Another stroke the people of Connecticut received about 1753 has sorely galled them ever since, and contributed not a little to their thirst of revenge. The Governor of New-York was then appointed “Captain-General and Commander in Chief of the militia, and all the forces by sea and land, within the Colony of Connecticut, and of all the forts and places of strength within the same.” This violation of the Charter of Connecticut by George II. was very extraordinary, as the reins of Government were then in the hands of protestant dissenters, whose _supposed_ veneration for the House of Hanover operated so powerfully, that the American protestant dissenting ministers were allowed to be installed teachers, and to hold synods, without taking the oath of allegiance to the English King, at the same time that papists, and even members of the Church of England, were not excused that obligation. The aggravating appointment above mentioned added no celebrity to the name of George II. in New-England; nor, however excusable it may appear in the eyes of those who with me question the colonial pretensions of the people of Connecticut, was it, upon the ground they have been allowed to stand by the English government, justifiable in point of right, nor yet in point of policy, were the true character of the New-Yorkers fully known. This argument may be used on more occasions than the present. But Connecticut hath not been the only sufferer from the restless ambition of New-York. Twenty miles depth of land belonging to the Massachusets and Newhampshire provinces, which formerly claimed to Hudson’s river, were cut off by the line that deprived Connecticut of the same proportion of its western territory. With this acquisition, surely, the New-Yorkers might have been content; but very lately their _wisdom_, if not their “fraud,” has prevailed over the “ignorance” of Newhampshire; which has sustained another amputation of its territory, eighty miles in width and two hundred miles in length; viz. all the land between the above-mentioned twenty-mile line and Connecticut river. The particulars of this transaction are interesting. Benning Wentworth, Esq. Governor of Newhampshire, by order of his present Majesty, divided, in 1762, the vast tract of land just mentioned into about 360 townships, six miles square each. These townships he granted to proprietors belonging to the four provinces of New-England, one township to sixty proprietors; and took his fees for the same, according to royal appointment. Every township was, in twelve years time, to have sixty families residing in it. In 1769 there were settled on this piece of land 30,000 souls, at a very great expence; and many townships contained 100 families. The New-Yorkers found means to deceive the King, and obtained a decree that the East boundary of New-York, after passing Connecticut and Massachusets-Bay, should be Connecticut river.[30] This decree annexed to the jurisdiction of