History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent

History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent Vol. 4 15th edition. George Bancroft Tufts University Trustees of Tufts University Medford, MA Perseus Project

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Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859

English Latin Greek French Italian Spanish The American Revolution. Epoch first. The Overthrow of the European colonial system. 1748-1763. The Overthrow of the European colonial system. Chapter 1:

America claims legislative independence of England. Pelham's administration.

1748.

in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hun- chap I.} 1748. dred and forty-eight, Montesquieu, wisest in his age of the reflecting statesmen of France, apprized the cultivated world, that a free, prosperous and great people was forming in the forests of America, which England had sent forth her sons to inhabit.

De l'esprit des Lois. LIV. XIX. chap. XXVII. Elle [une nation libre] donneroit aux peuples de ses colonies la forme de son gouvernement propre: et ce gouvernement portant avec lui la prosperite, on verroit se former de grands peoples dans les forces memes qu'elle enverroit habiter.

The hereditary dynasties of Europe, all unconscious of the rapid growth of the rising power, which was soon to involve them in its new and prevailing influence, were negotiating treaties among themselves to bring their last war of personal ambition definitively to an end. The great maritime powers, weary of hopes of con- chap. I.} 1748. quest and ignorant of coming reform, desired repose. To restore possessions as they had been, or were to have been, was accepted as the condition of peace; and guaranties were devised to keep them safe against vicissitude. But the eternal flow of existence never rests, bearing the human race onwards through continuous change. Principles grow into life by informing the public mind, and in their maturity gain the mastery over events; following each other as they are bidden, and ruling without a pause. No sooner do the agitated waves begin to subside, than, amidst the formless tossing of the billows, a new messenger from the Infinite Spirit moves over the waters; and the bark which is freighted with the fortunes of mankind, yields to the gentle breath as it first whispers among the shrouds, even while the beholders still doubt if the breeze is springing, and whence it comes, and whither it will go.

The hour of revolution was at hand, promising freedom to conscience and dominion to intelligence. History, escaping from the dictates of authority and the jars of insulated interests, enters upon new and unthought — of domains of culture and equality, the happier society where power springs freshly from ever-renewed consent; the life and activity of a connected world.

For Europe, the crisis foreboded the struggles of generations. The strong bonds of faith and affection, which once united the separate classes of its civil hierarchy, had lost their vigor. In the impending chaos of states, the ancient forms of society, after convulsive agonies, were doomed to be broken in pieces; and the fragments to become distinct, and seemingly lifeless, like the dust; ready to be whirled chap. I.} 1748. in clouds by the tempest of public rage, with a force as deadly as that of the sand storm in the Libyan desert. The voice of reform, as it passed over the desolation, would inspire animation afresh; but in the classes whose power was crushed, as well as in the oppressed who knew not that they were redeemed, it might also awaken wild desires, which the ruins of a former world could not satiate. In America, the influences of time were moulded by the creative force of reason, sentiment, and nature. Its political edifice rose in lovely proportions, as if to the melodies of the lyre. Peacefully and without crime, humanity was to make for itself a new existence.

A few men of Anglo-Saxon descent, chiefly farmers, planters, and mechanics, with their wives and children, had crossed the Atlantic in search of freedom and fortune. They brought the civilization which the past had bequeathed to Great Britain; they were followed by the slave-ship and the African; their happiness invited emigrants from every lineage of Central and Western Europe; the mercantile system, to which they were subjected, prevailed in the councils of all metropolitan states, and extended its restrictions to every continent that allured to conquest, commerce, or colonization. The accomplishment of their independence would agitate the globe, would assert the freedom of the oceans as commercial highways, vindicate power in the commonwealth for the united judgment of its people, and assure to them the right to a self-directing vitality.

The authors of the American Revolution avowed for their object the welfare of mankind, and believed that they were in the service of their own and of all chap. I.} 1748. future generations. Their faith was just; for the world of mankind does not exist in fragments, nor can a country have an insulated existence. All men are brothers; and all are bondsmen for one another. All nations, too, are brothers, and each is responsible for that federative humanity which puts the ban of exclusion on none. New principles of government could not assert themselves in one hemisphere without affecting the other. The very idea of the progress of an individual people, in its relation to universal history, springs from the acknowledged unity of the race.

From the dawn of social being, there has appeared a tendency towards commerce and intercourse between the scattered inhabitants of the earth. That mankind have ever earnestly desired this connection, appears from their willing homage to the adventurers and to every people, who have greatly enlarged the boundaries of the world, as known to civilization. The traditions of remotest antiquity celebrate the half-divine wanderer who raised pillars on the shores of the Atlantic; and record, as a visitant from the skies, the first traveller from Europe to the central rivers of Asia. It is the glory of Greece, that, when she had gathered on her islands and among her hills the scattered beams of human intelligence, her numerous colonies carried the accumulated light to the neighborhood of the ocean and to the shores of the Euxine. Her wisdom and her arms connected continents.

When civilization intrenched herself within the beautiful promontory of Italy, and Rome led the van of European reform, the same movement continued with still vaster results; for, though the military republic bounded the expansive spirit of independence chap. I.} 1748. by giving dominion to property, and extended her own influence by the sword, yet, heaping up conquests, adding island to continent, crushing nationalities, offering a shrine to strange gods, and citizenship to every vanquished people, she extended over a larger empire the benefits of fixed principles of law, and a cosmopolitan polytheism prevailed as the religion of the world.

To have asserted clearly the unity of mankind was the distinctive glory of the Christian religion. No more were the nations to be severed by the worship of exclusive deities. The world was instructed that all men are of one blood; that for all there is but one divine nature and but one moral law; and the renovating faith taught the singleness of the race, of which it embodied the aspirations and guided the advancement.

The tribes of Northern Europe, emerging freshly from the wild nurseries of nations, opened new regions to culture, commerce, and refinement. The beams of the majestic temple, which antiquity had reared to its many gods, were already falling in; the roving invaders, taking to their hearts the regenerating creed, became its intrepid messengers, and bore its symbols even to Iceland and Siberia.

Still nearer were the relations of the connected world, when an enthusiast reformer, glowing with selfish ambition, and angry at the hollow forms of Eastern superstition, caught life in the deserts of Arabia, and founded a system, whose emissaries hurried lightly on the camel's back beyond pathless sands, and, never diverging far from the warmer zone, conducted armies from Mecca to the Ganges and the Ebro. How did the two systems animate chap. I.} 1748. all the continents of the Old World to combat for the sepulchre of Christ, till Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia, came into conflict and intercourse with the South and East, from Morocco to Hindostan!

In due time appeared the mariner from Genoa. To Columbus God gave the keys that unlock the barriers of the ocean; so that he filled Christendom with his glory.

Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella on his fourth voyage.

The voice of the world had whispered to him that the world is one; and as he went forth towards the west, ploughing a wave which no European keel had entered, it was his high purpose not merely to open new paths to islands or to continents, but to bring together the ends of the earth, and join all nations in commerce and spiritual life.

While the world of mankind is accomplishing its nearer connection, it is also advancing in the power of its intelligence. The possession of reason is the engagement for that progress of which history keeps the record. The faculties of each individual mind are limited in their development; the reason of the whole

Kant's Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in Weltburgerlicher Ansicht. Sammtliche Werke. VII., i. 319.

strives for perfection, has been restlessly forming itself from the first moment of human existence, and has never met bounds to its capacity for improvement. The generations of men are not like the leaves on the trees, which fall and renew themselves without melioration or change; individuals disappear like the foliage and the flowers; the existence of our kind is continuous, and its ages are reciprocally dependent. Were it not so, there would be no great truths inspiring action, no laws regulating human chap I.} 1748. achievements; the movement of the living world would be as the ebb and flow of the ocean; and the mind would no more be touched by the visible agency of Providence in human affairs. In the lower creation, instinct is always equal to itself; the beaver builds his hut, the bee his cell, without an acquisition of thought, or an increase of skill. By a particular prerogative, as Pascal has written, not only each man advances daily in the sciences, but all men unitedly make a never-ceasing progress in them, as the universe grows older; so that the whole succession of human beings, during the course of so many ages, ought to be considered as one identical man, who subsists always, and who learns without end.

It is this idea of continuity which gives vitality to history. No period of time has a separate being; no public opinion can escape the influence of previous intelligence. We are cheered by rays from former centuries, and live in the sunny reflection of all their light. What though thought is invisible, and even when effective, seems as transient as the wind that raised the cloud? It is yet free and indestructible; can as little be bound in chains as the aspiring flame; and, when once generated, takes eternity for its guardian. We are the children and the heirs of the past, with which, as with the future, we are indissolubly linked together; and he that truly has sympathy with every thing belonging to man, will, with his toils for posterity, blend affection for the times that are gone by, and seek to live in the vast life of the ages.

Vivre dans la grande vie des siecles.

It is by thankfully recognising those ages as a part of the great existence in which we share, that his- chap. I.} 1748. tory wins power to move the soul. She comes to us with tidings of that which for us still lives, of that which has become the life of our life. She embalms and preserves for us the life-blood, not of masterspirits only, but of generations of the race.

And because the idea of improvement belongs to that of continuous being, history is, of all pursuits, the most cheering. It throws a halo of delight and hope even over the sorrows of humanity, and finds promises of joy among the ruins of empires and the graves of nations. It sees the footsteps of Providential Intelligence every where; and hears the gentle tones of his voice in the hour of tranquillity;

Nor God alone in the still calm we find; He mounts the storm and walks upon the wind. Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth, and mount upwards like the eagle. The petals of the flower wither, that fruit may form.

Kant's Werke.

The desire of perfection, springing always from moral power, rules even the sword, and escapes unharmed from the field of carnage; giving to battles all that they can have of lustre, and to warriors their only glory; surviving martyrdoms, and safe amid the wreck of states. On the banks of the stream of time, not a monument has been raised to a hero or a nation, but tells the tale and renews the hope of improvement. Each people that has disappeared, every institution that has passed away, has been but a step in the ladder by which humanity ascends towards the perfecting of its nature.

And how has it always been advancing; to the just chap. I.} 1748. judgments of the past, adding the discoveries of successive ages! The generations that hand the torch of truth along the lines of time, themselves become dust and ashes; but the light still increases its ever-burning flame, and is fed more and more plenteously with consecrated oil.

Milton's Animadversions upon the Remonstrants' Defence. O thou that hast the seven stars, &c., &c.

How is progress manifest in religion, from the gross symbols of the East to the sublime philosophy of Greece, from the Fetichism of the savage to the Polytheism of Rome; from the multiplied forms of ancient superstition and the lovely representations of deities in stone, to the clear conception of the unity of divine power, and the idea of the presence of God in the soul! How has mind, in its inquisitive freedom, taught man to employ the elements as mechanics do their tools, and already, in part, at least, made him the master and possessor of nature!

Descartes. Discours dela Me thode. Sixieme Partie. Oeuvres i. 192.

How has knowledge not only been increased, but diffused! How has morality been constantly tending to subdue the supremacy of brute force, to refine passion, to enrich literature with the varied forms of pure thought and delicate feeling! How has social life been improved, and every variety of toil in the field and in the workshop been ennobled by the willing industry of freemen! How has humanity been growing conscious of its unity and watchful of its own development, till public opinion, bursting the bonds of nationality, knows itself to be the spirit of the world, in its movement on the tide of thought from generation to generation!

From the intelligence that had been slowly ripen- chap. I.} 1748 ing in the mind of cultivated humanity, sprung the American Revolution, which was designed to organize social union through the establishment of personal freedom, and thus emancipate the nations from all authority not flowing from themselves. In the old civilization of Europe, power moved from a superior to inferiors and subjects; a priesthood transmitted a common faith, from which it would tolerate no dissent; the government esteemed itself, by compact or by divine right, invested with sovereignty, dispensing protection and demanding allegiance. But a new principle, far mightier than the church and state of the Middle Ages, was forcing itself into power. Successions of increasing culture and heroes in the world of thought had conquered for mankind the idea of the freedom of the individual; the creative but long latent energy that resides in the collective reason was next to be revealed. From this the state was to emerge, like the fabled spirit of beauty and love out of the foam of the ever-troubled ocean. It was the office of America to substitute for hereditary privilege the natural equality of man; for the irresponsible authority of a sovereign, a dependent government emanating from the concord of opinion; and as she moved forward in her high career, the multitudes of every clime gazed towards her example with hopes of untold happiness, and all the nations of the earth sighed to be renewed.

The American Revolution, of which I write the history, essaying to unfold the principles which organized its events, and bound to keep faith with the ashes of its heroes, was most radical in its character, yet achieved with such benign tranquillity, that even conservatism hesitated to censure. A civil war armed men of the same ancestry against each other, yet for chap. I.} 1748. the advancement of the principles of everlasting peace and universal brotherhood. A new plebeian democracy took its place by the side of the proudest empires. Religion was disenthralled from civil institutions. Thought obtained for itself free utterance by speech and by the press. Industry was commissioned to follow the bent of its own genius. The system of commercial restrictions between states was reprobated and shattered; and the oceans were enfranchised for every peaceful keel. International law was humanized and softened; and a new, milder and more just maritime code was concerted and enforced. The trade in slaves was branded and restrained. The home of the language of Bacon and Milton, of Chatham and Washington, became so diffused, that in every zone, and almost in every longitude, childhood lisps the English as its mother tongue. The equality of all men was declared; personal freedom secured in its complete individuality, and common consent recognised as the only just origin of fundamental laws, so that the people in thirteen separate states, with ample territory for creating more, each formed its own political institutions. By the side of the principle of the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the separate states, the noblest work of human intellect was consummated in a federative union. And that union put away every motive to its destruction, by insuring to each successive generation the right to better its constitution, according to the increasing intelligence of the living people.

Astonishing deeds, throughout the world, attended these changes. Armies fought in the wilderness for rule over the solitudes which were to be the future dwelling-place of millions. Navies hunted each other through every sea, engaging in battle now near the chap. I.} 1748. region of icebergs, now among the islands of the tropics. Inventive art was summoned to make war more destructive, and to signalize sieges by new miracles of ability and daring. Africa was invaded and, in part, appropriated by rival nations of white men. Asia was subjected to the influence and dominion of the higher culture of Europe, and an adventurous company of British traders succeeded by conquest to the empire of the Great Mogul.

For America, the period abounded in new forms of virtue and greatness. Fidelity to principle pervaded the masses. An unorganized people of their own free will suspended commerce by universal assent. Poverty rejected bribes. Heroism, greater than that of chivalry, burst into action from lowly men. Citizens, with their families, fled from their homes and wealth in towns, rather than yield to oppression. Battalions sprung up in a night from spontaneous patriotism. Where eminent statesmen hesitated, the instinctive action of the multitude revealed the counsels of magnanimity. Youth and genius gave up life freely for the liberties of mankind. A nation without union, without magazines and arsenals, without a treasury, without credit, without government, fought successfully against the whole strength and wealth of Great Britain. An army of veteran soldiers capitulated to insurgent husbandmen.

The world could not watch with indifference the spectacle. The oldest aristocracy of France, the proudest nobles of Poland, the bravest hearts of Germany, sent their representatives to act as the peers of plebeians, to die gloriously, or to live beloved, as the champions of humanity and freedom. Russia and the northern nations protected the young republic by an chap. I.} 1748. armed neutrality; while the catholic and feudal monarchies of France and Spain, children of the Middle Age, were wonderfully swayed to open the gates of futurity to the new empire of democracy; so that, in human affairs, God never showed more visibly his gracious providence and love.

