Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates: 1772

In Short

This political tract presents an official report by the British Board of Trade opposing a petition to establish a new colony in the Ohio River Valley, followed by a point-by-point rebuttal from Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, and their fellow investors. The imperial government argues that inland settlements endanger relations with Native Americans and drain coastal populations. In response, the speculators contend that thousands of settlers already occupy the region unlawfully, and that establishing formal government is the only way to prevent chaos. The text survives as a vital document illustrating the imperial policy failures that hastened the American Revolution.

The Story

The volume opens with the official determination of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations regarding a memorial submitted by Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton. Seeking a massive land grant along the Ohio River to establish a new, self-governing imperial colony, the investors offer to purchase territory previously acquired by the Crown from Native nations. The Board of Trade, led by the Earl of Hillsborough, flatly rejects the petition. Drawing upon established colonial policy, the Board argues that Great Britain’s interest in North America relies on coastal settlements that easily trade raw materials for British manufactured goods. Interior colonies, separated from the ocean by vast mountain ranges, would remain beyond effective commercial reach and military protection. Furthermore, the Board warns that encroaching upon inland territories risks costly wars with Indigenous nations and destabilizes existing Atlantic colonies by drawing away their working population. Citing warnings from military commanders and colonial governors, the Board advises the Crown to enforce the Proclamation Line of 1763, forbidding all expansion west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The second and far longer portion of the text presents the memorialists’ systematic counter-argument, likely drafted in large part by Benjamin Franklin. The authors systematically dismantle the Board’s premise that the Ohio country is isolated or economically useless. They point out that navigable rivers like the Ohio provide straightforward trade routes to Atlantic ports via short overland portages, allowing bulk goods such as hemp, flax, iron, and silk to be exported to Great Britain cheaper than land transport within England itself. Crucially, the investors challenge the legal and historical foundation of the Board’s policy. They demonstrate that the Crown formally purchased the lands south of the Ohio River from the Six Nations at the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, thereby lifting the temporary restrictions of the 1763 Proclamation.

The petitioners emphasize that imperial refusal to establish order will not stop migration. Thousands of frontier families have already moved over the mountains, living in a state of lawlessness without courts, magistrates, or tax collectors. These unregulated squatters continually clash with Native populations, threatening the very peace the Crown claims to protect. By contrasting the legal powerlessness of distant colonial assemblies like Virginia's with their own organized financial proposal, Walpole and his associates argue that creating a proprietary, self-funded colony is the only practical method to enforce British sovereignty, maintain peaceful diplomacy with Native tribes, and generate revenue for the imperial treasury.

How It Unfolds

The Crown's refusal The Board of Trade reviews the petition of Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, and their partners for an expansive land grant on the Ohio River. The Commissioners issue an adverse report, arguing that interior settlements contradict Great Britain's mercantile strategy of keeping colonies anchored to the Atlantic coast.

The strategic rationale Citing official correspondence from military commanders and southern governors, the imperial report stresses that interior garrisons are expensive to maintain and that westward migration invites catastrophic conflicts with Native tribes. The Board recommends issuing a new royal proclamation to strictly enforce the boundary line established in 1763.

The petitioners' rebuttal Walpole and his associates publish a detailed response, addressing the Board’s objections paragraph by paragraph. They argue that the lands in question were legally purchased by the Crown from the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix in 1768, rendering the 1763 prohibition obsolete.

The economic defense The memorialists demonstrate that the Ohio Valley possesses fertile soil, abundant timber, and navigable waterways capable of transporting raw materials cheaply to sea ports. They refute claims that the region is commercially isolated, showing that settlers already consume British manufactured goods carried across the mountains.

The reality on the frontier Highlighting the collapse of authority in the backcountry, the authors reveal that over five thousand families currently live beyond the Alleghenies without laws or government. They contend that denying a formal colonial charter will cause uncontrolled squatting, violent Indian skirmishes, and administrative chaos.

The People

• The Board of Trade (Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations): Represented primarily by figures like the Earl of Hillsborough, the Board seeks to preserve strict imperial control over North American territory. They aim to keep British subjects clustered along the Atlantic seaboard to protect ocean-bound mercantilism and prevent expensive Native American wars. Their rigid adherence to older colonial models leaves them blind to the uncontainable growth of the western frontier.
• Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton: A coalition of prominent British politicians and American colonial land speculators. They seek a royal charter to convert millions of acres in the Ohio Valley into a profitable new government. Driven by financial ambition and practical governance strategies, they aim to turn rapid, lawless frontier settlement into a structured, revenue-producing British colony.
• The Frontier Settlers: Though not authors of the document, the thousands of land-hungry families living beyond the Allegheny Mountains form the core problem of the debate. Operating without courts, civil officers, or clear legal land titles, their unmanaged expansion creates dangerous friction with Native populations and exposes the limits of royal authority.
• The Native Nations (including the Six Nations, Cherokee, and Shawnee): The sovereign Indigenous inhabitants whose ancestral lands are traded, claimed, and disputed. Their diplomatic treaties, particularly the cession at Fort Stanwix, are leveraged by both sides of the British political debate to justify opposing imperial policies.

In Its Own Voice

"Having thus briefly stated what has been the policy of this kingdom in respect to colonizing in America... it will, we humbly apprehend, be a very strong argument against forming settlements in the interior country..."

— The Board of Trade outlines its core doctrine of keeping British subjects restricted to coastal regions.

"Let the savages enjoy their desarts in quiet; little bickerings that may unavoidably sometimes happen, may soon be accommodated..."

— General Thomas Gage, quoted by the Board, argues for leaving interior wilderness regions to Indigenous tribes to avoid costly wars.

"Can these facts be possibly perverted so as to operate, either in point of argument or policy, against the proposition of governing the king's subjects on the lands in question?"

— Walpole and Franklin challenge the government's logic, highlighting that thousands of unchecked settlers are already occupying the disputed territory.

What It's Really About

At its core, this text presents an ideological war over the nature and future of empire. The Board of Trade views colonies strictly through a traditional mercantile lens: distant outposts existing solely to feed raw resources to the mother country across ocean trade routes. Any expansion that cannot be controlled by the Royal Navy or easily taxed is viewed as a direct threat to imperial order.

Conversely, Franklin and his fellow petitioners recognize that demographic growth cannot be held back by paper proclamations. They argue that empire must adapt to geographic reality. The text confronts fundamental questions of governance: Is sovereignty defined by drawing lines on a map, or by providing law, courts, and protection to people where they actually live? It exposes the deep institutional friction between London officials and American colonists that led directly to independence.

Why Read It Today

This public document offers a captivating window into the administrative mindset of the late British Empire just three years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. Readers fascinated by early American history, political debates, or the mechanics of 18th-century land speculation will appreciate the sharp intellectual sparring between imperial bureaucrats and sharp-minded colonial promoters.

The reading experience demands concentration, as the prose consists of formal 18th-century state papers filled with dense legalistic phrasing, geographical references, and detailed financial tables regarding land quit-rents and transport costs. However, beneath the official terminology lies an engaging drama of conflicting visions. The text captures the precise moment when British imperial policy lost touch with the realities of the American landscape. It leaves the reader with a vivid sense of the inevitability of the coming revolution, illustrating how rigid policies cooked up in London offices collapsed when confronted by the vastness of the American wilderness and the unstoppable momentum of westward migration.