( 345) 
‘¢That Columbia College was once in possession of landed 
property, which, if she still retained it, would be amply suffi- 
cient for her wants, and would save your memorialists from 
the afflicting necessity of importuning your honorable body. 
That property was transferred by the state of New York, on 
great political considerations, to other hands. It was entirely 
lost to the college, and no relief, under the eae which 
the loss occasioned, has hitherto been extended to h 
Had this been strictly accurate, without other facts affect- 
ing the merits of Columbia’s land-claims, a strong case for 
compensation might have been urged, except for the three 
statutes above cited. 
But the real situation was quite different. The New York 
grants of Vermont lands were disputed from the first, and in 
1790 they had become wholly unavailable to the claimants 
and practically worthless. For twenty years the colony and 
state of New York had done all that was practicable for their 
enforcement. Vermont, by a rebellion and revolution caused 
alone by the New York land-grants and the endeavors to 
enforce them by eviction of the earlier settlers, had won her 
independence of New York, and maintained it for thirteen 
years. Since 1782 the controversy had been practically 
closed, and in 1790 the state was justified in making peace 
with Vermont without liability for the disappointed expecta- 
tions of her citizens, or even their actual losses, if there were 
such; and this was the reason for expressly excluding any 
such liability of the state, by the act authorizing the treaty.t 
The subject is historically so interesting, and the facts illus- 
trating it are at this day so unfamiliar to the majority of 
* Some corrections, as respects accuracy, should be made in these state- 
ments : (1) The College apparently never settled the lands or obtained actual 
“ possession.” It was the same with Mr. Duane, Cyc. Amer. Biog., 2: 52 
(2) the state did not ‘‘transfer’’ the lands, as it never held them; it aid 
declare that claims and ditles under the New York colonial grants ‘should 
worked as an estoppel against any further claim in the future, and it may 
have been thought best to preserve the shadow of claim still left. 
+ Hamilton’s Works (Lodge), 7: 9-22. See post, p. 366, 1 Kent 178. 