Yet the thirteen colonies, in whom was involved the futurity of our race, were feeble settlements in the wilderness, scattered along the coast of a continent, little connected with each other, little heeded by their metropolis, almost unknown to the world. They were bound together only as British America, that part of the Western hemisphere which the English mind had appropriated. England was the mother of its language, the home of its traditions, the source of its laws, and the land on which its affections centred. And yet it was an offset from England, rather than an integral part of it; an empire of itself, free from nobility and prelacy, not only Protestant, but by a vast majority dissenting from the Church of England; attracting the commoners and plebeian sects of the parent country, and rendered cosmopolitan by recruits from the nations of the European continent. By the benignity of the law, the natives of other lands were received as citizens; and political liberty, as a birthright, was the talisman, that harmoniously blended all differences and inspired a new public life, dearer than their native tongue, their memories and their kindred. Dutch, French, Swede and German, renounced their nationality, to claim the rights of Englishmen.

The extent of those rights, as held by the colonists, had never been precisely ascertained. Of all the forms of civil government of which they had ever chap. I.} 1748. heard or read, no one appeared to them so well calculated to preserve liberty, and to secure all the most valuable advantages of civil society as the English;

Writings of Samuel Adams in 1748.

and of this happy constitution of the mother country, which it was usual to represent, and almost to adore, as designed to approach perfection,

Compare Blackstone's Commentaries, book i. c. i. § v. Note 12.

they held their own to be a copy, or rather an improvement, with additional privileges not enjoyed by the common people there.

Writings of Samuel Adams in 1748.

The elective franchise was more equally diffused; there were no decayed boroughs, or unrepresented towns; representation, which was universal, conformed more nearly to population; in colonies which contained more than half the inhabitants, the legislative assembly was chosen annually and by ballot, and the time for convening the legislature was fixed by a fundamental law; the civil list in every colony but one was voted annually, and annually subjected to scrutiny; appropriations of money often, for greater security against corruption and waste, included the nomination and appointment of the agents who were to direct the expenditures; municipal liberties were more independent and more extensive; in none of the colonies was there an ecclesiastical court, and in most of them there was no established church or religious test of capacity for office; the cultivator of the soil was for the most part a freeholder; in all the continent the people possessed arms, and the able-bodied men were enrolled and trained to their use; so that in America there was more of personal independence and far more of popular power than in England.

This colonial superiority, which had grown from chap. I.} 1748. sufferance and from circumstances, was a subject of in cessant complaint on the part of the officers of the crown, upon whose struggles the metropolis might cease to look with indifference; the relations of the colonies to Great Britain, whether to the king or to the parliament, were still more vague and undefined. They were planted under grants from the crown, and, to the last, the king in council was their highest court of appeal; yet, while the court lawyers of the seventeenth century asserted for the king unlimited legislative authority in the plantations, the colonies set bounds to the royal prerogative, either through the charters which the crown was induced to grant, or by the traditionary principles of English liberty, or by the innate energy, which, aided by distance, fearlessly assumed self-direction.

The method adopted in England for superintending American affairs, by means of a Board of Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, who had neither a voice in the deliberation of the cabinet nor access to the king, tended to involve the colonies in everincreasing confusion. The Board framed instructions without power to enforce them, or to propose measures for their efficiency. It took cognizance of all events, and might investigate, give information, or advise;

Chalmers's Political Annals of the United Colonies. Book II., chap. III. 236. Opinions of Eminent Lawyers; Preface VIII., IX.

but it had no authority to form an ultimate decision on any political question whatever. In those days there were two secretaries of state charged with the management of the foreign relations of Great Britain. The executive power with regard to the colonies was reserved to the Secretary of State, who had the care of what was called the Southern Department, chap. I.} 1748. which included the conduct of all relations with the Spanish peninsula and France. The Board of Trade, framed originally to restore the commerce and encourage the fisheries of the metropolis, was compelled to hear complaints from the executive officers in America, to issue instructions to them, and to receive and consider all acts of the colonial legislatures; but it had no final responsibility for the system of American policy that might be adopted. Hence from their very feebleness the Lords of Trade were ever ready to express their impatience at contradiction; easily grew vexed at disobedience to their orders; and were much inclined to suggest the harshest methods of coercion, knowing that their petulance would exhale itself in official papers, unless it should touch the pride or waken the resentment of the responsible minister, the crown and parliament.

The effect of their recommendations would depend on the character of the person who might happen to be the Secretary of State for the South, and on his influence with the parliament and the king. A long course of indecision had hitherto multiplied the questions, on which the demands and the customary procedure of the colonies were utterly at variance with the maxims that prevailed at the Board of Trade.

In April, 1724, the seals for the Southern Department and the colonies had been intrusted to the Duke of Newcastle. His advancement by Sir Robert Walpole, who shunned men of talents as latent rivals, was owing to his rank, wealth, influence over boroughs, and personal imbecility. For nearly four-and-twenty years he remained minister for British America; yet to the last, the statesman, who was deeply versed in chap. I.} 1748. the statistics of elections, knew little of the continent of which he was the guardian. He addressed letters, it used to be confidently said, to the island of New England,

James Otis on the Rights of the Colonies. Ms. Letter of J. Q. Adams.

and could not tell but that Jamaica was in the Mediterranean.

Walpole's Memoires of the last ten years of the reign of George II.

Heaps of colonial memorials and letters remained unread in his office; and a paper was almost sure of neglect, unless some agent remained with him to see it opened.

Memoires, &c., i. 343. Gov. Clinton, of New-York, to the Earl of Lincoln, April, 1748.

His frivolous nature could never glow with affection, or grasp a great idea, or analyse complex relations. After long research, I cannot find that he ever once attended seriously to an American question, or had a clear conception of one American measure.

The power of the House of Commons in Great Britain, rested on its exclusive right to grant annually the supplies necessary for carrying on the government; thus securing the ever-recurring opportunity of demanding the redress of wrongs. The strength of the people in America consisted also in the exclusive right of its assemblies to levy and to appropriate colonial taxes. In England, the king obtained a civil list for life; in America, the rapacity of the governors made it expedient to preserve their dependence for their salaries on annual grants, of which the amount was regulated, from year to year, by a consideration of the merits of the officer, as well as the opulence of the province. It was easy for the governors to obtain of their patrons in the ministry instructions to demand peremptorily a large, settled and permanent support; but the assemblies treated the instructions as binding only on executive officers, and claimed an chap. I.} 1748. uncontrolled freedom of deliberation and decision. To remove the inconsistency, the king must pay his officers from an independent fund, or change his instructions. Newcastle did neither. He continued the instructions, which he privately consented should be broken. Often arbitrary from thoughtlessness, he had no system, except to weaken opposition by bestowing office on its leaders. He was himself free from avarice; but having the patronage of a continent, in colonies where consummate discretion and ability were required, he would gratify his connections in the aristocratic families of England by intrusting the royal prerogative to men of broken fortunes, dissolute and ignorant, too vile to be employed near home; so that America became the hospital of Great Britain for its decayed members of parliament, and abandoned courtiers.

Huske to a Friend, inclosed in Lyttelton to his Brother, 30th Jan. 1758, in Phillimore's Memoirs of Lord Lyttelton, II. 604.

Of such officers the conduct was sure to provoke jealous distrust, and to justify perpetual opposition, But Newcastle was satisfied with distributing places; and acquiesced with indifference in the policy of the colonists, to keep the salaries of all officers of the crown dependent on the annual deliberations of the legislature. Placed between the Lords of Trade, who issued instructions, and the cabinet, which alone could propose measures to enforce them, he served as a non-conductor to the angry zeal of the former, whose places, under such a secretary, became more and more nearly sinecures; while America, neglected in England, and rightly resisting her rulers, went on her way rejoicing towards freedom and independence.

Disputes accumulated with every year; but Newcastle temporized to the last, and in February, 1748, chap. I.} 1748. on the resignation of the Earl of Chesterfield, he escaped from the embarrassments of American affairs by taking the seals for the Northern Department. Those of the Southern, which included the colonies, were intrusted to the Duke of Bedford.

The new secretary was a man of inflexible honesty and good — will to his country, untainted by duplicity or timidity. His abilities were not brilliant; but his inheritance of the rank and fortune of his elder brother gave him political consideration. In 1744, he had entered the Pelham ministry as First Lord of the Admiralty, bringing with him to that board George Grenville and the Earl of Sandwich. In that station his orders to Warren contributed essentially to the conquest of Louisburg. Thus his attention was drawn to the New World as the scene of his own glory. In the last war he had cherished the darling project of conquering Canada, and the great and practicable views for America were said by Pitt to have sprung from him alone. Proud of his knowledge of trade, and accustomed to speak readily on almost every subject, he entered without distrust on the administration of a continent.

Of the two dukes, who, at this epoch of the culminating power of the aristocracy, guided the external policy of England, each hastened the independence of America. Newcastle, who was childless, depended on office for all his pleasure;—Bedford, though sometimes fond of place, was too proud to covet it always. Newcastle had no passion but business, which he conducted in a fretful hurry, and never finished;—the graver Bedford, though fond of theatricals and jollity,

Pelham to Newcastle in Coxe's Pelham Administration, II. 365.

was yet capable of persevering in a system chap. I.} 1748. Newcastle was of so fickle a head, and so treacherous a heart, that Walpole called his name Perfidy;

Lord John Russell's Introduction to the Bedford Correspondence, i. XXVI.

Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, said, he had no friends, and deserved none; and Lord Halifax used to revile him, in the strongest terms, as a knave and a fool;

Bubb Dodington's Diary, 206.

he was too unstable to be led by others, and, from his own instinct about majorities, shifted his sails as the wind shifted;—Bedford, who was bold and unbending, and would do nothing but what he himself thought indisputably right, was always governed, and was also immeasurably obstinate in an opinion once received;

Walpole's Memoires of George II., i. 162.

being the most ungovernable governed man in England,

Henry Fox, Lord Holland.

and the most faithful to the vulgar and dissolute bandits who formed his political connection. Neither was cruel or revengeful; but while the one had no rancor or ill-nature, and no enmities but freaks of petulance, the other carried decision into his attachments and his feuds. Newcastle, with no elevation of mind, no dignity of manner, lavished promises, familiar caresses, tears and kisses,

Dodington's Diary, 149.

and cringing professions of regard with prodigal hypocrisy;—Bedford, whose hardy nature knew no wiles, was too haughty to practise even concealment, and was blunt, unabashed, and, without being aware of it, rudely impetuous, even in the presence of his sovereign. Newcastle was jealous of rivals;— Bedford was impatient of contradiction. Newcastle was timorous without caution, and rushed into difficulculties which he evaded by indecision;—the fearless, chap. I.} 1748. positive, uncompromising Bedford, energetic without sagacity, and stubborn with but a narrow range of thought, scorned to shun deciding upon any question that might arise, grew choleric at resistance, could not or would not foresee obstacles, and was known throughout America as ever ready at all hazards to vindicate authority.

Chapter 2:

The royal Governor of New York appeals to the Para-Mount power of Great Britain.—Pelham's administration continued.

1748-1749.

The sun of July, 1748, shed its radiance on the chap. II.} 1748. July. banks of the Hudson. The unguarded passes of its Highlands derived as yet no interest, but from the majestic wildness that enhanced the grandeur of their forms. The shadows of the mountains, as they bent from their silent repose to greet the infrequent bark that spread its sails to the froward summer breeze, were deepened by dense forests, which came down the hill-sides to the very edges of the river. The masses of verdant woodland were but rarely broken by openings round the houses of a thinly scattered tenantry, and by the solitary mansions of the few proprietaries, who, under lavish royal grants, claimed manors of undefined extent, and even whole counties for their inheritance. Through these scenes, George Clinton, an unlettered British admiral, who, being closely connected with the Duke of Newcastle and the Duke of Bedford, had been sent to America to mend his fortunes as governor of New York, was making his way towards Albany, where the friendship of the Six Nations was to be confirmed by a joint treaty between their chiefs and the commissioners chap II.} 1748. July. from several colonies, and the encroachments of France were to be circumscribed by a concert for defence.

As his barge emerged from the Highlands, it neared

Clinton to the Duke of Bedford, 15 August, 1748.

the western bank to receive on board Cadwallader Golden, the oldest member of the royal council. How often had the governor and his advisers joined in deploring the levelling principles

Clinton to Colden, 11 March, 1748. Golden to Clinton, 21 March, 1748. Colden to the Duke of Newcastle, 21 March, 1748. Clinton to Colden, 25 April, 1748.

of the people of New York and the neighboring colonies; the tendencies of American legislatures to independence; their unwarrantable presumption in declaring their own rights and privileges; their ambitious efforts to wrest the administration from the king's officers, by refusing fixed salaries, and compelling the respective governors to annual capitulations for their support! How had they conspired to dissuade the English government from countenancing the opulent James Delancey, then the Chief Justice of the Province and the selfish and artful leader of the opposition! The inhabitants of the plantations, they reiterated to one another and to the ministry, are generally educated in republican principles; upon republican principles all is conducted. Little more than a shadow of royal authority remains in the Northern Colonies.

Ms. Memorial prepared as a reply to the Representation of the New York Assembly of 19 May, 1747. Journals of N. Y. Assembly, II. 149-155.

Very recently the importunities of Clinton had offered the Duke of Newcastle the dilemma of supporting the governor's authority, or relinquishing power to a popular faction. It will be impossible, said one of his letters, which was then under consider- chap II.} 1748. July. ation

Board of Trade to Clinton, 29 June, 1748.

in England before the king, to secure this valuable province from the enemy, or from a faction within it, without the assistance of regular troops, two thousand men at least. There never was so much silver in the country as at present, and the inhabitants never were so expensive in their habits of life. They, with the southern colonies, can well discharge this expense.

Clinton to Newcastle, from the draught.

The party of royalists who had devised the congress, as subsidiary to the war between France and England, were overtaken by the news, that preliminaries of peace between the European belligerents had been signed in April; and they eagerly seized the opportunity of returning tranquillity, to form plans for governing and taxing the colonies by the supreme authority of Great Britain. A colonial revenue, through British interposition, was desired, for the common defence of America, and to defray the civil list in the respective provinces. Could an independent income be obtained for either of these purposes, it might, by degrees, be applied to both.

To the convention in Albany came William Shirley, already for seven years governor of Massachusetts; an English lawyer, artful, needy, and ambitious; a member of the Church of England; indifferent to the laws and the peculiar faith of the people whom he governed, appointed originally to restore or introduce British authority, and more relied upon than any crown officer in America. With him appeared Andrew Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson, both natives and residents of Boston, as chap II.} 1748. July. Commissioners from Massachusetts. Oliver was bred at Harvard College, had solid learning and a good knowledge of the affairs of the province, and could write well. Distinguished for sobriety of conduct, and for all the forms of piety, he enjoyed public confidence; but at heart he was ruled by the love of money; and having diminished his patrimony by unsuccessful traffic, was greedy of the pecuniary rewards of office.

