L- Essays 
great increase of Englishmen, English trade, and 
English power. 
The grants to most of the colonies are of long, 
narrow slips of land, extending west from the Atlan- 
tic to the South Sea. They are much too long for 
their breadth; the extremes at too great a distance; 
and therefore unfit to be continued under their 
present dimensions. 
Several of the old colonies may conveniently be 
limited westward by the Allegany or Appalachian 
mountains, and new colonies formed west of those 
mountains. 
A single old colony does not seem strong enough 
to extend itself otherwise than inch by inch. It 
cannot venture a settlement far distant from the 
main body, being unable to support it; but if the 
colonies were united under one governor-general and 
grand council, agreeably to the Albany plan, they 
might easily, by their joint force, establish one or 
more new colonies, whenever they should judge it 
necessary or advantageous to the interest of the 
whole. 
But if such union should not take place, it is pro- 
posed that two charters be granted, each for some 
considerable part of the lands west of Pennsylvania 
and the Virginia mountains, to a number of the no- 
bility and gentry of Britain; with such Americans 
as shall join them in contributing to the settlement 
of those lands, either by paying a proportion of the 
expense of making such settlements, or by actually 
going thither in person, and settling themselves and 
families. 
56] :