upon the New York Governor that he interpreted his commission as giving him jurisdiction to that line. Governor Clinton promptly interposed a counter-claim to jurisdiction eastward to the Connecticut River; a claim grounded upon the express terms of the New York Grant, but which had nevertheless been overcome by Massachusetts and Connecticut, whose grants, like Wentworth's jurisdiction, had been limited by no definite western boundary. It may be noted here that the two latter colonies had succeeded in advancing their western boundaries to the present line twenty miles east of the Hudson by dint of prescriptive rights acquired by prior occupancy of the territory a right in which the New Hampshire Governor was entirely deficient.

While the rival governors were preparing to contest their claims, the outbreak of the Franco-Canadian war in 1754 caused a total suspension of emigration to the territory, its exposed position near the theatre of hostilities counterbalancing all the advantages which it offered to settlers. But the advent of peace and British ascendancy in Canada, in 1759, set the tide which speedily filled the Connecticut Valley and the shores of Lake Champlain with a God-fearing and liberty-loving population. The young men of Massachusetts and Connecticut, who traversed the wilds on numerous military expeditions during the war, brought back glowing accounts of the swarms of fur-bearing animals that roamed the forests, of the salmon and trout with which the rivers and lakes abounded, and above all, of the mammoth growths of white pine that crowded its valleys and bore testimony to a soil of surpassing fertility. These quickly returned, bringing with them their neighbors and friends, to reap the benefits of the liberal grants offered by the Crown through the New Hampshire Governor. During the four years from 1760 to 1764, Wentworth granted not less than one hundred and fifty townships west of the Connecticut, and fifty or more on the east side. New York made no grants in the territory, but continued to assert a claim eastward to the river, and constantly warned off the settlers under Wentworth's grants. Proclamations and counter-proclamations were issued, and representations made to the Home Government, by the governors of the two provinces, resulting finally in an order of the king in council, dated July 20, 1764, definitely establishing the west bank of the Connecticut as the boundary between the two. Wentworth, however, and his successor, continued to make grants east of the river as long as the royal authority was recognized in New Hampshire.

The grantees of these townships were for the most part from Connecticut, though a considerable number were from Massachusetts and a few from Rhode Island. As a rule, also, the first settlers came from the same locality

as the grantees; so that for many years the Connecticut element in the population greatly predominated. Under their charters, whose vagueness allowed exceeding liberality of construction, the settlers speedily developed a system of town government surpassing, if possible, in its spirit of independence and unbridled democracy, that of Massachusetts and Connecticut, on which it was modeled. Their remoteness from the seat of the provincial government at Portsmouth, the sparseness of the population, and the consequent danger from Indians, naturally led to this result among a people already by previous training deeply imbued with ideas of local self-government. The strength of religious sentiment among them, and the almost universal prevalence of Congregationalism as a form of belief and of church polity, greatly intensified this spirit and lent a powerful impulse to all its manifestations. There was scarcely a function of civil government which these fierce little republics did not essay during the first years of their existSo manifest was this spirit in the very beginning of the settlements, that the New York Governor used it to enforce his argument against Wentworth's claim to jurisdiction west of the Connecticut, representing to the Lords of Trade and Plantations that "the New England Governments are formed on republican principles, and those principles are zealously inculcated on their youth, in opposition to the principles of the Constitution of Great Britain. The Government of New York, on the contrary, is established as nearly as may be after the model of the English Constitution. Can it then be good policy to diminish the extent of jurisdiction in His Majesty's Province of New York, to extend the power and influence of the other?"

ence.

The royal decree of 1764, transferring the territory west of the river to the jurisdiction of New York, was not only without the consent of the settlers, but was manifestly against their will. The New York Government, being then the embodiment of the centralized system as opposed to the New England town system, would at best have found it difficult to maintain more than a nominal authority over the Grants, which was the collective name given to the Wentworth towns outside the Mason Line. But when it was claimed that this arbitrary act of the Crown was retroactive and operated to invalidate the land titles of the settlers, all thought of acquiescence fled from their minds, and at once gave place to a spirit of uncompromising resistance. Especially was this the case on the west side of the Green Mountains, where, from their proximity to New York, they were most frequently evicted from their lands by adverse claimants from the latter province. East of the mountains, and more particularly in the Cohos country, as the Upper Connecticut Valley was then called, the power of New York was so little felt that the transfer occasioned no more

active hostility than arose from sympathy and a general spirit of resistance to oppression even in the abstract, which was everywhere rife at the time.

The people on the two sides of the mountains, however, were never so closely united in sentiment as might have been expected from their common origin and similarity of circumstances. Not only was the Green. Mountain range itself at that time a formidable barrier to intercourse between the two sections, but there were active causes of alienation even more potent and lasting than this passive agent. As has already been stated, the settlers on the Grants, with the exception of a small number from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, had come from Connecticut. The unity of religious and political sentiment among them has also been remarked; and it is true, in a general sense, that there was substantial accord in their views. At the same time, there were differences sufficient, in conjunction with the physical cause above named, to originate two distinct political parties and lead to two different schemes of statute-making among them at the period of the Revolution; incidentally, also, favoring the growth of the doctrines which are the subject of this paper.