The complaisant, cultivated, and truly intelligent Hutchinson was now the Speaker of the House of Assembly in Massachusetts; the most plausible and the most influential, as well as the most ambitious man in that colony. Loving praise himself, he soothed with obsequious blandishments any one who bade fair to advance his ends. To the congregational clergy he paid assiduous deference, as one of their most serious and constant supporters; but his conduct did not flow from a living faith; and his pious life and unfailing attendance at meeting, were little more than a continuous flattery. He was one who shunned uttering a direct falsehood; but he did not scruple to conceal truth, to equivocate, and to deceive. He courted the people, but from boyhood, inwardly disliked and despised them; and used their favor and confidence only as steps to his own promotion. He, too, though well educated, and of uncommon endowments, and famed at college as of great promise, so coveted money, that he became a trader in his native town, and like others, smuggled goods which he sold at retail. Failing of profits in mercantile pursuits, he withdrew from business in which he had rather impaired his inheritance, but his ruling passion was unchanged; and to gain property was the most chap II.} 1748. July. ardent desire of his soul;

John Eliot. Sub voce Hutchinson.

so that his avarice was the great incentive to his ambition. He had once been in England as agent of Massachusetts at the time when the taxing America by parliament first began to be talked of, and had thus had occasion to become acquainted with British statesmen, the maxims of the Board of Trade, and the way in which Englishmen reasoned about the colonies. He loved the land of his nativity, and made a study of its laws and history; but he knew that all considerable emoluments of office sprung not from his frugal countrymen, but from royal favor. He was a man of clear discernment, and where unbiassed by his own interests, he preferred to do what was right; but his sordid nature led him to worship power; he could stoop to solicit justice as a boon; and a small temptation not only left him without hardihood to resist oppression, but would easily bend him to become its instrument. At the same time he excelled in the art of dissimulation, and knew how to veil his selfishness by the appearance of public spirit.

The congress at Albany was thronged beyond example by the many chiefs of the Six Nations and their allies.

Minutes of the Congress held at Albany, July, 1748.

They resolved to have no French within their borders, nor even to send deputies to Canada, but to leave to English mediation the recovery of their brethren from captivity. It was announced, that tribes of the Far West, dwelling on branches of Erie and the Ohio, inclined to friendship; and nearly at that very moment envoys from their villages were at Lancaster, solemnizing a treaty of commerce with chap II.} 1748. July. Pennsylvania.

Narrative of George Croghan, Ms. Causes of the alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians. 56, 126.

Returning peace was hailed as the happy moment for bringing the Miamis and their neighbors within the covenant chain of the English, and thus, as Europeans reasoned, extending British jurisdiction through Western New York to the Wabash.

The lighted calumet had been passed from mouth to mouth; the graves of the tawny heroes, slain in war, had been so covered with expiating presents, that their vengeful spirits were appeased; the wampum belts of confirmed love had been exchanged; when the commissioners of Massachusetts, acting in harmony with Clinton and Shirley, and adopting their opinions and almost their language, represented to them in a memorial, that as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New-York were the barrier of America against the French, the charge of defending their frontiers ought as little to rest on those provinces, as the charge of defending any counties in Great Britain on such counties alone; that the other governments had been invited to join in concerting measures, but all, excepting Connecticut, had declined; they therefore urged an earnest application to the king so far to interpose, as that, whilst the French were in Canada, the remoter colonies which were not immediately exposed, might be obliged to contribute in a just proportion towards the expense of protecting the inland territories of New England and New York.

Memorial of Oliver, Hutchinson and Choate, through Clinton and Shirley.

We, Aug. subjoined Clinton and Shirley, as they forwarded the paper to the Board of trade, agree with the memo- chap. II.} 1748. Aug. rialists.

Clinton and Shirley to the Board of Trade, 18 August, 1748, in the collection of documents obtained for the State of New York, by its agent, John Romeyn Brodhead. London Documents, XXVIII. 58.

The attitude of the French justified cautious watchfulness on the part of every officer of British America. The haste or the negligence of their plenipotentiaries at Aix la Chapelle had left their boundary in America along its whole line, determined only by the vague agreement, that it should be as it had been before the war; and for a quarter of a century before the war, it had never ceased to be a subject of altercation. In this wavering condition of an accepted treaty of peace and an undetermined limit of jurisdiction, each party hurried to occupy in advance as much territory as possible, without too openly compromising their respective governments. Acadia, according to its ancient boundaries, belonged to Great Britain; but France had always, even in times of profound peace,

Representation of the Board of Trade to the king, 1721.

urgently declared that Acadia included only the peninsula; before the restoration of Cape Breton, an officer from Canada had occupied the isthmus between Baye Verte and the Bay of Fundy; a small colony kept possession of the mouth of the St. John's River;

Col. Mascarene to the Board of Trade, 2 June, 1749. Lords of Trade to Bedford, 10 August, 1749. De Boisherbert, French Commandant at St. John's, to Colonel Cornwallis, 16 August, 1749. Cornwallis to Lords of Trade, 20 August, 1749.

and the claim to the coast as far west as the Kennebeck had never been abandoned.

La Galissoniere to Col. Mascarene, 15 January, 1749.

At the West, also, France had uniformly and frankly claimed the whole basin of the Saint Lawrence and of the Mississippi, and in proof of its right- chap. II.} 1748. ful possession pointed to its castles at Crown Point, at Niagara, among the Miamis, and within the borders of Louisiana. Ever regarding the friendship of the Six Nations as a bulwark essential to security, La Galissoniere, the governor-general of Canada, insisted on treating with them as the common allies of the French and English;

La Galissoniere to Clinton, 25 August, 1748. Shirley to Board of Trade, 28 October, 1748.

and proposed direct negotiations with them for liberating their captive warriors. When Clinton and Shirley claimed the delivery of the Iroquois prisoners as subjects of England, the Canadian governor denied their subjection, and sent the letter to be read to the tribes assembled round the grand council-fire at Onondaga. We have ceded our lands to no one, spoke their indignant orator, after due consultation; we hold them of Heaven alone.

Acte Authentique, &c., &c., 2 Nov., 1748. N. Y. Paris Doe. x. 8.

Still further to secure the affections of the confederacy, it was resolved to establish an Indian mission on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence; and the self-devoted Abbe Francis Picquet,

Documentary History of N. Y., i. 423, &c.

attracted by the deep and safe harbor, the position at the head of the Rapids, the height and size of the surrounding oak forests, the surpassingly rich soil, selected Oswegatchie, now Ogdensburg, with a view to gather in a village under French supremacy, so many Iroquois converts to Christianity, as would reconcile and bind all their kindred to the French alliance. And for the more distant regions, orders were sent in October to the Commandant at Detroit, to oppose every English establishment on the Maumee, the Wabash, and the chap. II.} 1748. Ohio, by force; or, if his strength was insufficient, to summon the intruder to depart, under highest perils for disobedience.

Journal de ce qui s'est passe, &c. N. Y. Paris Doc. x.

Plausible reasons, therefore, existed for the memorial of Hutchinson and Oliver; but the more cherished purpose of those who directed the councils of the Congress at Albany, was the secure enjoyment of the emoluments of office without responsibility to the respective American provinces. From past experiments, added Clinton and Shirley jointly, as they forwarded the ostensibly innocent petition, we are convinced that the colonies will never agree on quotas, which must, therefore, be settled by royal instructions.

Clinton and Shirley to Board. N. Y. London Doe. XXVIII., 60.

It is necessary for us likewise to observe to your lordships, thus they proceeded to explain their main design, on many occasions there has been so little regard paid in several colonies to the royal instructions, that it is requisite to think of some method to enforce them.

Bayard's Trial at New York, 1702.

What methods should be followed to reduce a factious colony had already been settled by the great masters of English jurisprudence. Two systems of government had long been at variance; the one founded on prerogative, the other on the supremacy of parliament. The first opinion had been professed by many of the earlier lawyers, who considered the colonies as dependent on the crown alone. Even after the Revolution, the chief justice at New York, in 1702, declared, that, in the plantations the king governs by his prerogative;

Knox, Controversy Reviewed.

and Sir John Holt chap. II.} 1748. had said, Virginia being a conquered country, their law is what the king pleases. But when, in 1711, New York, during the administration of Hunter, was left without a revenue, the high powers of parliament were the resource of the ministers; and they prepared a bill, reciting the neglect of the province, and imposing all the taxes which had been discontinued by its legislature. Northey and Raymond, the attorney and the solicitor general, lawyers of the greatest authority, approved the measure.

Knox, Controversy Reviewed.

When, in 1724, a similar strife occurred between the crown and Jamaica, and some held that the king and his Privy Council had a right to levy taxes on the inhabitants of that island, the crown lawyers, Lord Hardwicke, then Sir Philip Yorke, and Sir Clement Wearg,

Opinions of eminent Lawyers. i. 223. Mansfield's opinion in the case of Campbell v. Hall.

made the memorable reply, that a colony of English subjects cannot be taxed but by some representative body of their own, or by the parliament of England. That opinion impressed itself early and deeply on the mind of Lord Mansfield, and in October, 1744, when the neglect of Pennsylvania to render aid in the war had engaged the attention of the ministry, Sir Dudley Rider and Lord Mansfield, then William Murray, declared, that a colonial assembly cannot be compelled to do more towards their own defence than they shall see fit, unless by the force of an act of parliament, which alone can prescribe rules of conduct for them.

Chalmers' Introduction, Ms. II. 86.

Away, then, with all attempts to compel by prerogative, to govern by instructions, to obtain a revenue chap. II.} 1748. by royal requisitions, to fix quotas by a council of crown officers. No power but that of parliament can overrule the colonial assemblies.

Such was the doctrine of Murray, who was himself able to defend his system, being unrivalled in debate, except by William Pitt alone. The advice of this illustrious jurist was the more authoritative, because he had long known the Americans. I began life with them, said he, on a later occasion, and owe much to them, having been much concerned in the plantation causes before the Privy Council. So I became a good deal acquainted with American affairs and people.

Holiday's Life of Lord Mansfield, 248.

During the discussions that are now to be related, he was often consulted by the agents of the American royalists. His opinion, coinciding with that of Hardwicke, was applauded by the Board of Trade, and became the corner-stone of British policy.

On this theory of parliamentary supremacy Shirley and his associates placed their reliance. Under his advice,

Clinton to Bedford, 17 Oct. 1749. That Clinton acted by the advice of Shirley appears from several letters.

it was secretly, but firmly, resolved to bring the disputes between governors and American assemblies to a crisis; New York was selected as the theatre, and the return of peace as the epoch, for the experiment; elaborate documents prepared the ministry for the struggle; and Clinton was to extort from the colonial legislature fixed salaries and revenues at the royal disposition, or, by producing extreme disorder, to compel the interposition of the parliament of chap. II.} 1748. Oct. Great Britain.

Clinton to Shirley, 5 August, 1748; Shirley to Clinton, 13 August; Clinton to Bedford, 15 August; same to same, 20 October, and same to same, 30 October. Clinton to Lords of Trade, 20 October, and same to same, 30 October. Clinton to Bedford, 22 November.

To the Assembly which met in October, 1748, Clinton, faithful to his engagements, and choosing New York as the opening scene in the final contest that led to independence, declared, that the methods adopted for colonial supplies made it his indispensable duty at the first opportunity to put a stop to these innovations; and he demanded, what had so often been refused, the grant of a revenue to the king for at least five years. The Assembly, in reply, insisted on naming in their grants the incumbent of each office. From recent experience, they continue, we are fully convinced that the method of an annual support is most wholesome and salutary, and are confirmed in the opinion, that the faithful representatives of the people will never depart from it.

Warning them of the anger of parliament,

Journals of N. Y. Assembly, II. 246.

Clinton prorogued the Assembly, and in floods of letters and documents represented to the secretary of state, that its members had set up the people as the high court of American appeal; that they claimed all the powers and privileges of parliament; that they virtually assumed all the public money into their own hands, and issued it without warrant from the governor; that they took to themselves the sole power of rewarding all services, and in effect, the nomination to all offices, by granting the salary annually, not to the office, but, by name, to the person

Clinton to Bedford from the Draught.

in the office; that the system, if not speedily reme- chap. II.} 1748. Oct. died, would affect the dependency of the colonies on the crown.

Ms. Present state of the Province of N. Y.

And he entreated the king to make a good example for all America, by regulating the government of New York. Till then, he added, I cannot meet the Assembly, without danger of exposing the king's authority and myself to contempt.

Clinton to Bedford, 20 October, 1748.

Thus issue was joined with a view to involve the Nov. British parliament in the administration of the colonies, just at the time, when Bedford, as the secretary, was resolving to introduce uniformity into their administration by supporting the authority of the central government; and his character was a guarantee for resolute perseverance. Considering the present situation of things, he had declared to Newcastle,

Bedford to Newcastle, 11 August, 1748. Bedford Correspondence, i. 441.

it would be highly improper to have an inefficient man at the head of the Board of Trade; and, at his suggestion, on the first day of November, 1748, two months after the peace of America and Europe had been ratified, the Earl of Halifax, then just thirty-two years old, entered upon his long period of service as First Commissioner for the Plantations. He was fond of splendor, profuse, and in debt; passionate, overbearing, and self-willed; of moderate sense, and ignorant of the world.

Walpole's George II.

Familiar with a feeble class of belles-lettres, he loved to declaim long passages from Prior;

Richard Cumberland's Memoirs of Himself.

but his mind was not imbued with political theories, or invigorated by the lessons of a manly philosophy. As a public man, he was fond of authority; without sagacity, yet unwilling to defer to any chap. II.} 1748. Nov. one; and not fearing application, he preferred a post of business to a sinecure. To the imagination of the British people the American plantations appeared as boundless and inhospitable deserts, dangerous from savages and dismally wild:—Halifax beheld in them half a hemisphere subjected to his supervision; and, glowing with ambition, he resolved to elevate himself by enlarging the dignity and power of his employment. For this end, unlike his predecessors, he devoted himself eagerly and zealously to the business of the plantations, confiding in his ability to master their affairs almost by intuition; writing his own dispatches; and, with the undoubting self-reliance of a presumptuous novice, ready to advance fixed opinions and propose plans of action.

The condition of the continent, whose affairs he was to superintend, seemed to invite and to urge his immediate and his utmost activity, to secure the possessions of Great Britain against France, and to maintain the authority of the central government against the colonies themselves. As he looked on the map of America, he saw the boundary line along the whole frontier rendered uncertain by the claims of France; both nations desiring unlimited possessions;—France, to bound British enterprise by the Penobscot or the Kennebeck,

Galissoniere to Col. Mascarene, 15 Jan., 1749.

and the Alleghanies; England, to bring the continent under her flag, to supply the farthest wigwam from her workshops, to fill the wilderness with colonies that should trade only with their metropolis.

As he read the papers which had accumulated in the Board of Trade, and the dispatches which were chap. II.} 1748. Nov. constantly coming in, as fast as the crown officers in the colonies became aware of the change in the spirit of the administration, the affairs which he was to manage, seemed from the irresolution of his predecessors, to have become involved in universal confusion, tending to legislative independence and rebellion. Here wrote Glen, the governor of South Carolina, levelling principles prevail; the frame of the civil government is unhinged; a governor, if he would be idolized, must betray his trust;

Glen to Bedford, 27 July, 1748.

the people have got the whole administration in their hands; the election of members to the assembly is by ballot; not civil posts only, but all ecclesiastical preferments, are in the disposal or election of the people; to preserve the dependence of America in general, the Constitution must be new modelled.

Glen to Bedford, 10 October, without date.

In North Carolina, no law for collecting quit-rents, had been perfected; and its frugal people, whom their governor reported as wild and barbarous, paid the servants of the crown scantily, and often left them in arrears.

Gabrill Johnston to Bedford, 1748, received 17 November.

