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 authority. See Alvord's "Mississippi Valley in British
Politics," vol. I, pp. 203-4.


It does not follow that the King and his advisers intended that
the territory should be kept forever intact as a forest preserve.
They seem to have contemplated that, from time to time, cessions
would be secured from the Indians and tracts would be opened for
settlement. But every move was to be made in accordance with
plans formulated or authorized in England. The restrictive policy
won by no means universal assent in the mother country. The Whigs
generally opposed it, and Burke thundered against it as "an
attempt to keep as a lair of wild beasts that earth which God, by
an express charter, has given to the children of men."

In America there was a disposition to take the proclamation
lightly as being a mere sop to the Indians. But wherever it was
regarded seriously, it was hotly resented. After passing through
an arduous war, the colonists were ready to enter upon a new
expansive era. The western territories were theirs by charter, by
settlement, and by conquest. The Indian population, they
believed, belonged to the unprogressive and unproductive peoples
of the earth. Every acre of fertile soil in America called to the
thrifty agriculturist; every westward flowing river invited to
trade and settlement as well, therefore, seek to keep back the
ocean with a broom as to stop by mere decree the tide of