable one to determine the character of a political system. For the purpose which he or any other investigator of the subject had in view, it makes no difference whether the inhabitants of the colonies stood in a mediate or an immediate relation to the King. The form of colonial government is not determined by the nearness or remoteness of royal control.

1 Commentaries, Introduction, section 4.