In Virginia, the land of light taxes and freedom from paper money, long famed for its loyalty, where the people had nearly doubled in twenty-one years, and a revenue, granted in perpetuity, with a fixed quit-rent, put aside the usual sources of colonial strife, the insurgent spirit of freedom invaded the royal authority in the Established Church; and in 1748, just as Sherlock, the new bishop of London, was interceding with the king for an American episcopate, which Bedford and Halifax both favored as essential chap. II.} 1748. Nov. to royal authority, Virginia, with the consent of Gooch, its lieutenant-governor, transferred by law

Hening's Statutes at large, VI. 90. XXII. Geo. II., chap. XXXIV. § 7.

the patronage of all the livings to the vestries. The act was included among the revised laws, and met with the king's approbation.

Dinwiddie to the Earl of Holdernesse, 5 June, 1753.

But from the time that its purpose was perceived, Sherlock became persuaded, that Virginia, formerly an orderly province, had nothing more at heart than to lessen the influence of the crown.

Bishop of London to the Board of Trade.

Letters from Pennsylvania warned the ministers, that as the obstinate, wrong-headed Assembly of Quakers in that province pretended not to be accountable to his Majesty or his government, they might in time apply the public money to purposes injurious to the crown and the mother country.

But nowhere did popular power seem to the royalists so deeply or dangerously seated as in New England, where every village was a little self-constituted democracy, whose organization had received the sanction of law and the confirmation of the king. Especially Boston, whose people had liberated its citizen mariners, when impressed by a British admiral in their harbor, was accused of a rebellious insurrection. The chief cause, said Shirley,

Shirley to the Board of Trade.

of the mobbish turn of a town inhabited by twenty thousand persons, is its constitution, by which the management of it devolves on the populace, assembled in their town-meetings. With the Assembly which represented the towns of Massachusetts the wary barrister declined a decided chap. II.} 1748. Nov. rupture. When, in November, the legislature of that province, jealous from a true instinct, reduced his salary one third, on the plea of public distress, he answered plausibly, that the province had doubled its population within twenty years; had in that time organized within its limits five-and-twenty new towns; and, at the close of the long war, was less in debt than at its beginning. But his hopes of sure emoluments rested in England, and were connected with the success of the applications from New-York.

The same conspiracy against the colonies extended to New Jersey. In December, the council of that Dec. province likewise found it their indispensable duty to represent to his Majesty the growing rebellion in their province.

James Alexander to C. Golden, 3 January, 1749.

The conflict for lands in its eastern moiety, where Indian title deeds, confirmed by long occupation, were pleaded against claims derived from grants of an English king, led to confusion which the rules of the English law could not remedy. The people of whole counties could not be driven from their homesteads, or imprisoned in jails; Belcher,

Belcher to the Board of Trade, Jan., 1749.

the temporizing governor, confessed that he could not bring the delegates into measures for suppressing the wicked spirit of rebellion. The proprietors, who had purchased the long dormant claim to a large part of the province, made common cause with men in office, invoked British interposition, and accused their opponents of throwing off the king's authority and treasonably and boldly denying his title to New Jersey. These appeals were to tally with and accre- chap II. 1748} Dec. dit the representation from New-York.

C. Colden to Clinton, 12 January, 1749. Compare too Hamilton's Speech to the Assembly of the Jerseys at Perth Amboy.

Such was the aspect in which official records presented America to the rash and inexperienced Halifax. From the first moment of his employment, he stood forth the busy champion of the royal authority; and in December, 1748, his earliest official words of any import, promised a very serious consideration on what he called the just prerogatives of the crown, and those defects of the constitution, which had spread themselves over many of the plantations, and were destructive of all order and government,

Letter of December, to Glen of South Carolina.

and he resolved on instantly effecting a thorough change, by the agency of parliament. While awaiting its meeting, the menaced encroachments of France urgently claimed his attention; and with equal promptness he determined to secure the possession of Nova Scotia and the Ohio valley. 1749.

The region beyond the Alleghanies had as yet no English settlement, except, perhaps, a few scattered cabins in Western Virginia. The Indians south of Lake Erie and in the Ohio valley were, in the recent war, friendly to the English, and were now united to Pennsylvania by a treaty of commerce. The traders, chiefly from Pennsylvania, who strolled from tribe to tribe, were without fixed places of abode, but drew many Indians over the lake to trade in skins and furs. The colony of New York, through the Six Nations, might command the Canadian passes to the Ohio valley; the grant to William Penn actually included a part of it; but Virginia bounded its ancient chap. II.} 1749. dominion only by Lake Erie. To secure Ohio for the English world, Lawrence Washington of Virginia, Augustus Washington, and their associates, proposed a colony beyond the Alleghanies. The country west of the great mountains is the centre of the British dominions, wrote Halifax and his colleagues, who were inflamed with the hope of recovering it by having a large tract settled; and the favor of Henry Pelham, with the renewed instance of the Board of Trade,

Representation of the Board of Trade to the king. Coxe's Pelham Administration, II. 277, 278. Franklin's Writings, IV. 336. Shelburne to Fauquier, 8 Oct. 1767.

obtained in March, 1749, the king's instructions to the governor of Virginia, to grant to John Hanbury and his associates in Maryland and Virginia five hundred thousand acres of land between the Monongahela and the Kenawha, or on the northern margin of the Ohio. The company were to pay no quit-rent for ten years, within seven years to colonize at least one hundred families, to select immediately two-fifths of their territory, and at their own cost to build and garrison a fort. Thomas Lee, president of the Council of Virginia, and Robert Dinwiddie, a native of Scotland, surveyor-general for the southern colonies, were among the shareholders.

Aware of these designs, France anticipated England. Immediately, in 1749, La Galissioniere, whose patriotic mind revolved great designs of empire, and questioned futurity for the results of French power, population, and commerce in America,

Memoire sur les Colonies de la France par M. de la Galissoniere, N. Y. Paris Doc. x. 25.

sent De Celoron de Bienville, with three hundred men, to trace and occupy the valley of the Ohio,

Compare Shirley to Lords of Trade, 4 July, 1749.

and that of the Saint Lawrence, as far as Detroit. On the southern chap. II.} 1749. banks of the Ohio, opposite the point of an island, and near the junction of a river, that officer buried, at the foot of a primeval red-oak, a plate of lead with the inscription, that, from the farthest ridge whence water trickled towards the Ohio, the country belonged to France; while the lilies of the Bourbons were nailed to a forest tree in token of possession.

Procos Verbal, N. Y. Paris Doc. x. 9.

I am going down the river, said he to Indians at Logstown, to scourge home our children, the Miamis and the Wyandots; and he forbade all trading with the English. The lands are ours, replied the Indians, and they claimed freedom of commerce. The French emissary proceeded to the towns of the Miamis, expelled the English traders, and by letter requested Hamilton, the governor of Pennsylvania, to prevent all farther intrusion. But the Indians brooded over the plates which he buried at the mouth of every remarkable creek. We know, thus they murmured, it is done to steal our country from us; and they resolved to go to the Onondaga council for protection.

Croghan's Ms. Account of his Transactions, &c. &c.

On the northeast, the well informed La Galissoniere took advantage of the gentle and unsuspecting character of the Acadians themselves, and of the doubt that existed respecting occupancy and ancient titles. In 1710, when Port Royal, now Annapolis, was vacated, the fort near the mouth of the St. John's remained to France. The English had no settlement on that river; and though they had, on appeal to their tribunals, exercised some sort of jurisdiction, it had not been clearly recognised by the few inhabit- chap. II.} 1749. ants, and had always been denied by the French government. It began to be insinuated,

La Galissoniere to Col. Mascarene, 15 January, 1749.

that the ceded Acadia was but a part of the peninsula lying upon the sea between Cape Fourches and Cape Canso, and that therefore the descendants of the French still owed allegiance to France. The Abbe La Loutre, missionary and curate of Messagouche, now Fort Lawrence, which is within the peninsula, favored the, representation with alacrity; and, sure of influence over his people and his associate priests, he formed the plan, with the aid of La Galissoniere and the court of France, to entice the Acadians from their ancient dwelling-places, and plant them on the frontier as a barrier against the English.

Meroires sur les Affaires du Canada, depuis 1749, jusquaa 1760.

But even before the peace, Shirley, who always advocated the most extended boundary of Nova Scotia, represented to George the Second, that the inhabitants near the isthmus, being French and Catholic, should be removed into some other of his Majesty's colonies, and that Protestant settlers should occupy their lands.

Shirley's Memoirs of the Last War, 77, 75.

From this atrocious proposal, Newcastle, who was cruel only from frivolity, did not withhold his approbation; but Bedford, his more humane successor, restricting his plans of colonization to the undisputed British territory, sought to secure the entire obedience of the French inhabitants by intermixing with them colonists of English descent.

Bedford to the Duke of Cumberland, 28 Oct., 1748.

The execution of this design, which the Duke of chap. II.} 1749. Cumberland, Pelham, and Henry Fox assisted in maturing, devolved on Halifax. Invitations went through Europe to invite Protestants from the continent to emigrate to the British colonies. The Moravian brethren

22 Geo. II., c. XXX.

were attracted by the promise of exemption from oaths and military service. The goodwill of New England was encouraged by care for its fisheries; and American whalemen, stimulated by the promise of enjoying an equal bounty

22 George II., c. XLV.

with the British, learned to follow their game among the icebergs of the Greenland seas. But the main burden of securing Nova Scotia fell on the British treasury. While the General Court of Massachusetts,

Instructions to Massachusetts Agent, 26 June, 1749.

through their agent in England, sought to prevent the French from possessing any harbor whatever in the Bay of Fundy, or west of it on the Atlantic, proposals were made, in March, 1749, to disbanded officers and soldiers and marines, to accept and occupy lands in Acadia; and before the end of June, more than fourteen hundred persons,

Lords of Trade to Cornwallis, 15 May, 1749.

under the auspices of the British parliament, were conducted by Colonel Edward Cornwallis, a brother of Lord Cornwallis, into Chebucto harbor. There, on a cold and sterile soil, covered to the water's edge with one continued forest of spruce and pine, whose thick underwood and gloomy shade hid rocks and the rudest wilds, with no clear spot to be seen or heard of, rose the first town of English origin east of the Penobscot.

Hon. Col. Cornwallis to Lords of Trade, 22 June, 1749, and 20 August, 1749.

From the minister whose promptness, vigilance, and chap. II.} 1749. spirit gave efficiency to the enterprise, it took the name of Halifax. Before winter three hundred houses were covered in.

Cornwallis to the Board of Trade, October, 1749.

At Minas, now Lower Horton, a blockhouse was raised, and fortified by a trench and a palisade; a fort at Pesaquid, now Windsor, protected the communications with Halifax. These, with Annapolis on the Bay of Fundy, secured the peninsula.

The ancient inhabitants had, in 1730, taken an oath of fidelity and submission to the English king, as sovereign of Acadia, and were promised indulgence in the true exercise of their religion, and exemption from bearing arms against the French or Indians. They were known as the French Neutrals. Their hearts were still with France, and their religion made them a part of the diocese of Quebec. Of a sudden it was proclaimed to their deputies

Minutes of Council of Nova Scotia, 14 July, 1749.

convened at Halifax, that English commissioners would repair to their villages, and tender to them, unconditionally,

Ordonnance of Cornwallis, &c. &c., 1 August, 1749.

the oath of allegiance. They could not pledge themselves before Heaven to join in war against the land of their origin and their love; and, in a letter signed by a thousand of their men, they pleaded rather for leave to sell their lands and effects, and abandon the peninsula for new homes, which France would provide.

Letter of the French Inhabitants to Cornwallis, 7 Sept., 1749.

But Cornwallis would offer no option but between unconditional allegiance and the confiscation of all their property. It is for me, said he, to command and to be obeyed;

Answer of the Governor in Council to the French Inhabitants, 7 September, 1749.

and he chap. II.} 1749. looked to the Board of Trade for further instructions.

Cornwallis to the Board of Trade, 11 September, 1749.

With the Micmac Indians, who, at the instigation of La Loutre, One Leutre, a French Priest. Board of Trade to Bedford, 16 October, 1749. De Lutre, a priest. Cornwallis. the missionary, united with other tribes to harass the infant settlements, the English governor dealt still more summarily. The land on which you sleep is mine: such was the message of the implacable tribe;

Micmac Indians to Governor Cornwallis, 23 September, 1749.

I sprung out of it as the grass does; I was born on it from sire to son; it is mine forever. So the council at Halifax

Resolutions of Council, Halifax, 1 October, 1749.

voted all the poor Red Men that dwelt in the peninsula These Micmacks include the Cape Sable, St. John's Island, Cape Breton and all inhabiting the peninsula. Cornwallis to the Board of Trade. to be so many banditti, ruffians, or rebels; and by its authority Cornwallis, to bring the rascals to reason,

Cornwallis to the Board of Trade, 17 October, 1749.

offered for every one of them taken or killed ten guineas, to be paid on producing the savage or his scalp.

Proclamation against the Micmac Indians, 2 October, 1749.

But the source of this disorder was the undefined state of possession between the European competitors for North America.

Meantime, La Galissoniere, having surrendered his government to the more pacific La Jonquiere, repaired to France, to be employed on the commission for adjusting the American boundaries. La Jonquiere, saw the imminent danger of a new war, and like Bedford would have shunned hostilities; but his instructions from the French ministry, although they did not require advances beyond the isthmus, compelled him to attempt confining the English within chap. II.} 1749. the peninsula of Acadia.

La Jonquiere to Cornwallis, 25 October, 1749. Cornwallis to La Jonquiere, 1 November, 1749. John H. Lydius to Cornwallis, 1 December, 1749. Abbe Maillard to Gerard Beaubassin, 3 May, 1749.

Thus, while France, with the unity of a despotic central power, was employing all its strength in Canada to make good its claims to an extended frontier, Halifax signalized his coming into office by planting Protestant emigrants in Nova Scotia, as a barrier against encroachments on the North East, and by granting lands for a Virginia colony on both banks of the Ohio, in order to take possession of the valley of the Mississippi. With still greater impetuosity he rushed precipitately towards an arbitrary solution of all the accumulated difficulties in the administration of the colonies.

Long experience having proved that American assemblies insisted on the right of deliberating freely on all subjects respecting which it was competent for them to legislate, the Board of Trade, so soon as Halifax had become its head, revived and earnestly promoted the scheme of strengthening the authority of the prerogative by a general act of the British parliament. At its instance, on the third day of March,

Commons' Journals, XXV. 246.

1749, under the pretext of suppressing the flagrant evils of colonial paper-money, the disappointed Horatio Walpole, who, for nearly thirty years, I have been near thirty years in the Council of this Province, * * and, in all that time, I do not remember that any public money was drawn by any governor from the Treasury and applied to any other use than what it was designed for by the Assembly that granted it, except for a perquisite which the King's Auditor of his revenue claimed; and you know, sir, what influence the governors were under at that time to make them do this. Horatio Walpole, the Auditor, was brother to Sir Robert Walpole. Ms. Letter to Governor Shirley from New York, July 1749. had vainly struggled, as auditor-general of the colonies, to chap. II.} 1749. gain a sinecure allowance of five per cent. on all colonial revenues, reported a bill to overrule charters, and to make all orders by the king, or under his authority, the highest law of America.