All the settlers had brought with them a passionate attachment to the town system, and the belief that the popular branch of the Legislature ought to be absolutely supreme in a constitutional government. Those from Massachusetts, fresh from the long conflict between the Assembly and the Executive in that province, had also imbibed the belief that a state of perfect security and happiness would result from the privilege of electing the executive as well as the legislative branch of the Government. This latter belief was fully shared by the great body of those who had come from Connecticut, since there the people had long enjoyed the privilege of electing annually all the officers of Government; under which system, and the peculiar blending of Church and State which obtained in that colony, a very great degree of liberty had been enjoyed, especially as the great majority of the people were of one religious faith and practice.

There had been, however, in Connecticut, a small minority, composed of lesser religious sects and denominations, who were treated as dissenters from the established faith, and who complained, with much reason apparently, that they were unduly persecuted by the prevailing sect. These dissenters, known generally by the name of Separatists, conceived that their wrongs, which were of course visited upon them by the executive branch of the Government, were in a great measure due to some inherent principle of tyranny common to all forms of central authority, however con stituted. They consequently looked with disfavor upon an independent executive per se. Having struggled persistently, but vainly, for toleration

in Connecticut, these radicals, when the emigration to the Grants commenced, went in great numbers to the region west of the Green Mountains, that being the most remote from the seat of the Government under which they were expecting to live. Here they procured numerous town charters, and established themselves in a permanent ascendancy wherever they cast their lot. One entire society of them, minister and all, settled in Bennington, and was soon joined by another of the same sect from Massachusetts. Prominent among them were the Allens, the Fays, and Warners, who headed the successful resistance to New York, and finally achieved the independence of Vermont. Most of the settlers who came from that colony of heretics, Rhode Island, also located in the vicinity of Bennington, and added an element of even fiercer democracy. Their experience of the oppressive measures of New York intensified the peculiar political sentiments of these people to the last pitch that precedes anarchy. Great strength of intellect and a remarkable boldness of expression characterized the leaders, resulting in the rapid spread of their peculiar tenets, and making Bennington at once the centre of political influence west of the Mountains. At a later date, also, the southernmost towns on the east side came to look to Bennington for guidance.

On the other hand, the emigrants to the Cohos country were almost wholly of the prevailing sect in Connecticut and of their religious brethren in Massachusetts. Here also events had led to a concentration of influence scarcely less potent than that which had its seat at Bennington. Among the earliest settlers in the valley had come a number of men of large wealth and culture, many of them graduates of Yale or Harvard College, who were eminently fitted to mold the institutions of a State, as well as guide its destinies when formed. To the influence of these men was due the location at Hanover, in 1769, of Dartmouth College, then just chartered by the Crown, with the privilege of choosing its own habitation. Thus, with President Eleazer Wheelock, there were drawn to Hanover and its immediate vicinity his son and successor, Colonel John Wheelock; his brother-in-law, Bezaleel Woodward, first Professor of Mathematics in the college; and a numerous company of other educated and influential men, whose zeal and capacity for public affairs added greatly to the prominence which these river towns had already attained. The college became naturally the centre of political influence in the valley. It acquired further ascendancy in this direction from being given a quasi jurisdiction over a threemile square district in the midst of which it was located, and which was set off from Hanover and given the name of Dresden. The river was no more than nominally a dividing line between separate provinces. The Govern

ment of New York was too remote to make itself much felt in the towns on the west side, while that of New Hampshire was scarcely more than a name to those on the east side. It issued a few commissions to justices of the peace and to militia officers, and exacted a trifling tax in return. But it provided no local courts, and little defence against the Indians. Representation in the Provincial Assembly being entirely at the pleasure of the royal governor, none of the towns outside the Mason Grant, on account of their republican proclivities probably, had, with one or two exceptions, ever been summoned to send delegates; and they, in turn, paid little heed to legislative enactments in which they had no voice. For the purpose of more effectually resisting the attacks of the savages, loose confederacies of the towns on both sides of the river were frequently formed-connections which were dissolved and renewed at will, according as the circumstances of the hour seemed to dictate. Familiarity with such shifting relations, and practical freedom from all exterior restraint, gradually bred in the towns on the Upper Connecticut an exaggerated notion of the extent of their prerogative; while their non-participation in the larger affairs of government further narrowed their views and prepared them for the extraordinary part which they were destined to play throughout the tentative period in which the colonies wrought out the problem of free government.

Such was the situation of affairs when the revolt of the colonies set on foot two diverse schemes of state-making in the old province of New Hampshire one emanating from the revolutionary provincial congress at Exeter, and embracing only the territory of the later province east of the Connecticut; the other taking its rise at Bennington and comprehending the · grants between the river and Lake Champlain. Between these two a third scheme, nebulous and indeterminate as yet, was faintly broached at the college, but attracted no attention either at Exeter or Bennington. This latter scheme aimed at a confederation of all the grants on both sides of the river into a State, with its seat of government at or near the college.

Governor John Wentworth, the last of the royal line in New Hampshire, had maintained himself in nominal authority till September, 1775, when he abdicated and sailed away in a British frigate. Upon his departure, the evil consequences entailed upon the people by a hundred years of paternal government at once became apparent. Not only was the province left without any civil constitution-whereas the other New England colonies, under their charter organizations, passed without shock into a state of independence, Connecticut's royal charter of 1662 even continuing by express provision as her organic law till 1818-but the habit of dependence