"My ideas, my Lords, are not chimerical; I know something of the situation and state of things in America; and from some little occurrences or instances that have already really happened, I can very easily figure to myself what may, and, in short, what will certainly happen, if not prevented in time." IX. At the same time that we submit the foregoing reasoning against colonization in the interior country to your Lordships consideration, it is proper we should take notice of one argument, which has been invariably held forth in support or every proposition of this nature, and upon which the present proponents appear to lay great stress. It is urged, that such is the state of the country now proposed to be granted, and erected into a separate government, that no endeavours on the part of the crown can avail, to prevent its being settled by those who, by the increase of population in the middle colonies, are continually emigrating to the Westward, and forming themselves into colonies in that country, without the intervention or controul of government, and who, if suffered to continue in that lawless state of anarchy and confusion, will commit such abuses as cannot fail of involving us in quarrel and dispute with the Indians, and thereby endangering the security of his Majesty's colonies. We admit, that this is an argument that deserves attention; and we rather take notice of it in this place, because some of the objections stated by Governor Wright _lose their force upon the supposition that the grants against which he argues are to be erected into separate governments_. But we are clearly of opinion, that his arguments do, in the general view of them, as applied to the question of granting lands in the interior parts of America, stand unanswerable; and _admitting_ that the settlers in the country in question are _as numerous as report states them to be_, yet we submit to your Lordships, that this is a fact which does, in the nature of it, operate strongly in point of argument _against_ what is proposed; for if the foregoing reasoning has any weight, it certainly ought to induce your Lordships to advise his Majesty to take every method to _check_ the progress of these settlements, and _not_ to make such grants of the land as will have an immediate tendency to encourage them; a measure which we conceive is altogether as unnecessary as it is impolitic, as we see nothing to hinder the government of Virginia from extending the laws and constitution of that colony to such persons as may have already settled there _under legal titles_.