of the new republic, with which England and her agents had nothing to do. "It has never been doubted," says Chief Justice Marshall, "that either the United States, or the several states, had a clear title to all the lands within the boundary lines described in the treaty, subject only, to the Indian right of occupancy, and that the exclusive power to extinguish that right was vested in that government which might constitutionally exercise it." These facts should be kept in mind when one comes to consider the equivocal course that England afterwards pursued. But how were the savage wards occupying these lands, and thus suddenly coming under the guardianship of the republic, to be dealt with? Were they to be evicted by force and arms, and their possessory rights entirely disregarded, or were their claims as occupants to be gradually and legitimately extinguished by treaty and purchase, as the frontiers of the white man advanced? In other words, was the seisin in fee on the part of the states, or the United States, to be at once asserted and enforced, to the absolute and immediate exclusion of the tribes from the lands they occupied, or was a policy of justice and equity to prevail, and the ultimate right to the soil set up, only after the most diligent effort to ameliorate the condition of the dependent red man had been employed? The answer to this question had soon to be formulated, for on March 1st, 1784, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee and James Monroe, delegates in the Continental Congress on the part of the State of Virginia, in pursuance of the magnanimous policy of her statesmen, executed a deed of cession to the United States, of all her claim and right to the territory northwest of the Ohio, the same to be used as a common fund "for the use and benefit of such of the United States as have become, or shall become, members of the confederation or federal alliance of the states." The only reservations made were of a tract of land not to exceed one hundred and fifty thousand acres to be allowed and granted to General George Rogers Clark, his officers and soldiers, who had conquered Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and the western British posts under the authority of Virginia, said tract being afterwards located on the Indiana side of the Ohio, adjacent to the falls of that river, and known as the "Illinois Grant," and a further tract to be laid off between the rivers Scioto and Little Miami, in case certain lands reserved to the continental troops of Virginia upon the waters of the Cumberland, "should, from the North Carolina line, bearing in further upon the Cumberland lands than was expected," prove to be deficient for that purpose. The cession of Virginia was preceded by that of New York on the first day of March, 1781, and followed by that of Massachusetts, on the 19th day of April, 1785, and that of Connecticut on the 14th of September, 1786, and thus the immense domain now comprising the states