Such a coalition of power seemed in harmony with that legislative supremacy, which was esteemed the great whig doctrine of the revolution of 1683; it also had the semblance of an earlier precedent. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, parliament sanctioned what a king, by his royal power, might do,

31 Hen. VIII. c. VIII. Compare 1 Ed. VI., c. XII., Hallam's Constitutional Hist. of England, i. 47, 48, 50.

and gave the energy of law to his proclamations and ordinances. In this it did but surrender the liberties of its own constituents: Halifax and his board invited the British parliament to sequester the liberties of other communities, and transfer them to the British crown.

The people of Connecticut,

Journal of Commons, XXV. 793.

through their agent, Eliakim Palmer, protested against the unusual and extraordinary attempt, so repugnant to the laws and constitution of Great Britain, and to their own inestimable privileges and charter, of being governed by laws of their own making. By their birthright, by the perils of their ancestors, by the sanctity of royal faith, by their own affectionate duty and zeal, by their devotion of their lives and fortunes to their king and country, they remonstrated against the bill. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island pleaded their patents, and reminded parliament of the tribute alrleady levied on them by the monopoly of their commerce. For Massachusetts, William Bollan, through chap. II.} 1749. the very good-natured Lord Baltimore, represented, that the bill virtually included all future orders of all future princes, however repugnant they might be to the constitution of Great Britain, or of the colonies; thus abrogating for the people of Massachusetts their common rights as Englishmen, not less than their charter privileges The agent of South Carolina cautiously intimated, that, as obedience to instructions was already due from the governors, whose commissions depended on the royal pleasure, the deliberative rights of the assemblies were the only colonial safeguard against unlimited authority.

Commons' Journal, XXV., 793, 794, 813, 814, 815, 818.

Venerating the British constitution, as established at the Revolution, Onslow, the speaker of the House of Commons, believed that parliament had power to tax America, but not to delegate that power; and, by his order, the objections to the proposed measure were spread at length on the journal.

Ms. Memoirs of Bollan's Services.

The Board of Trade wavered, and in April consented, reluctantly, to drop for the present, and reserve, the despotic clauses;

Bollan, the Massachusetts agent, to Secretary Willard, April, 1749.

but it continued to cherish the spirit that dictated them, till it had driven the colonies to independence, and had itself ceased to exist.

At the same time Massachusetts was removing every motive to interfere with its currency by abolishing its paper money. That province had demanded, as a right, the reimbursement of its expenses for the capture of Louisburg. Its claim, as of right, was denied; for its people, it was said, were the subjects, and not the allies of England; owing allegiance, and chap. II.} 1749. not entitled to subsidies. The requisite appropriation was made by the equity of parliament; yet Pelham himself, the prime minister, declared that the grant was a boon. Massachusetts had already, in January, 1749 by the urgency of Hutchinson, voted, that its public notes should be redeemed with the expected remittances from the royal exchequer. Twice in the preceding year, it had invited a convention of the neighboring colonies, to suppress jointly the fatal paper-currency; but finding concert impossible, it proceeded alone. As the bills had depreciated, and were no longer in the hands of the first holders, it was insisted, that to redeem them at their original value would impose a new tax on the first holders themselves; and therefore forty-five shillings of the old tenor, or eleven shillings and threepence of the new emission, were, with the approbation of the king in council, redeemed by a Spanish milled dollar. Thus Massachusetts became the hard-money colony of the North.

Hutchinson's Correspondence. Hutchinson's Hist. II. Felt's Massachusetts Currency.

The plan for enforcing all royal orders in America by the act of the British parliament had hardly been abandoned, when the loyalty and vigilance of Massachusetts were perverted to further the intrigues against its liberty. In April, 1749, its Assembly, which always held that Nova Scotia included all the continent east of New England, represented to the king the insolent intrusions of France on their territory, advised that the neighboring provinces should be informed of the common danger, and begged that no breach might be made in any of the chap. II.} 1749. territories of the crown on the American continent. It was on occasion of transmitting this address, that Shirley developed his system. To the Duke of Bedford

Shirley to the Duke of Bedford, 24 April, 1749, and 18 Feb. 1748-9.

he recommended the erecting and garrisoning of frontier fortresses, under the direction of the king's engineers and officers. A tax for their maintenance, he urged, should be laid by parliament upon the colonies, without which it will not be done. From the prosperous condition of America, he argued, that making the British subjects on this continent contribute towards their common security could not be thought laying a burden; and he cited the Acts of Trade and the duty laid on foreign sugars imported into the northern colonies, as precedents that established the reasonableness of his proposal.

Shirley's associates in New York were equally persevering. The seventh day of May, 1749, brought to them the agreeable news, that all went flowingly on

J. Ayscough, Clinton's private secretary, to Colden, 9 May, 1749. Catherwood sends us the agreeable news, that all goes flowingly on; Assembly to be reproved and dissolved; the new minister, viz.: Duke Bedford, Duke Dorset, Lord Halifax, &c., presenting a memorial to his Majesty in favor of his Excellency, &c. &c.

as they had desired. Knowing that Bedford, Dorset, and Halifax had espoused their cause, they convened the legislature. But it was in vain. The faithful representatives of the people, thus spoke the Assembly of New York in July, can never recede from the method of an annual support. I know well, rejoined the governor, the present sentiments of his Majesty's ministers; and you might have guessed at them by the bill lately brought into parliament for enforcing the king's instructions. Con- chap. II.} 1749. sider, he adds, the great liberties you are indulged with. Consider, likewise, what may be the consequences, should our mother country suspect that you design to lessen the prerogative of the crown in the plantations. The Romans did not allow the same privileges to their colonies, which the other citizens enjoyed; and you know in what manner the republic of Holland governs her colonies. Endeavor, then, to show your great thankfulness for the great privileges you enjoy.

The representatives

Journals of the New-York Assembly, II. 267, 269.

adhered unanimously to their resolutions, pleading that governors are generally entire strangers to the people they are sent to govern; . . . . . they seldom regard the welfare of the people, otherwise than as they can make it subservient to their own particular interest; and, as they know the time of their continuance in their governments to be uncertain, all methods are used, and all engines set to work, to raise estates to themselves. Should the public moneys be left to their disposition, what can be expected but the grossest misapplication, under various pretences, which will never be wanting? To this unanimity the governor could only oppose his determination of most earnestly invoking the attention of the ministry and the king to their proceedings; and then prorogued the Assembly, which he afterwards dissolved.

To make the appeal to the ministry more effective, Shirley, who had obtained leave to go to England, and whose success in every point was believed to be most certain,

Clinton to Colden, 6 November, 1749.

before embarking received from Colden chap. II.} 1749. an elaborate argument, in which revenue to the crown, independent of the American people, was urged as indispensable; and to obtain it, the most prudent method, it was insisted, would be by application to parliament.

Colden to Shirley, 25 July, 1749.

But before Shirley arrived in Europe, the ministry was already won to his designs. On the first day of June, the Board of Trade had been recruited by a young man gifted with a thousand talents, Of a thousand talents. This praise came from David Hume. the daring and indefatigable Charles Townshend. A younger son of Lord Townshend, ambitious, capable of unwearied labor, bold, and somewhat extravagant in his style of eloquence, yet surpassed, as a debater, only by Murray and Pitt, he was introduced to office through the commission for the colonies. His extraordinary and restless ability rapidly obtained sway at the board; Halifax cherished him as a favorite, and the parliament very soon looked up to him as the greatest master of American affairs.

How to regulate charters and colonial governments, and provide an American civil list independent of American legislatures, was the earliest as well as the latest political problem which Charles Townshend attempted to solve. At that time, Murray, as crown lawyer, ruled the cabinet on questions of legal right; Dorset, the father of Lord George Germain, was president of the Council; Lyttelton and George Grenville were already of the Treasury Board; and Sandwich, raised by his hold on the affections of the Duke of Bedford, presided at the Admiralty; Halifax, Charles Townshend, and their chap. II.} 1749. colleagues, were busy with remodelling American constitutions; while Bedford, the head of the new party that was in a few years to drive the more liberal branch of the whig aristocracy from power, as Secretary of State for the Southern Department, was the organ of communication between the Board of Trade and the crown.

These are the men who proposed to reconcile the discrepancy between the legal pretensions of the metropolis and the actual condition of the colonies. In vain did they resolve to shape America at will, and fashion it into new modes of being. The infant republics were not like blocks of marble from the quarry, which the artist may group by his design, and gradually transform by the chisel from shapeless masses to the images of his fancy; they resembled living plants, whose inward energies obey the Divine idea without effort or consciousness of will, and unfold simultaneously their whole existence and the rudiments of all their parts, harmonious, beautiful and complete in every period of their growth.

Bacon de Augmentis Scientiarum. Lib. VII, cap. II. Quemadmodum enim Statuarius, quando simulacrum aliquod sculpit ant incidit, illius solummodo partis figuram effingit,circa quam manus occupata est, non autem caeterarum, (veluti si faciem efformet, corpus reliquum rude permanet et informe saxum, done ad illud quoque pervenerit) e contra vero natura, quando florem molitur, aut animal, rudimenta partium omnium simul parit et product: eodem modo, etc., etc. Lord Bolingbroke, in his Idea of a Patriot King, translates the words of the great master: Nature throws out altogether and at once the whole system of every being, and the rudiments of all the parts.

These British American colonies were the best trophy of modern civilization; on them, for the next forty years, rests the chief interest in the history of man.

John Adams's Works, v. 405. The history of the American Revolution is indeed the history of mankind during that epoch.

Chapter 3:

The Exploration of Ohio.—Pelham's administration continued.

1749-1750.

The world had never witnessed colonies with in- chap. III.} 1749. July. stitutions so free as those of America; but this result did not spring from the intention of England. On the twelfth of July, 1749, all the ministers of state assembled at the Board of Trade, and deliberated, from seven in the evening till one the next morning,

Letter from the Solicitor, F. J. Paris, in James Alexander to C. Golden, 25 Sept., 1749.

on the political aspect of the plantations. The opinions of Sir Dudley Rider and William Murray were before them. They agreed, that all accounts concurred in representing New Jersey as in a state of disobedience to law and government, attended with circumstances which manifested a disposition to revolt from dependence on the crown. . . . . . While the governor was so absolutely dependent on the Assembly, order could not possibly be restored. And they avowed it as their fundamental rule of American government, that the colonial officers of the king should have some appointment from home. Such was their fixed maxim and principle.

Report of Facts agreed on by the Board of Trade 26 July, 1749, in F. J. Paris to James Alexander, 26 July, 1749. Board of Trade to Gov. Belcher, of New Jersey, 28 July, 1749.

The English ministry chap. III.} 1749. viewed it as a narrow question, relating to a subordinate branch of executive administration; America knew that it involved for the world all hope of establishing the power of the people.

The agents of the American royalists continued indefatigable in their solicitations. They had the confidential advice of Murray, Solicitor Murray advised Mr. Catherwood not to leave the Sharpes, for they were by far the best hands one could be in for interest with the ministry. Letter of Gov. Clinton of 9 Feb., 1749. who instructed them how best to increase their influence with the ministry. To this end they also fomented a jealous fear of the levelling principles which had crept into New York and New Jersey, and which were believed to prevail in New England and Pennsylvania. Drink Lord Halifax in a bumper, were the words of Clinton, as he read his letters from England; though I durst say, he added, the rest are as hearty. Especially the Duke of Bedford, on the first day of November, gave assurances to Clinton,

Bedford to Clinton, 1 November, 1749. Clinton to Colden, 5 Feb., 1749-50.

that the affairs of the colonies would be taken into consideration, and that he might rely on receiving all proper assistance and vigorous support in maintaining the king's delegated authority. The secretary was in earnest, and for the rest of his life remained true to his promise, not knowing that he was the dupe of the profligate cupidity of worthless officers.

In a document designed for the eye of Halifax, Colden hastened to confirm the purpose. Of popular power the increase in the northern colonies was immeasurable. Royalty would have in-New York but chap. III.} 1749. the outward appearance of authority, till a governor and proper judges should receive independent salaries. I do not imagine, he wrote in November, 1749, that any assembly will be induced to give up the power, of which they are all so fond, by granting duties for any number of years. The authority of parliament must be made use of, and the duties on wine and West India commodities be made general for all North America. The ministry, he added, are not aware of the number of men in North America able to bear arms, and daily in the use of them. It becomes necessary that the colonies be early looked into, in time of peace, and regulated.

Compare Clinton to Bedford, 17 Oct., 1749. Same to Lords of Trade, same date.

As a source of revenue, William Douglas in Boston, a Scottish physician, publicly proposed a stamp duty upon all instruments used in law affairs.

Douglas: Historical and Political Summary, i. 259.

But the suggestion had nothing of novelty. In 1728, Sir William Keith had advised extending, by act of parliament, the duties upon parchment and stamps, to America,

Sir Wm. Keith's Remarks on the most Rational Means, &c., &c.

and eleven years later the advice had been repeated by merchants in London, with solicitations

Proposals for establishing by Act of Parliament the duties upon Stamp Paper and Parchment in all the British American colonies.

that won for the proposition the consideration of the ministry.

Thus had the future colonial policy of England been shadowed forth to statesmen, who were very willing to adopt it. Morris, the chief justice of New Jersey,

Gov. Belcher to Partridge, 15 Nov., 1750.

interested in lands in that province, and trained by his father to a hatred of popular power, was much listened to; and the indefatigable Shirley not quite successful with the more reasonable Pelham, chap. III.} 1749. became the eulogist and principal adviser of Cumberland, of Bedford, and of Halifax. Should Massachusetts reduce his emoluments, he openly threatened to appeal to an episcopal interest, and make himself independent of the Assembly for any future support.

Shirley to Secretary Willard, 29 Nov., 1749.

The menace to Massachusetts was unseasonable. The public mind in that province, and most of all in Boston, was earnestly inquiring into the active powers of man, to deduce from them the right to uncontrolled inquiry, as the only security against religious and civil bondage. Of that cause the champion was Jonathan Mayhew, offspring of purest ancestors, nurtured by the ocean's-side, sanctified from childhood, a pupil of New England's Cambridge. Instructed in youth, thus he spoke of himself, in the doctrines of civil liberty, as they were taught by such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, and others among the ancients, and such as Sidney and Milton, Locke and Hoadley, among the moderns, I liked them; and having learned from the Holy Scriptures, that wise, brave, and virtuous men were always friends to liberty, that God gave the Israelites a king in his anger, because they had not sense and virtue enough to like a free common wealth, and that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, this made me conclude that freedom is a great blessing.

Sermon of Mayhew's, printed in 1766.

From early life, Mayhew took to his heart the right of private judgment, clinging to it as to his religion. Truth and justice he revered as realities which every human being had capacity to discern. The duty of each individual to inquire and judge he deduced from the constitution of man, and chap. III} 1749. held to be as universal as reason itself. At once becoming revolutionary, he scoffed at receiving opinions because our forefathers had embraced them; and pushing the principle of Protestantism to its universal expression, he sent forth the American mind to do its work, disburdened of prejudices. The ocean which it had crossed had broken the trail of tradition, and it was now to find its own paths and make for itself a new existence, with not even its footsteps behind it, and nothing before it but its own futurity.

In January, 1750, the still youthful Mayhew, him- 1750. self a declared volunteer in the service, instinctively alarmed at the menaced encroachments of power, summoned every lover of truth and of mankind to bear a part in the defensive war against tyranny and priestcraft.

Sermons of Mayhew, preached and printed in 1750.

