They complain that "the alterations and amendments proposed by our delegates to the Confederation in consequence of the aforesaid instructions by us to them given, were rejected, and no satisfactory reason assigned for the rejection thereof." They declare that unless amendments be made to "the third article of the Confederation, and the proviso to the ninth (according to which no State is to be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States)," that "we mean not to subject ourselves to such guaranty." * * * "We declare that we will accede to the Confederation, provided an article or articles be added thereto, giving full power to the United States, in Congress assembled, to ascertain and fix the western limits of the States claiming to extend to the Mississippi or South Sea, and expressly reserving or securing to the United States a right in common in and to all lands lying to the westward of the frontiers as aforesaid, not granted to, or surveyed for, or purchased by individuals at the commencement of the present war. " Allusion is made to States "grasping for territories to which, in our judgment, they have not the least shadow of exclusive right. " A picture is painted of the great advantages Virginia would enjoy by selling these lands, and attracting the population of other States. The probability that Virginia would organize this territory into independent States is made the occasion of severe arraignment, and the charge of establishing a "sub- confederacy, " an "impermm in imperio," and of a movement "to lull suspicion to sleep, and to cover the designs of a secret ambition." Her former allies in the effort to establish the western limits, who had subsequently joined the Confederation, are touched up as follows:
"Although the pressure of immediate calamities, the dread of their continuing from the appearance of dis-union, and some other peculiar circumstances, may have induced some States to accede to the present Confederation contrary to their own interests and judgments, it
