If the land was to attain anything like its real value, settlers must be induced to occupy it.

Of course it was possible to let the people go out as they pleased and take up land, and to let the Government collect from them as might be possible at a fixed rate.

But experience during colonial days had shown the weakness of such a method, and Congress was apparently determined to keep under its own control the region which it now possessed, to provide for orderly sale, and to permit settlement only so far as it might not endanger the national interests.

The method of land sales and the question of government for the western country were recognized as different aspects of the same problem.

The Virginia offer of cession forced the necessity of a decision, and no sooner was the Virginia offer framed in an acceptable form, in 1783, than two committees were appointed by Congress to report upon these two questions of land sales and of government.
Thomas Jefferson was made chairman of both these committees.