He reproved the impious bargain between the sceptre and the surplice. He preached resistance to the first small beginnings of civil tyranny, lest it should swell to a torrent and deluge empires. The doctrines, he cried, of the divine right of kings and non-resistance are as fabulous and chimerical as the most absurd reveries of ancient or modern visionaries. If those who bear the title of civil rulers do not perform the duty of civil rulers,— if they injure and oppress,—they have not the least pretence to be honored or obeyed. If the common safety and utility would not be promoted by submission to the government, there is no motive for submission; disobedience becomes lawful and glorious, —not a crime, but a duty.

Such were the litanies of nations

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Poems, The Problem.

that burst from the boldest and most fervid heart in New Eng- chap. III.} 1750. ] and, and were addressed to the multitude from the pulpit and through the press. Boston received the doctrine, and its ablest citizens delighted in the friendship of the eloquent teacher.

The words of Mayhew were uttered at a time when the plautations engaged the whole thoughts of the men in power, who were persuaded that all America was struggling to achieve a perfect legislative independence, and that New Jersey at least was in a slate of rebellion. At a great council in February, 1750, the Board of Trade

R. H. Morris of New Jersey to the Governor of New York, 12 February, 1750.

was commanded to propose such measures as would restore and establish the prerogative in its utmost extent throughout the colonies. Bedford,

Earl of Lincoln to Clinton, 12 February, 1750.

the Lords of Trade, the Privy Council,—all, had American affairs much at heart: and resolved to give ease to colonial governors and their successors for ever. The plea for the interposition of the supreme legislature was found in the apprehension that a separate empire was forming. Fools, said the elder proprietary, Penn, are always telling their fears that the colonies will set up for themselves;

Thomas Penn to James Hamilton, 12 February, 1750.

and their alarm was increased by Franklin's plan of an Academy at Philadelphia. Fresh importunities succeeded each other from America; and when Bedford sent assurances of his purpose to support the royal authority, he was referred by the crown officers of New York to the papers in the office of the Board of Trade, relating to Hunter, who, from 1710 to 1714, had struggled in that province for chap. III.} 1750. the prerogative. Under the sanction of that precedent, Clinton

Clinton to Bedford, 19 March, 1750.

urged, in March, that it was absolutely necessary to check the insolence of faction by a powerful interposition; and he advised imposts on wine and West India produce. These, if granted by parliament, would be sufficient for supporting the civil list. If made general over all the colonies, they could be in no shape prejudicial to trade.

Same to same, 26 March, 1750.

He insisted, that the proposition contained its own evidence of being for the service of the king. This province, he repeated, in April,

Clinton to Lords of Trade, 3 April, 175, and same to Bedford, 9 April.

by its example, greatly affects all the other colonies. Parliament, on a true representation of the state of the plantations, must think it their duty to make the royal officers less dependent on the assemblies, which may be easily done by granting to the king the same duties and imposts, that, in the plantations, are usually granted from year to year.

But neither the blunt decision of Bedford, nor the arrogant self-reliance of Halifax, nor the restless activity of Charles Townshend, could, of a sudden, sway the system of England in a new direction, or overcome the usages and policy of more than a half century. But new developments were easily given to the commercial and restrictive system. That the colonies might be filled with slaves, who should neither trouble Great Britain with fears of encouraging political independence, nor compete in their industry with British workshops, nor leave their employers the entire security that might prepare a revolt, liberty to trade

23 Geo. II. c. XXXI. § 1.

—saddest concession of freedom—to and from chap. III.} 1750. any part of Africa, between Sallee, in South Barbary, and the Cape of Good Hope, was, in 1750, extended to all the subjects of the king of England. But for the labor of free men new shackles were devised.

America abounded in iron ore; its unwrought iron was excluded by a duty from the English market; and its people were rapidly gaining skill at the furnace and the forge. In February,

Journals of Commons, XXV., 979, 986, 993.

1750, the subject engaged the attention of the House of Commons. To check the danger of American rivalry, Charles Townshend was placed at the head of a committee, on which Horatio Walpole, senior, and Robert Nugent, afterwards Lord Clare,—a man of talents, yet not free from bombast and absurdities,

Walpole's Memoirs of Geo. II., i, 171, and Letters.

—were among the associates. After a few days' deliberation, he brought in a bill which permitted American iron, in its rudest forms, to be imported duty free; but now that the nailers in the colonies could afford spikes and large nails cheaper than the English, it forbade the smiths of America to erect any mill for slitting or rolling iron, or any plating forge to work with a tilt-hammer, or any furnace for making steel. The restriction, said Penn, is of most dangerous consequence to prevent our making what we want for our own use. . . . . .It is an attack on the rights of the king's subjects in America.

Douglas: Historical and Political Summary, II., 109.

William Bollan, the agent of Massachusetts, pleaded its inconsistency with the natural rights of the colonists.

W. Bollan to the Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, 5 April, 1750.

But while England applauded the restriction, its owners of iron mines grudged to America a share of the market for chap. III.} 1750. the rough material; the tanners, from the threatened inaction of the English furnaces, feared a diminished supply of bark; the clergy and gentry foreboded injury to the price of woodlands.

Journals of Commons, XXV., 1053, 1091, 1096.

The importation of bar iron from the colonies was therefore limited to the port of London, which already had its supply from abroad. The ironmongers and smiths of Birmingham thought well of importing bars of iron free, but, from. compassion to the many thousand families in the kingdom who otherwise must be ruined, they prayed that the American people might be subject not to the proposed restrictions only, but to such others as may secure for ever the trade to this country. Some would have admitted the raw material from no colony where its minute manufacture was carried on. The House even divided on the proposal, that every slitting-mill in America should be demolished; and the clause failed only by a majority of twenty-two. But an immediate return was required of every mill already existing, and the number was never to be increased

23 Geo. II., c. XXIX.

There was no hope that this prohibition would ever be repealed.

Thomas Penn to James Hamilton, 1 May, 1750.

England did not know the indignation thus awakened in the villages of America. Yet the royalist, Kennedy, a member of the Council of New York, and an advocate for parliamentary taxation, publicly urged on the ministry,

A. Kennedy's Observations on the Importance of the Northern Colonies, 1750.

that liberty and encouragement are the basis of colonies. To supply ourselves, chap. III.} 1750. he urged, with manufactures is practicable; and where people in such circumstances are numerous and free, they will push what they think is for their interest, and all restraining laws will be thought oppression, especially such laws as, according to the conceptions we have of English liberty, they have no hand in controverting or making. . . They cannot be kept dependent by keeping them poor; and he quoted to the ministry the counsel of Trenchard,

Trenchard in Cato's Letters, 1722.

that the way to keep them from weaning themselves was to keep it out of their will. But the mother country was more and more inclined to rely on measures of restraint and power. It began to be considered, that the guard-ships were stationed in the colonies not so much for their defence, as to preserve them in their dependence and prevent their illicit trade.

Memorial from New York to the Admiralty, 1750.

In the same year Turgot, then but threeand-twenty years of age, one day to be a minister of France, and a friend to the United States, then prior of Sorbonne, mingled with zeal for Christianity the enthusiasm of youthful hope, as he contemplated the destiny of the western world. Vast regions of America! he exclaimed, in the presence of the assembled clergy of France, just twenty-six years to a day before the Declaration of Independence, Equality keeps from them both luxury and want; and preserves to them purity and simplicity with freedom. Europe herself will find there the perfection of her political societies, and the surest support of her wellbeing.

Discours de Turgot, Prieur de Sorbonne, prononce le 3 Juillet, 1750, in Oeuvres de Turgot, II. 591, 592. L'Europe elle-meme y trouvera la perfection de ses societes politiques, et le plus ferme appui de sa felicite

Colonies, added the young philosopher,

Second Discours. Oeuvres de Turgot, II. 602. Ce que fera un jour l'amerique.

chap. III.} 1750. are like fruits, which cling to the tree only till they ripen; as soon as America can take care of itself, it will do what Carthage did. For a season, America must have patience; England's colonial policy was destroying itself. The same motive which prevailed to restrain colonial commerce and pursuits urged England to encroach on the possessions of France, that the future inhabitants of still larger regions might fall under English rule and become subservient to English industry. In the mercantile system lay the seeds of a war with France for territory, and, ultimately, of the union and independence of America.

But the attempt to establish that system of government, which must have provoked immediate resistance, was delayed by jealousies and divisions in the cabinet. Dear Brother, Pelham used to say to Newcastle, I must beg of you not to fret yourself so much upon every occasion.

Pelham to Newcastle, in Coxe, i. 460.

But the Duke grew more and more petulant, and more impatient of rivalry. It goes to my heart, said he, that a new, unknown, factious young party is set up to rival me and nose me every where;

Newcastle to Pelham, May 9-20. Coxe, II. 336.

and he resolved to drive out of the administration the colleague whom he disliked, envied and feared. For it always holds true, that Heaven plants division in the councils of the enemies of freedom. Selfishness breeds as many factions as there are clashing interests; nothing unites indissolubly, but that love of man which truth and chap. III.} 1750. justice and the love of all good can alone inspire

The affairs of Nova Scotia, of which Newcastle was ignorant, served at least his purposes of intrigue.

Illustrative Correspondence. Newcastle to Pelham.

The French saw with extreme anxiety the settlement at Halifax. To counteract its influence, a large force under the command of the recklessly sanguinary partisan, La Corne, had through the winter held possession of the isthmus of the peninsula; and found shelter among the Acadians south of the Messagouche, in the town of Chiegnecto, or Beaubassin, now Fort Lawrence. The inhabitants of that village, although it lay beyond the limits which La Corne was instructed to defend, were compelled to take the oaths of allegiance to the French king;

Cornwallis to Bedford, 19 March, 1750.

and in the name of three chiefs of the Micmac Indians,

Orders of Three Indian Chiefs to the Inhabitants of Pesiquid, Mines, &c. &c., inclosed in Cornwallis to the Lords of Trade, 19 March, 1750. Read at the Board, 3 May, 1750.

orders had been sent to the Acadians of the remoter settlements, to renounce subjection to England, and take refuge with the French.

Cornwallis, who had received the first ñotice of the movement from La Jonquiere himself,

Cornwallis to Lords of Trade, 7 Dec. 1749.

desired immediately to recover the town. He sought aid from the Massachusetts;

Cornwallis to Lords of Trade, 30 April, 1750.

but only received for answer, that, by the constitution of that province, the assembly must first be convinced of the necessity of raising supplies;

Lieut. Gov. Phips to Cornwallis. Boston, 20 Feb. 1750.

that to insure cooperation, compulsory measures must be adopted by the British government to- chap. III.} 1750. wards all the colonies.

He was therefore able to send from Halifax no more than a party of four hundred men, who, just at sunset on the twentieth of April, arrived not far from the town at the entrance of what is now called Cumberland Basin. The next day the transports sailed near the harbor; the flag of the Bourbons was raised on the dikes to the north of the Messagouche;

Journal of Lawrence.

while, to the south of it, the priest La Loutre himself set fire to the church in Chiegnecto, and its reluctant, despairing inhabitants, torn by conflicting passions, attached to their homes which stood on some of the most fertile land

Cornwallis to the Lords of Trade, 10 July, 1750.

in the world, yet bound to France by their religion and their oaths, consumed their houses to ashes, and escaped across the river which marks the limit of the peninsula.

Memoires, 8.

On Sunday, the twenty-second, Lawrence, the English commander, having landed north of the Messagouche, had an interview with La Corne, who avowed his purpose, under instructions from La Jonquiere, to defend

Cornwallis to Bedford, 1 May, 1750.

at all hazards, and keep possession of every post as far as the river Messagouche, till the boundaries between the two countries should be settled by commissaries.

La Come held a strong position, and had under his command Indians, Canadians, regular troops, and Acadian refugees, to the number, it was thought, of twenty-five hundred. The English officer was, therefore, compelled for his safety to embark, on the very day on which he landed,

Cornwallis to the Lords of Trade, 30 Sept. 1750.

leaving the French in un- chap. III.} 1750. disturbed possession of the isthmus.

A swift vessel was dispatched expressly from Halifax to inform the government, that La Corne and La Loutre held possession of the isthmus, that a town which was within the acknowledged British limits, had been set on fire; that its inhabitants had crossed over to the French side; that the refugees, able to bear arms, were organized as a military force; that the French Acadians, remaining within the peninsula, were rebels at heart, and unanimously wished to abandon it rather than take the oath of allegiance to the English king; that the savages were incited to inroads and threats of a general massacre; that the war was continued on the part of the French by all open and secret means of violence and treason.

Cornwallis to Lords of Trade, 30 April, and same to Bedford, 1 May, 1750.

At the same time the governments of New Hampshire and the Massachusetts Bay were informed of the audacious proceedings of the French, and invited to join in punishing La Corne as a public incendiary.

Cornwallis to Lieutenant-Governor Phips at Boston, 3 May, 1750.

The New England colonies received the news without any disposition to undertake dislodging the French. In England the Earl of Halifax insisted

Lords of Trade to Bedford, 4 June, 1750.

effectually that prompt support should be sent to the colony, of which the settlement was due to his zeal. Authority had already

Lords of Trade to Cornwallis, 16 February, 1750.

been given to disarm the Acadians; new settlers were now collected to be transported at the public expense,

Lords of Trade to Cornwallis, 8 June, 1750.

and an Irish regiment was sent over with orders, that Chiegnecto chap. III.} 1750. should be taken, fortified, and if possible, colonized by protestants.

Lords of Trade to Cornwallis, 14 June, 1750.

Yet a marked difference of opinion existed between the Lords of Trade and their superior. Bedford was honorably inclined to a pacific adjustment with France; but Halifax was led by his pride and his ambition to disregard all risks of war; and becoming impatient at his subordinate position, he already heartily hated

Pelham to Newcastle in Coxe's Pelham Ad. II. 378.

his patron, and coveted a seat in the cabinet with exclusive authority in the department, with all the impetuous ardor of inexperienced ambition.

Newcastle was sure to seize the occasion to side with Halifax. Act with vigor, said he to his brother, and support our right to the extended boundary of Nova Scotia. If you do, you may run a risk of a war with France; that risk is to be run.

Newcastle to Pelham, 9-20 June, 1750. Coxe II. 345.

But the great object that filled his thoughts and disturbed his rest, was the dismissal of Bedford. Even the more cautious Pelham began to complain of the secretary's boyishness and inattention to business;

Pelham to Newcastle, 25 July—5 August, 1750. Coxe II. 365.

the king's mistress, who had thought Bedford too important a person to be trifled with, was soothed into a willingness to have him discarded. His office is a sinecure, said the king, who missed the pedantry of forms; he receives his pay easily; and to Newcastle he added, you, your brother and Hardwicke are the only ministers.

Newcastle to Pelham, 12-23 August, 1750, and Coxe's Pelham Ad. II. 129.

It seemed as if Halifax would at once obtain the seals of the Southern Department with the entire charge of the colonies. Halifax, wrote chap. III.} 1750. Pelham, who favored his advancement, amongst the young ones, has the most efficient talents.

Pelham to Newcastle, 24 Aug.—4 Sept., 1750.

He would be more approved by the public, thought Hardwicke, than either Holdernesse or Waldegrave. He is the last man, except Sandwich, I should think of for secretary of state, exclaimed Newcastle. He is so conceited of his parts, he would not be in the cabinet one month without thinking he knew as much or more of business than any one man. He is impracticable;. . . . . .the most odious man in the kingdom. . . . . . A man of his life, spirit, and temper, will think he knows better than any body. Newcastle would have none of that young fry. But above all, he would be rid of Bedford. I am, I must be an errant cipher of the worst sort, said he in his distress, if the Duke of Bedford remains coupled with me as secretary of state. To get rid of Bedford was still to him the great point, the great point of all,

Newcastle to Hardwicke, 8-19 Sept. 17, 1750.

more than the designation of the next emperor of Germany, and more than a war with the Bourbons.

