They were willing to form colonies on Spanish or British territory, and they were even willing to work for the dismemberment of the Western Territory from the Union, if by so doing they could increase the value of the lands which they sought to acquire.
American adventurers had been in correspondence with Lord Dorchester, the Governor General of Canada, looking to the possibility of securing British aid for those desirous of embarking in great land speculations in the West.

These men proposed to try to get the Westerners to join with the British in an attack upon Louisiana, or even to conduct this attack themselves in the British interests, believing that with New Orleans in British hands the entire province would be thrown open to trade with the outside world and to settlement; with the result that the lands would increase enormously in value, and the speculators and organizers of the companies, and of the movements generally, grow rich in consequence.

[Footnote: Canadian Archives, Dorchester to Sydney, June 7, 1789; Grenville to Dorchester, May 6, 1790; Dorchester to Beckwith, June 17, 1790; Dorchester to Grenville, Sept.

25, 1790.

See Brown's "Political Beginnings," 187.] They assured the British agents that the Western country would speedily separate from the eastern States, and would have to put itself under the protection of some foreign state.
Dorchester considered these plans of sufficient weight to warrant inquiry by his agents, but nothing ever came of them.
The Yazoo Land Companies.
Much the most famous, or, it would be more correct to say, infamous, of these companies were those organized in connection with the Yazoo lands.