e Board a Report from the Right
Honourable the Lords of the Committee of Council for plantation affairs
Dated the 17th of this Instant in the words following viz,

Your Majesty having been pleased by your order in council of the 14th
June 1771, to refer to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations
the humble petition of James Macdonald Merchant of Portrie in the Isle
of Sky and Norman Macdonald of Slate in the said Island for themselves
and on behalf of Hugh Macdonald Edmund Macqueen John Betton and
Alexander Macqueen of Slate and Reverend Mr Wm Macqueen and Alexander
Macdonald of the said Isle of Sky and County of Inverness setting forth
that the petitioners have had in view to form a settlement to themselves
and their families in your Majesty's Province of North Carolina have for
sometime been making Dispositions for that purpose by engaging servants
and disposing of their Effects in this Country and being now ready to
embark and carry their said intention into execution the petitioners
humbly pray that your Majesty will be pleased to grant them Forty
thousand acres of Land in the said Province upon the terms and
conditions it hath been usual to grant such Lands. The said Lords
Commissioners have reported to this Committee "that the emigration of
the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland to the American Colonies is
a circumstance which in their opinion cannot fail to lessen the strength
and security and to prejudice the landed Interest and manufactures of
these Kingdoms and the great extent to which this emigration has of late
years prevailed renders it an object well deserving the serious
attention of Government that upon the Ground of this opinion they have
thought it necessary in cases where they have recommended Grants of Land
in America to be made to persons of substance and ability in this
Kingdom to propose amongst other conditions that they should be settled
by foreign protestants and therefore the said Lords Commissioners can on
no account recommend to this committee to advise your Majesty to comply
with the prayer of a petition founded on a resolution taken by a number
of considerable persons to abandon their settlements in this Kingdom and
to pass over to America with their Families and Dependants in a large
body and which therefore holds out a plan that they think instead of
meeting the encouragement ought rather to receive the discouragement of
Government. The Lords of the Committee this day too