The two dukes remained at variance, leaving Cornwallis to get the better in Nova Scotia without previous concert with France.

Pelham to Newcastle in Coxe II. 344.

In August a second expedition left Halifax to take possession of Chiegnecto. It succeeded, but not without loss of life. Indians and Acadian refugees, aided, perhaps, by French in disguise, altogether very few in number, had intrenched themselves strongly behind the dikes, and opposed their landing. Nor were they dislodged without an intrepid assault, in which the English had chap. III.} 1750. six killed and twelve wounded.

Cornwallis to Lords of Trade.

Thus was blood fist shed after the peace of Aix la Chapelle. Fort Lawrence was now built on the south of the Messagouche, but the French had already fortified their position on the opposite bank at Fort Beau Sejour as well as at Bay Verte. Having posts also at the mouth of the St. John's River and the alliance of the neighboring Indians, they held the continent from Bay Verte to the borders of the Penobscot.

Such was the state of occupancy, when, in September, at Paris, Shirley, who had been placed at the head of the British Commission, presented a memorial, claiming for the English all the land east of the Penobscot and south of the St. Lawrence, as constituting the ancient Acadia.

Memorials of the English Commissaries, 21 Sept., 1750.

The claim, in its full latitude, by the law of nations, was preposterous; by a candid interpretation of treaties, was untenable. France never had designed to cede, and had never ceded, to England, the southern bank of the St. Lawrence, nor any country north of the forty-sixth parallel of latitude. In their reply to the British claim, the French commissaries, in like manner disregarding the obvious construction of treaties, narrowed Acadia to the strip of land on the Atlantic, between Cape St. Mary and Cape Canseau.

Memorial of the French Commissaries, 21 September, and an explanatory Memorial, 16 November, 1750.

There existed in France statesmen who thought Canada itself an incumbrance, difficult to be defended, entailing expenses more than benefits. But La Galissoniere

La Galissoniere: Memoire sur les Colonies de la France, December, 1750.

pleaded to the ministry, that honor, glory, and religion forbade the abandonment of faithful and chap. III.} 1750. affectionate colonists, and the renunciation of the great work of converting the infidels of the wilderness; that Detroit was the natural centre of a boundless inland commerce; that the country of Illinois was in a delightful climate, an open prairie, waiting for the plough; that, considering the want of maritime strength, Canada and Louisiana were the bulwarks of France in America against English ambition. De Puysieux, the French minister for foreign affairs, like the English Secretary, Bedford, was earnestly desirous of avoiding war; but a fresh collision in America touched the sense of honor of the French nation, and made negotiation .hopeless.

A French brigantine with a schooner, laden with provisions and warlike stores, and bound from Quebec to the river St. John's, was met by Rous in the British ship of war Albany off Cape Sable. He fired a gun to bring her to; she kept on her course: he fired another and a third; and the brigantine prepared for action. The English instantly poured into her a broadside and a volley of small arms; and after a short action compelled her to strike. The Albany had a midshipman and two mariners killed; the French lost five men. The brigantine was taken to Halifax, and condemned in the Admiralty Court.

Cornwallis to Lords of Trade, 27 November, 1750.

On the side of France, indignation knew no bounds; it seemed that its flag had been insulted; its maritime rights disregarded; its men wantonly slain in time of peace; its property piratically seized and confiscated. There was less willingness to yield an extended boundary.

The territory which is now Vermont was equally chap. III.} 1750. in dispute. New York carried its limits to the Connecticut River, as a part of its jurisdiction; France, which alone had command of Lake Champlain, extended her pretensions to the crest of the Green Mountains; while Wentworth, the only royal governor in New England, began to convey the soil between the Connecticut and Lake Champlain by grants under the seal of New Hampshire.

A deeper interest hung over the valley of the Ohio. What language shall be the mother tongue of its future millions? What race, the Romanic or the Teutonic, shall form the seed of its people? The Six Nations expressed alarm for their friends and allies on the Ohio, against whom the French were making preparations, and asked what reliance they might place on the protection of New York. After concert with the governor of Pennsylvania, Clinton, in September, 1750, appealed to the Assembly for means to confirm their Indian alliances, and to assist Pennsylvania in securing the fidelity of the Indians on Ohio River.

Journals of New York Assembly, i. 283, 284.

The Assembly refused; and the Onondagas, whose chief was a professed Roman Catholic, whose castles contained a hundred neophytes, whose warriors glittered in brave apparel from France, scoffed with one another at the parsimonious colonists.

Letter of Conrad Weisser, in Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania, IV. 222.

The tendency of the Americans themselves towards union, and the desire on the part of England to concentrate its power over the colonies by the aid of the authority of the British parliament, were alike chap. III.} 1750. developed in connection with the necessity of resisting encroachments on the side of Canada. The unity of the French system of administration promised success by ensuring obedience to one council and one voice.

Clinton to Governor of Pennsylvania, 8 October, 1750.

To counteract their designs effectually along the whole frontier, the best minds in New York, and in other provinces, were busy in devising methods for, uniting the colonies on the main; for, unless this were done, Ohio would be lost. Of all the Southern provinces, South Carolina was most ready to join with the rest of the continent.

Letters of Glen, Governor of South Carolina, to Clinton, and of Clinton to Glen, July–December, 1750, in the New York London Documents, XXX.

Doubting whether union could be effected without an immediate application to his Majesty for that purpose, the Council of New York, after mature and repeated deliberation on Indian affairs, still determined, that the governor should write to all the governors upon the continent,

Letter of Clinton's Secretary, Ayscough, Fort George, 11 December, 1750. Clinton to Governor of Pennsylvania, 19 June, 1751, &c.

that have Indian nations in their alliance, to invite commissioners from their respective governments to meet the savage chiefs at Albany. But, from what Clinton called the penurious

Clinton to the Board of Trade.

temper of American assemblies, this invitation was not generally accepted,

Belcher of New Jersey to Clinton, 18 April, 1751. Belcher's Letter Books, VII. 78, 79, 117.

though it forms one important step in the progress of America towards union.

While Pennsylvania, in strife with its proprietaries, neglected its western frontier, the Ohio Company of Virginia, profiting by the intelligence of Indian hunters,

Washington's Writings, II. 802.

who had followed every stream to its headspring and crossed every gap in the mountain ranges, chap. III.} 1750. discovered the path by Will's Creek to the Ohio. Their stores of goods, in 1750, were carried no further than that creek. There they were sold to traders, who, with rivals from Pennsylvania, penetrated the West as far as the Miamis.

To search out and discover the lands westward of the Great Mountains, the Ohio Company

Instructions of the Ohio Company to Christopher Gist, 11 September, 1750.

summoned the adventurous Christopher Gist from his frontier home on the Yadkin. He was instructed to examine the Western country as far as the Falls of the Ohio, to look for a large tract of good level land, to mark the passes in the mountains, to trace the courses of the rivers, to count the falls, to observe the strength and numbers of the Indian nations.

On the last day of October,

Journals of Gist, printed by Thomas Pownall, in the Appendix to Thomas Pownall's Topographical Description of North America.

the bold messenger of civilization parted from the Potomac. He passed through snows over the stony and broken land of the Alleghanies; he halted among the twenty Delaware families that composed Shanoppin's town on the southeast side of the Ohio; swimming his horses across the river, he descended through the rich but narrow valley to Logstown. You are come, said the jealous people, to settle the Indians' lands: you never shall go home safe. Yet they respected him as a messenger from the English king. From the Great Beaver Creek he crossed to the Muskingum, killing deer and wild turkeys. On Elk's Eye Creek he found a village of the Ottawas, friends to the French. The hundred families of Wyandots or Little Mingoes at Muskingum were divided; chap. III.} 1750. one half adhering to the English. George Croghan, the emissary from Pennsylvania, was already there;

Croghan's Ms Journals, in New York London Documents, XXXIV, 16.

and traders came with the news, that two of his people were taken by a party of French and Indians, and carried, to the new fort at Sandusky. Come and live with us, said the Wyandots to Gist; bring great guns and make a fort. If the French claim the branches of the Lakes, those of the Ohio belong to us and our brothers, the English. When they heard that still another English trader had been taken, they would have killed three French deserters for revenge. In January, 1751, after a 1751 delay of more than a month, the Wyandots held a council at Muskingum; but while they welcomed the English agents, and accepted their strings of wampum, they deferred their decision to a general council of their several nations. Leaving the Wyandots, and crossing at White Woman's Creek, where had long stood the home of a weary New England captive, the agent of Virginia reached the last town of the Delawares, five miles above the mouth of the Scioto. These, like the others of their tribe, who counted in all five hundred warriors, promised goodwill and love to the English.

Just below the mouth of the Scioto lay the houses of the Shawnees, on each side of the Ohio. Their room of state was on the north side, in length ninety feet, roofed with bark. They gratefully adhered to the English, who had averted from them the wrath of the Six Nations.

From the Shawnee town the envoys of the English world crossed the Little Miami, and journeyed chap. III.} 1751. in February towards the Miami River; first of white men on record, they saw that the land beyond the Scioto, except the first twenty miles, is rich and level, bearing walnut trees of huge size, the maple, the wild cherry, and the ash; full of little streams and rivulets; variegated by beautiful natural prairies, covered with wild rye, blue grass and white clover. Turkeys abounded, and deer and elks, and most sorts of game; of buffaloes, thirty or forty were frequently seen feeding in one meadow. Nothing, they cried, is wanting but cultivation to make this a most delightful country.

Gist's Journal in Pownall's Appendix, 11.

Their horses swam over the swollen current of the Great Miami; on a raft of logs they transported their goods and saddles; outside of the town of the Picqualennees, the warriors came forth with the peace-pipe, to smoke with them the sacred welcome. They entered the village with the English colors, were received as guests into the king's house, and planted the red cross upon its roof.

The Miamis were the most powerful confederacy of the West, excelling the Six Nations, with whom they were in amity. Each tribe had its own chief; of whom one, at that time the chief of the Piankeshaws, was chosen indifferently to rule the whole nation. They formerly dwelt on the Wabash, but, for the sake of trading with the English, drew nearer the East. Their influence reached to the Mississippi, and they received frequent visits from tribes beyond that river. The town of Picqua contained about four hundred families, and was one of the strongest in that part of the continent.

On the night of the arrival of the envoys from chap. III.} 1751. Virginia and Pennsylvania,

De la Jonquiere to Clinton, 10 Aug. 1751.

two strings of wampum, given at the Long House of the villages, removed trouble from their hearts and cleared their eyes; and four other belts confirmed the message from the Wyandots and Delawares, commending the English to their care.

In the days that followed, the traders' men helped the men of Picqua repair their fort; and distributed clothes and paint, that they might array themselves for the council. When it was told that deputies from the Wawiachtas, or, as we call them, Weas, and from the Piankeshaws, were coming, deputies from the Picquas went forth to meet them. The English were summoned to the Long House, to sit for a quarter of an hour in the silence of expectation, when two from each tribe, commissioned by their nations to bring the Long Pipe, entered with their message and their calumet.

On the twenty-first day of February, after a distribution of presents, articles of peace and alliance were drawn up between the English of Pennsylvania on the one side, and the Weas and Piankeshaws on the other; were signed and sealed in duplicate, and delivered on both sides. All the friendly tribes of the West were also to meet the next summer at Logstown, for a general treaty with Virginia.

Croghan's Journal of Transactions, &c.

The indentures had just been exchanged,

Gist in Pownall, 12, 13.

when four Ottawas drew near with a present from the governor of Canada, were admitted at once to the council, and desired a renewal of friendship with their chap. III.} 1751. fathers, the French.

Compare Des Essais d'etablissements des Anglais à la Belle Riviere. 22 Sept. 1751.

The king of the Piankeshaws, setting up the English colors in the council, as well as the French, rose and replied: The path to the French is bloody, and was made so by them. We have cleared a road for our brothers, the English, and your fathers have made it foul, and have taken some of our brothers prisoners. They had taken three at the Huron village, near Detroit, and one on the Wabash. This, added the king, we look upon as done to us; and turning suddenly from them, he strode out of the council. At this, the representative of the French, an Ottawa, wept and howled, predicting sorrow for the Miamis.

To the English the Weas and Piankeshaws, after deliberation, sent a speech by the great orator of the Weas. You have taken us by the hand, were his words, into the great chain of friendship. Therefore we present you with these two bundles of skins, to make shoes for your people, and this pipe to smoke in, to assure you our hearts are good towards you, our brothers.

In the presence of the Ottawa ambassadors, the great war-chief of Picqua stood up, and summoning in imagination the French to be present, he spoke:

Fathers! you have desired we should go home to you, but I tell you it is not our home; for we have made a path to the sun-rising, and have been taken by the hand by our brothers, the English, the Six Nations, the Delawares, the Shawnees, and the Wyandots; and we assure you, in that road we will go.

De la Jonquiere to the French Minister, 17 October, 1751.

And as you threaten us with war in the spring, we chap. III.} 1751. tell you, if you are angry, we are ready to receive you, and resolve to die here, before we will go to you. That you may know this is our mind, we send you this string of black wampum.

Brothers, the Ottawas, you hear what I say; tell that to your fathers, the French; for that is our mind, and we speak it from our hearts.

The French colors are taken down; the Ottawas are dismissed to the French fort at Sandusky. The Long House, late the senate-chamber of the United Miamis, rings with the music and the riotous motions of the feather-dance. Now a war-chief strikes a post: the music and the dancers, on the instant, are hushed to silent listeners; the brave recounts his deeds in war, and proves the greatness of his mind by throwing presents lavishly to the musicians and the dancers. Then once more the turmoil of joy is renewed, till another warrior rises to boast his prowess, and scatter gifts in his turn.

Thus February came to an end. On the first day of March, Gist took his leave. The Miamis, resolving never to give heed to the words of the French, sent beyond the Alleghanies this message: Our friendship shall stand like the loftiest mountain.

The agent of the Ohio Company gazed with rapture on the valley of the Great Miami, the finest meadows that can be. He was told, that the land was not less fertile to the very head-springs of the river, and west to the Wabash. He descended to the Ohio by way of the Little Miami, still finding many clear fields, where herds of forty or fifty buffaloes were feeding together on the wonderfully tall grasses. He checked his perilous course, when within fifteen chap. III.} 1751. miles of the falls at Louisville; and taking with him, as a trophy, the tooth of a mammoth, then a novel wonder, he passed up the valley of the Kentucky River, and through a continuous ledge of almost inaccessible hills and rocks and laurel thickets, found a path to the Bluestone. He paused on his way, to climb what is now called The Hawk's Nest, whence he could see the Kenhawa burst through the next high mountain; and having proposed the union, and appointed at Logstown a meeting of the Mingoes, the Delawares, the Wyandots, the Shawnees, and the Miami nations, with the English, he returned to his employers by way of the Yadkin and the Roanoke.

In April, 1751, Croghan again repaired to the Ohio Indians. The half-king, as the chief of the mixed tribe on the branches of the Ohio was called in token of his subordination to the Iroquois confederacy, reported, that the news of the expedition under Celoron had swayed the Onondaga council to allow the English to establish a trading-house; and a belt of wampum, prepared with due solemnity, invited Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, to build a fort at the forks of Monongahela.

