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injury of the remaining Settlers, as they are now too few to maintain a tolerable Road through the Township or to attract the notice of the Legislature to give any effectual assistance towards the doing of it, and being myself a considerable Land holder in the Township and having my children settled about me, I feel perhaps more than any other Individual the disadvantages of the uninhabited state of so great a proportion of the Lands in it. Upon these considerations I had to the utmost of my power promoted the Escheat of those Lands without asking a Grant of an acre of it for myself — and when the Idea was suggested of settling a number of those People of Colour upon those lands, I entered warmly into it, not only as what would serve to improve the Place in general, and afford assistance to us towards repairing the Roads, but likewise furnish us with Labourers of whom we stand in too much need to make any tolerable progress in our own improvements. I was therefore willing to make considerable sacrifices for the purpose of carrying into effect your Proposal, and what I understood to be the wish of His Excellency for settling them here, — I gave up 400 Acres of land I had purchased and which lay contiguous to the escheated Lands on condition only of receiving a free Grant of other Lands tho' more remote, and persuaded several Gentlemen who had Lands in a similar situation to do the same, in order to accommodate them with Land to form a more compleat Settlement, and proposed inspecting their work, and issuing their Provisions to them weekly on condition of their going on with it, and though their numbers have increased far beyond what I had at first any Idea of, shall if no allowance can consistently be made for it still persevere in doing so. But there are Dear Sir expences attending the settling and provisioning such a number of People in Preston too heavy for me as an Individual to sustain, or to