We have upon former occasions found it necessary to take notice of the Complaints which have been made of the injustice and extortion of the Servants of the Crown in New York in this respect and we have at all times considered the liberty they have assumed to theiselves of taking greater and other fees upon Grants of Land, than what were established by the ordinance of the Governor and Council of the year 1710, as most unwarrantable and unjust.

By that Ordinance the fees allowed to be taken upon Grants of Land by the Governor the Secretary and the Surveyor are considerably larger than what are at this day received for the same service in any other of the Colonies nor are fees allowed as we conceive to any other officers than those we have mentioned.

Of later times however the Governor the Secretary and the Surveyor have taken and do now exact considerably more than double what that ordinance allows and a number of other officers do upon various pretences take fees upon all Grants of Land, in so much that the whole amount of these fees upon a Grant. of one thousand acres of Land is in many instances not far short of the real value of the fee Simple and we think we are justified in supposing that it has been from a consideration of the advantage arising from these exorbitant fees that His Majesty's Governors of New York have of late years taken upon themselves upon the most unwarrantable pretences to elude the restrictions contained in His Majestys Instructions with regard to the quantity of Land to be granted to any one person and to contrive by the insertion in one grant of a number of names either fictitious or which if real are only lent for the purpose to convey to one person in one Grant from twenty to forty thousand acres of Land an abuse which is now grown to that height as well to deserve your Lordships attention In the present case however the only part for your Lordships consideration is whether you will not think fit if the measure we have suggested should be adopted to advise His Majesty to give the most positive instructions to the Governor of New York that upon any application made to him for the Lands proposed to be regranted on the Conditions we have stated he do upon the