It was by this construction of the patents and charters of the American colonies that tjae Western Territories, as far as the Mississippi, wore ceded to the United States by the peace with Great Britain ; and it was by virtue of tlie same construction of the patents tliat Congress, in 1788, procured a formal surrender of the unappropriated Western lands from the States above named, -- Connecticut, however, reserving a tract in Ohio, bounded on the south by the forty-first degree of north latitude and on the north by the Connecticut line, containing three million six hundred and sixty-seven thousand acres.^

In March, 16.32, a Dutch ship was forced, by stress of weather, into the port of Plymouth, and was seized on a charge of having traded and obtained her cargo in countries subject to His Britannic Majesty. Out of this seizure grew the first sharp controversy between the English King and the States-General regarding their respective rights and claims in America -- a controversy meriting special attention. The Dutch, in a carefully j)repared deduction of their title, declared that after the North River was discovered in 1609 by subjects of their High Mightinesses, and visited by some of their citizens in 1610 and following years, a grant was made in 1615, to some of their subjects, of the trade to that country, and a small fort and garrison established there, which remained until the charter granted to the West India Company, which included these as well as other countries ; that the grant of His Britannic Majesty to his subjects under the name of New England included the land between the forty-first and forty-fifth degrees ; and the grant to Virginia included the country between the thirtyseventh and thirty-ninth degrees, leaving one hundred miles from one to the other, so that the Dutch limits should be from the thirty-ninth to the fortyfirst parallel, between which degrees it was not known the English had any designs, and which the subjects of their High Mightinesses obtained, partly