(342) 
Vermont in accordance with the treaty ; and it is not supposable 
that an intended compensation to Columbia, denied to all 
others, was thus secretly smuggled into the act of 1814, under 
a deceptive statement of a different purpose. 
The prior legislation, moreover, and the history and con- 
dition of the New York land claims at the time of the treaty, 
and the distribution of the indemnity fund received from 
Vermont, render the motive of compensation by the act of 
1814 improbable in the extreme. 
Prior Legislation. —The act of 1790 (Ch. 18), which 
authorized the treaty, appointed commissioners from New 
York to meet commissioners from Vermont to agree upon 
terms of settlement, and expressly declared that, 
*‘ Nothing herein shall be intended or construed to give 
such claimants [of lands] any right to any further compensa- 
tion whatever from this State, other than such compensation 
which may be stipulated as aforesaid” [to be paid by Ver- 
mont]. 
This provision, expressly excluding further compensation, 
was not an unadvised or a hasty one. It expressed the 
deliberate judgment and determination of the legislature; it 
was in accordance with a similar provision of the act of 1789 
(repealed by that of 1790), and was enacted after discussions 
at various times during the preceding decade concerning a 
controversy of forty years’ standing. It was in effect a deci- 
sion by the legislature that the New York land-claims, 
whether good or bad originally, had become incapable of 
enforcement through the rebellion and long continued inde- 
pendence of Vermont; so that those claims were really worth 
only what could be obtained from Vermont by negotiation 
and compromise, and should no longer stand in the way of 
the public interests in the recognition of Vermont’s indepen- 
dence and admission into the union. 
he commissioners having agreed upon the sum of $30,000 
to be paid to New York, and Vermont having agreed to pay 
it, New York declared, as above stated, that all claims and 
titles under New York colonial or state grants, except those 
