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sustaining some hundred thousand yeomen. Valuable, or rather invaluable, as it is, we ought without hesitation to surrender it if we cannot with justice support that claim to it which unfortunately now stands opposed under the difficulties of an ingenuity which has endeavoured to obscure the line, and an apposition, which, I trust, you will dispassionately authorize to be resisted under the limitations of a cautious & prudent yet decided policy. But, withdrawing our view, for a moment, from this unpleasant topic, permit me, if you please, to ask your attention to the tracts of the same character, which are situated on this side of the disputed territory. They furnish not only an asylum for the poor, in which they subdue the wildness and become independent yeomen in a short time; but they invite that native enterprise and talent which frame their own character and fortune unmolested by the artificial distinctions sometimes found extremely embarrassing to genuine worth In the portions of territory last referred to, the settlement has been rapidly advancing under the encouragement of our legal regulations, and the measures of execution which have been applied. Within the term of the existing Land Agency, while private proprietors have been subjecting a great portion of the wilderness to the support of families, the State has disposed of soil and its produce to the amount of more than seventy thousand dollars, of which a part is now on the roads and in bridges, and a part in surveys, explorations, and incidental attentions. Some additional expenditures not directly drawn from this fund and the joint sales of Massachusetts and Maine, are, as will appear, excluded from the foregoing calculation. The proceeds, however, of one hundred and sixty eight thousand acres sold under