as well advertised, and the emphasis upon liberty of
conscience, when contrasted with the restrictions of the Test Act, gives
ample support for the significance of liberty as a motivating factor.
However, economic causes predominated.

[29] Ray Allen Billington, _Westward Expansion_ (New York, 1960), p.
380. Billington refers here to the distribution-pre-emption measure of
1841, whereas Congress actually recognized squatters' rights in the act
of 1830.

[30] Williams, "The Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania," p. 382.

CHAPTER THREE

_The Politics of Fair Play_

The political system of these predominantly Scotch-Irish squatters in
the Susquehanna Valley, along the West Branch, offers a vivid
demonstration of the impact of the frontier on the development of
democratic institutions. Occupying lands beyond the reach of the
Provincial legislature, with some forty families of mixed national
origin in residence by 1773, these frontier "outlaws" had to devise some
solution to the question of authority in their territory.[1] Their
solution was the extra-legal creation of _de facto_ rule historically
known as the Fair Play system. The following is a contemporary
description of that system:

There existed a great number of locations of the third of April,
1769, for the choicest lands on the West Branch of Susquehanna,
between the mouths of _Lycoming_ and _Pine creeks_; but the
proprietaries, from extreme caution, the result of that experience,
which had also produced the very penal laws of 1768, and 1769, and
the proclamation already stated, had prohibited any surveys being
made beyond the _Lycoming_. In the mean time, in violation of all
law, a set of hardy adventurers, had from time to time, seated
themselves on this doubtful territory. They made improvements, and
formed a very considerable population. It is true, so far as
regarded the rights to real property, they were not under the
protection of the laws of the country; and were we to adopt the
visionary theories of some philosophers, who have drawn their
arguments from a supposed state of nature, we might be led to
believe that the state of these people would have been a state of
continual warfare; and that in contests for property the weakest
must give way to the strongest. To prevent the consequences, real
or supposed, of this state of things, they formed a mutual compact
among themselves