4396. LAND COMPANIES, Early western.—
During the regal government, two companies,
called the Loyal and the Ohio Companies,
had obtained grants from the crown for 800,000 or 1,000,000 of acres of land, each, on
the Ohio, on condition of settling them in a
given number of years. They surveyed some,
and settled them; but the war of 1755 came on,
and broke up the settlements. After it was
over, they petitioned for a renewal. Four other
large companies then formed themselves, called
the Mississippi, the Illinois, the Wabash, and
the Indiana companies, each praying for immense
quantities of land, some amounting to
200 miles square; so that they proposed to cover
the whole country north between the Ohio
and Mississippi, and a great portion of what
is south. All these petitions were depending
without any answer whatever from the crown,
when the Revolution war broke out. The petitioners
had associated to themselves some of
the nobility of England, and most of the characters
in America of great influence. When
Congress assumed the government, they took
some of their body in as partners, to obtain
their influence; and I remember to have heard,
at the time, that one of them took Mr. Gerard
as a partner, expecting by that to obtain the influence
of the French Court, to obtain grants
of those lands which they had not been able to
obtain from the British government. All these
lands were within the limits of Virginia and
that State determined, peremptorily that they
never should be granted to large companies, but
left open equally to all; and when they passed
their land law (which I think was in 1778),
they confirmed only so much of the lands of the
Loyal company, as they had actually surveyed,
which was a very small proportion, and annulled
every other pretension. And when that
State conveyed the lands to Congress (which
was not till 1784), so determined were they to
prevent their being granted to these or any
other large companies, that they made it an
express condition of the cession, that they
should be applied first towards the soldiers'
bounties, and the residue sold for the payment
of the national debt, and for no other purpose.
This disposition has been, accordingly, rigorously
made, and is still going on; and Congress
considers itself as having no authority to dispose
of them otherwise.—
To J. M. G. de Rayneval. Washington ed. iv, 371.
Ford ed., viii, 19.
(W.
March. 1801)
