But as the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations have thought proper to insert in their _Report_ the above-mentioned letters from General Gage and Governor Wright, it may not be improper for us to give the opinion of his Majesty's house of burgesses of the dominion of Virginia, on the _very point_ in question, as conveyed to his Majesty in their address of the 4th of August 1767, and delivered the latter end of that year, to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, by Mr. Montague, agent for the colony.--The house of burgesses say,--"We humbly hope, that we shall obtain your royal indulgence, _when we give it as our opinions_, that it will be _for your Majesty's service, and the interest of your American dominions in general, to continue the encouragements_" (which were a _total exemption from any consideration-money whatsoever, and a remission of quit-rent for ten years, and of all kinds of taxes for fifteen years_) "for _settling those frontier lands_." By this means the house observed, "_New_ settlements will be made _by people of property, obedient subjects to government_; but if the present restriction should continue, we have the strongest reason to believe, _that country will become the resort of fugitives and vagabonds, defiers of law and order, and who in time may form a body dangerous to the peace and civil government of this colony_." We come now to the consideration of the 9th, 10th, and 11th paragraphs. In the 9th, the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations observe, "That admitting the settlers over the mountains, and on the Ohio, to be as numerous as _report_ states them to be," [and which we shall from undoubted testimony, prove to be not less than five thousand families, of at least six persons to a family, independent of some thousand families, which are also settled _over_ the mountains, within the limits of the province of Pennsylvania] yet their Lordships say, "It operates strongly in point of argument _against_ what is proposed." And their Lordships add, "if the foregoing reasoning has any weight, it ought certainly to induce the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council, 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."