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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: War and Peace
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO COLONEL ARMSTRONG. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. II (1758-1775) [1889]

Edition used:

The Writings of George Washington, collected and edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889). Vol. II (1758-1775).

Part of: The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols.

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TO COLONEL ARMSTRONG.

Dear Sir,

Upon my return home from the Annapolis races (from whence I wrote you, committing the letter to the care of Capt. McGachen of Baltimore Town, who assured me it should be forwarded the week after,) I received a letter from Lord Dunmore, our Governor, containing the following paragraph, which I enclose for your information, agreeable to my promise.

“I last post received yours of the 12th inst.1 (that is September) wherein you beg to be informed whether I propose granting patents to such officers and soldiers as claim under his Majesty’s proclamation in 8ber 1763. I do not mean to grant any patents on the Western waters, as I do not think I am at present impowered so to do. I did indeed tell a poor old German lieutenant who was with me,2 and informed me he was very poor and had ten children, that I possibly might grant him a patent contiguous to that which he had under Mr. Dinwiddie’s proclamation, which, I suppose, is what may have given rise to the report you have heard.”

I was suspicious, as I think I wrote you in my last, that the report of Lord Dunmore’s granting patents was rather premature; for after declaring to the officers of his own government that he did not conceive himself at liberty to issue patents for lands on the Western Waters, I could scarce think he would change his opinion without giving them some intimation of it, either in a publick or private manner; and yet there are some words in his letter (which I have marked) which seem to imply an expectation at least of doing it. It remains therefore to be considered, whether the officers claiming under his Majesty’s proclamation of 1763 have a better chance of securing their lands elsewhere; and if they have not, whether the known equity of their claims, the prevailing opinion that Bullet is proceeding by authority in the surveys he is now making, and the united endeavors of the officers to obtain patents for the lands actually surveyed, may not discourage other emigrants from settling thereon; and, in the end, induce government to comply with their just requisitions by fulfilling its own voluntary promises. I own it is a kind of lottery, and whether the chance of a prize is not worth the expense of a survey, is the point in question. As subjects and individuals of the community at large, we are at least upon a par with those who are occupying the country; but whether any of these pleas, under the present discouragements of government, will avail anything, is a mere matter of speculation, on which every person must exercise his own powers of reflection.

[1 ]I have not been able to discover this letter of Washington’s.

[2 ]David Wilper.