Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/360

334 of the American business, and that the King had given "general directions thereon."

Shelburne at the same time was negotiating, as already seen, with Franklin, and with Phineas Lyman and Sir John Amherst, in regard to the establishment of new settlements on the Ohio and on the Illinois, which Townshend's restrictive ideas would have rendered impossible, and would have also been impossible under the intermediate plan of 1764. After the death of Charles Townshend in September, he laid his policy before his colleagues; and having, it is to be presumed, received their approval, presented it to the Board of Trade in a letter of October 5th. In November, Franklin revived the question of the Indian boundary; and Shelburne made a communication relating to it to the Board of Trade. The Board replied on December 23rd; and just before leaving the American Department Shelburne directed that the boundary line projected in 1764 should be run—thereby in the opinion of a recent American author "laying the foundation of the policy which subsequently became the basis of the Indian Policy of the United States; i.e. the policy of marking a boundary line between the Indian hunting grounds and settlements, and forbidding pioneers to cross that line."

The Board's answer to the October letter did not arrive until March 7th, 1768, after Shelburne had given up the American Department. It was in the main outlines a reversion—as was to be expected—to the policy of the Grenville Ministry of 1764; but it allowed the formation of a new colony by a Chartered Company between the mountains and the Indian boundary line, and declined to entertain any larger schemes. Hillsborough, apparently in the interest of Virginia, opposed this plan, as he had uniformly done, and resigned in 1772; probably in consequence of this difference of opinion with his colleagues.