302        ILLINOIS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
the Nation's pocket; If we do, all our Sugar Trade is undone for tis worth all ours put together and we have shewed the French how valuable it is which they did not know before"
Commodore Douglas near a year ago wrote me from Tobago one of the Neutral Islands which the French took possession of in the last War and which they still retain; He says there are about a dozen French familys on the Island who subsist by fishing but are otherwise so lazy as totally to neglect the Culture of the Soil which he describes to be extremely fertile; But the great Importance of that Island is from its situation as it lyes to the Windward of all our Islands so that in any future War it will be a terrible Thorn in our Sides if the French were to settle and f ortifie it: There certainly must be commodious harbours on that Island because it was the place he pitched upon to station his large Ships during the Hurricane Season.
I copied out that part of the Commodores letter & gave it to Mr Wood Mr Pitt's under Secretary last Winter.
Such is the language of the West Indians but still I should think the peaceable possession of North America a thing of greater consequence.
I dont imagine we should people that immense Tract in Ten Centurys but unless we have the name of the whole we shall never be at rest in those parts that are peopled while the smallest Germ of French Government subsists from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudsons Bay
In the Winter before last by the Duke of Newcastles Order I drew up a paper on this Subject which I had the honour to lay before Your Lordship and I remember at that time Your Lordship thought some of my Notions Chimerical, But as things now stand they may not appear so much out of the Way.
We are now entire Masters nearly from the Mouth of the
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Ohio all the way to the Northward as far as the Continent of America extends—Yet we see what Disturbances a handful of Frenchmen have given us to the Southward by stirring up the Creeks and other Nations in those parts.    Therefore I cannot