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Rh and the French law, the latter of which still remained dear to the descendants of the ancient colonists. He checked the desire of the English Bishops to transplant the Episcopate to the colonies, and he recommended that the tenure of the judges should be as in England, during good behaviour. In regard to the unsettled western territories between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, he determined to encourage settlements on the Ohio and in Illinois in keeping with the policy which he had tried to lay down in principle in 1763 of establishing a boundary line between the colonies and the Indian nations, neither recognizing the sea-to-sea claims of some of the older coast colonies, nor allowing the back lands to become part of an overgrown Canada under a military governor. This policy was opposed by Hillsborough, who, according to Franklin, urged as objections "the distance from the other settlements which would make it of little use to this country, as the expense on the carriage of goods would oblige the people to manufacture themselves; and further, that it would for the same reason be difficult both to defend and govern; that it might lay the foundation of a power in the heart of America which might be troublesome to the other colonies and prejudicial to our government over them, and that people were wanted here and in the settled colonies, so that none could be spared for a new colony."

But these questions, however important, especially in their ultimate development, seemed at the moment inconsiderable in comparison with that of the American