charter was not so bad as to usurp a vacated charter.” The General Assembly were obliged to be content with this answer, as it contained much truth, and came from the clergy, whose ambition and power are not to be trifled with. Whatever might be the reason of the English Government’s winking at the contempt shewn to their authority by the people of Connecticut, it certainly added to their ingratitude and bias to usurpation. Having been in possession of that country one-hundred and forty years, the General Assembly, though unsupported either by law or justice, resolved to take up and settle their lands west not only of Hudson but Susquehanna river, and extending to the South-Sea. In pursuance of this resolution, they with modesty passed over New-York, and the Jerseys, because they are possessed by Mynheers and fighting christians, and seized on Pensylvania, claimed by Quakers, who fight not for either wife or daughter. They filled up their fathers iniquities, by murdering the Quakers and Indians, and taking possession of their lands; and no doubt, in another century, they will produce deeds of sale from Sunksquaw, Uncas, or some other supposititious Sachem. This is a striking instance of the use I have said the Colony sometimes make of their charter, to countenance and support their adventurous spirit of enterprize. They plead that their charter bounds them on the west by the South-Sea; but they seem to have forgotten that their charter was surreptitiously obtained; and that the clause on which they dwell is rendered nugatory, by the petitioners having described their lands as lying upon Connecticut river, and obtained partly by purchase and partly by conquest. Now, it being a fact beyond all controversy, that they then had not conquered, nor even pretended to have purchased, any lands west of Hudson’s-River, it is evident that their westernmost boundary never did or ought to extend further than to that river. Not that Mr. Pen has any just title to those lands on Susquehanna river which are the bone of contention, and which lie north of his patent: they belong to the assigns of the Plymouth Company, or to the Crown of England.