l
the habitants and soldiers would avail themselves of their privilege of
withdrawing from the ceded territories.

* The Proclamation of 1763 drew the boundaries of "four distinct
and separate governments." Grenada was to include the island of that
name, together with the Grenadines. Dominico, St. Vincent, and Tobago.
The Floridas lay south of the bounds of Georgia and east of the
Mississippi River. The Apalachicola River was to be the dividing line
between East and West Florida. Quebec included the modern province of
that name and that part of Ontario lying north of a line drawn from Lake
Nipissing to the point where the forty-fifth parallel intersects the St.
Lawrence River.

The disposition made of the great rectangular area bounded by the
Alleghanies, the Mississippi, the Lakes, and the Gulf, was fairly
startling. With fine disregard of the chartered claims of the seaboard
colonies and of the rights of pioneers already settled on frontier
farms, the whole was erected into an Indian reserve. No "loving subject"
might purchase land or settle in the territory without special license;
present residents should "forthwith remove themselves"; trade should be
carried on only by permit and under close surveillance; officers were
to be stationed among the tribes to preserve friendly relations and to
apprehend fugitives from colonial justice.

The objects of this drastic scheme were never clearly stated. Franklin
believed that the main purpose was to conciliate the Indians. Washington
agreed with him. Later historians have generally thought that what the
English Government had chiefly in mind was to limit the bounds of the
seaboard colonies, with a view to preserving imperial control over
colonial affairs. Very likely both of these motives weighed heavily in
the decision. At all events, Lord Hillsborough, who presided over the
meetings of the Lords of Trade when the proclamation was discussed,
subsequently wrote that the "capital object" of the Government's policy
was to confine the colonies so that they should be kept in easy reach
of British trade and of the authority necessary to keep them in due
subordination to the mother country, and he added that the extension of
the fur trade depended "entirely upon the Indians being undisturbed in
the possession of their hunting-grounds." *

* But as Lord Hillsborough had just taken office and adopted
bodily a policy formulated by his predecessor, he is none too good an
a