Croghan's Journal of his Transactions.

Chapter 4:

America Refuses to be ruled by arbitrary Instruc-Tions.—Pelham's administration continued.

1751-1753.

the thoughts of the British ministry were so chap. IV.} 1751. engrossed by intrigues at home, as to give but little heed to the glorious country beyond the Alleghanies. Having failed in the attempt to subject all the colonies by act of parliament to all future orders of the king, the Lords of Trade sought to gain the same end in detail. Rhode Island, a charter government, of which the laws were valid without the assent of the king, continued to emit paper currency,

Potter's Rhode Island Currency, 12.

and the more freely, because Massachusetts had withdrawn its notes and returned to hard money.

J. B. Felt's Massachusetts Currency, 133, 134.

In 1742, twenty-eight shillings of Rhode Island currency would have purchased an ounce of silver; seven years afterwards, it required sixty shillings; compared with sterling money, the depreciation was as ten and a half or eleven to one. This was pleaded as the justification of the Board of Trade, who, in March, 1751, presented a bill to restrain bills of credit in New England, with an additional clause giving the authority of law to the king's instructions on that subject.

Journal of the Commons, XXVI. 65, 119, 120, 187, 206, 265.

In the dan- chap. IV.} 1751. gerous precedent, Bollan, the agent for Massachusetts, discerned the latent purpose of introducing by degrees the same authority to control other articles. He argued, moreover, that the province had a natural and lawful right to make use of its credit for its defence and preservation.

Compare Lind on Acts relating to the Colonies, 238.

New York also urged the benefit of a paper credit. Before the bill was engrossed, the obnoxious clause was abandoned.

24 Geo. II. c. LIII.

Yet there seemed to exist in the minds of some persons of consequence, a fixed design of getting a parliamentary sanction of some kind or other to the king's instructions; and the scheme was conducted with great perseverance and art.

Bollan, agent for the Massachusetts Bay to the Speaker of its Assembly, 7 March, 12 April, 12 July, 1751.

Meantime, parliament, by its sovereign act, on the motion of Lord Chesterfield, changed the commencement of the year, and regulated the calendar for all the British dominions. As the earth and the moon, in their annual rounds, differed by eleven days from the English reckoning of time, and would not delay their return, the legislature of a Protestant kingdom, after centuries of obstinacy, submitted to be taught by the heavens, and conquering a prejudice, adopted the calendar as amended by a pope of Rome.

The Board of Trade was all the while maturing its scheme for an American civil list.

Representation of the Board of Trade upon the State of New York, 2 April, 1751, in N. Y. London Doc. XXX. 5. Compare also order of the Privy Council of 6 August, 1751, and the justificatory Representation of the Lords of Trade, 4 April, 1754. London Doc. XXXI. 89.

The royal prerogative was still the main-spring in their system. chap. IV.} 1751. With Bedford's approbation,

Thos. Penn to Gov. Hamilton, 30 March, 1751.

they advised the appointment of a new governor for New York, with a stricter commission and instructions; the New York legislature should be ordered to grant a permanent revenue, to be disbursed by royal officers, and sufficient for Indian presents, as well as for the civil list. At the same time, it was resolved to obtain an American revenue by acts of parliament.

Mss. of William Bollan.

The excessive discriminating duties in favor of the British West Indies, given and granted in 1733, on the products of the Foreign West India Islands, imported into the continental colonies, were prohibitory in their character, and had never been collected. England, which thought itself able to make such a grant, to be levied in ports of a thinly inhabited continent, could never give effect to the statute; and did but discipline America to dispute its supreme authority. The trade continued to be pursued with no more than an appearance of disguise; and Newcastle, who had escaped from the solicitations and importunities of the British West Indians by conceding the law, had also avoided the reproaches of the colonists by never enforcing it.

This forbearance is, in part, also, to be ascribed to the moderation of character of Sir Robert Walpole. He rejected the proposition for a colonial stamp-tax, being content with the tribute to British wealth from colonial commerce; and he held that the American evasions of the acts of trade, by enriching the colonies, did but benefit England, which was their final mart. The policy was generous and safe; but can a minister excuse his own acts of despotic legislation by chap. IV.} 1751. his neglect to enforce them? The administration of Sir Robert Walpole had left English statutes and American practice more at variance than ever. Woe to the British statesman who should hold it a duty to enforce the British laws!

In 1740, Ashley, a well informed writer, had proposed to establish a fund by such an abatement of the duty on molasses imported into the northern colonies,

John Ashley's Memoirs and Considerations concerning the Trade, &c., of the British colonies, with proposals for rendering those colonies more beneficial to Great Britain.

as would make it cease to be prohibitory. Whether this duty, he added, should be one, two, or three pence sterling money of Great Britain per gallon, may be matter of consideration. The time was come when it was resolved to discard the policy of Walpole. Opinions were changing on the subject of a stamp-tax; and the Board of Trade, in 1751, entered definitively on the policy of regulating trade, so as to uproot illicit traffic and obtain an American revenue.

Bollan's Sketch of his Services.

To this end, they fostered the jealous dispute between the continental colonies and the favored British West Indian Islands; that, under the guise of lenity, they might lower the disregarded prohibitory duties, and enrich the exchequer by the collection of more moderate imposts.

But the perfidious jealousy with which the Duke of Newcastle plotted against his colleague, the Duke of Bedford, delayed for the present the decisive interposition of parliament in the government of America. Besides, Halifax with his Board was equally at variance with his superior. The former was eager to chap. IV.} 1751. foster the settlement of Nova Scotia at every hazard; Bedford desired to be frugal of the public money, and was also honestly inclined to maintain peace with France. The governor of that colony

Cornwallis to Lords of Trade, 30 Sept. and 27 Nov., 1750.

had written impatiently for ships of war; and Halifax in the most earnest and elaborate official papers had seconded his entreaties;

Halifax and Lords of Trade to Bedford, 16 Jan. and 7 March, 1751.

but Bedford was dissatisfied at the vastness of the sums lavished on the new plantation, and was, moreover, fixed in the purpose of leaving to the pending negotiation an opportunity of success. He was supported by the Admiralty, at which Sandwich was his friend; while Newcastle, with his timorous brother, enforced the opinions of Halifax. The intrigue in the cabinet had come to maturity. Bedford's neglect of the forms of office had vexed the king; his independence of character had paid no deference to the king's mistress. Sandwich was dismissed from the Admiralty. Admitted in June to an audience at court, Bedford inveighed long and vehemently against his treacherous colleague, and resigned.

Hardwicke in Coxe's Pelham Administration, II. 189.

His successor was the Earl of Holdernesse, a very courtly peer, proud of his rank, formal, and of talents which could not excite Newcastle's jealousy, or alarm America for its liberties. The disappointed Halifax, not yet admitted to the cabinet, was consoled by obtaining a promise, that the whole patronage and correspondence of the colonies should be vested in his Board. The increase of their powers might invigorate their schemes for regulating America; for which, however, no energetic system of adminstration could be adopted, without the aid of the chap. IV.} 1751. new party of which Bedford was the head.

During the progress of these changes, the colonies were left to plan their own protection. But every body shunned the charge of securing the valley of the Ohio. Of the Virginia Company the means were limited. The Assembly of Pennsylvania, from motives of economy, refused to ratify the treaty which Croghan had negotiated at Picqua, while the proprietaries

Thomas Penn to Governor Hamilton, 25 February, 1751.

of that province openly denied their liability to contribute to Indian or any other expenses;

Hamilton's Message to the Pennsylvania Assembly, 21 August, 1751, in Hazard, IV. 235.

and sought to cast the burden of a Western fort on the equally reluctant people of Virginia. New York could but remonstrate with the governor of Canada.

Clinton to La Jonquiere, 12 June, 1751.

The deputies of the Six Nations were the first to manifest zeal. At the appointed time in July, they came down to Albany to renew their covenant chain; and to chide the inaction of the English, which was certain to leave the wilderness to France.

When the congress, which Clinton had invited to meet the Iroquois, assembled at Albany, South Carolina came also,

Drayton's South Carolina, 94 and 239. Clinton to Bedford, 17 July, 1751, in New York London Documents, XXX. 16, and Clinton to Lords of Trade, same date.

for the first time, to join in council with New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts,—its earliest movement towards confederation. From the Catawbas, also, hereditary foes to the Six Nations, deputies attended to hush the war-song that for so many generations had lured their chiefs along the Blue Ridge to Western New York. They chap. IV.} 1751. approached the grand council, singing the words of reconciliation, bearing their ensigns of colored feathers, not erect, as in defiance, but horizontally, as with friends; and, accompanied by the rude music from their calabashes, they continued their melodies, while their great chief lighted the peace-pipe. He himself was the first to smoke the sacred calumet; then Hendrick, of the Mohawks; and all the principal sachems in succession. Nor was the council dismissed, till the hatchet was buried irrecoverably deep, and a tree of peace planted, which was to be ever green as the laurel on the Alleghanies, and to spread its branches till its shadow should reach from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Thus was South Carolina first included in the same bright chain with New England. When would they meet in council again? Thus did the Indians, in alliance with England, plight faith fo one another, and propose measures of mutual protection.

To anticipate or prevent the consummation of these designs remained the earnest effort of the French. They sent priests, who were excited partly by ambition, partly by fervid enthusiasm, to proselyte the Six Nations; their traders were to undersell the British; in the summer of 1751, they launched an armed vessel of unusual size on Lake Ontario,

Memorial on Indian Affairs in Clinton to Lords of Trade, 1 October, 1751.

and converted their trading-house at Niagara into a fortress;

Clinton to De la Jonquiere, 12 June, 1751. De la Jonquiere to Clinton, 10 August. Alexander's Remarks on the Letters, sent to Dr. Mitchell.

they warned the governor of Pennsylvania,

La Jonquiere to Governor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, 6 June, 1751.

that the English never should make a treaty in the basin of the chap. IV.} 1751. Ohio; they sent troops to prevent the intended congress of red men;

Letter from Jonathan Edwards, August, 1751.

and they resolved to ruin the English interest in the remoter West, and take vengeance on the Miamis.

Yet Louis the Fifteenth disclaimed hostile intentions; to the British minister at Paris he himself expressed personally his concern that any cause of offence had arisen, and affirmed his determined purpose of peace. The minister of foreign relations, De Puysieux, who, on the part of France, was responsible for the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, a man of honor, though not of ability, was equally disinclined to disturb the public tranquillity. But Saint-Contest, who, in September, 1751, succeeded him, though a feeble statesman and fond of peace, yet aimed at a federative maritime system against England;

Flassan: Hist. de la Diplomatic Fran aise, VI. 15.

and Rouille, the minister of the marine department, loved war and prepared for it. Spain wisely kept aloof. By antipathy, said the Marquis of Ensenada, the considerate minister of Ferdinand the Sixth, and from interest also, the French and English will be enemies, for they are rivals for universal commerce; and he urged on his sovereign seasonable preparations, that he might, by neutrality, recover Gibraltar, and become the arbiter of the civilized world.

De la Ensenada's Report, presented to Ferdinand VI. in 1751. See Coxe et Muriel: Espagne sous les Rois de la Maison de Bourbon, IV. 294.

Every thing seemed to portend a conflict between England and France along their respective frontiers in America. To be prepared for it, Clinton's advisers recommended to secure the dominion of Lake Ontario chap. IV.} 1751. by an armed sloop and by forts upon its shore. But, it was asked, how is the expense to be defrayed?

And the question did but invite from the governor of New York new proposals for a general duty by act of parliament;

Memorial on Indian Affairs. Clinton to Lords of Trade, 1 October, 1751.

because it would be a most vain imagination to expect that all the colonies would severally agree to impose it.

The receiver-general of New York, Archibald Kennedy, urged, through the press, an annual meeting of commissioners from all the colonies at New York or Albany. From upwards of forty years observation upon the conduct of provincial assemblies, and the little regard paid by them to instructions, he inferred, that a British parliament must oblige them to contribute, or the whole would end in altercation and words. He advised an increase of the respective quotas, and the enlargement of the union, so as to comprise the Carolinas; and the whole system to be sanctioned and enforced by an act of the British legislature.

Archibald Kennedy's Importance of gaining and preserving the Friendship of the Indians, &c.,

A voluntary union, said a voice from Philadel- 1752. phia, in March, 1752, in tones which I believe were Franklin's,

Anonymous Letter from Philadelphia, March, 1752.

a voluntary union, entered into by the colonies themselves, would be preferable to one imposed by parliament; for it would be, perhaps, not much more difficult to procure, and more easy to alter and improve, as circumstances should require and experience direct. It would be a very strange thing, if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and chap. IV.} 1752. be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted for ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous.

While the people of America were thus becoming familiar with the thought of joining from their own free choice in one confederacy, the government of England took a decisive step towards that concentration of power over its remote dominions, which for thirty years

See the very elaborate Report of the Board of Trade, signed by Chetwynde, Dominique, Bladen, and Ashe, 8 September, 1721.

had been the avowed object of attainment on the part of the Board of Trade. Halifax with his colleagues, of whom Charles Townshend was the most enterprising and most fearlessly rash, was appointed to take charge of American affairs; with the entire patronage and correspondence belonging to them.

Order in Council, 11 March, 1752.

Yet the independence of the Board was not perfect. On important matters governors might still address the Secretary of State, through whom, also, nominations to offices were to be laid before the king in council. We draw nearer to the conflict of authority between the central government and the colonies. An ambitious commission, expressly appointed for the purpose, was at last invested with the care of business, from which party struggles and court intrigues, or love of ease and quiet had hitherto diverted the attention of the ministry. Nor did the Lords of Trade delay to exercise their functions, and to form plans for an American civil list and a new chap. IV.} 1752. administration of the colonies. They were resolved to attach large emoluments, independent of American acts of assembly, to all the offices, of which they had now acquired the undivided and very lucrative patronage. Their continued subordination served to conceal their designs; and the imbecility of Holdernesse left them nothing to apprehend from his interference.

But in the moment of experiment, the thoughts of the Board were distracted by the state of relations with France.

Along the confines of Nova Scotia, the heat of contest began to subside; but danger lowered from the forest on the whole American frontier. In the early summer of 1752, John Stark, of New Hampshire, as fearless a young forester as ever bivouacked in the wilderness, was trapping beaver along the clear brooks that gushed from his native highlands, when a party of St. Francis Indians stole upon his steps, and scalped one of his companions. He, himself, by courage and good humor, won the love of his captors; their tribe saluted him as a young chief, and cherished him with hearty kindness; his Indian master, accepting a ransom, restored him to his country. Men of less presence of mind often fell victims to the fury of the Indian allies of France.

At the same time, the Ohio Company, with the express sanction

Laws of Virginia, February, 1752. 25 Geo. II., c. 25. Report of Lewis and Walker to Lord Botetourt, 2 February, 1769.

of the Legislature of Virginia, were forming a settlement beyond the mountains. Gist had, on a second tour, explored the lands southeast of the Ohio, as far as the Kenhawa. The jealousy of the Indians was excited. Where, said the deputy of chap. IV.} 1752. the Delaware chiefs, where lie the lands of the Indians? The French claim all on one side of the river, and the English on the other.

Virginia, under the treaty of Lancaster, of 1744, assumed the right to appropriate to her jurisdiction all the lands as far west as the Mississippi. In May, 1752, her commissioners met chiefs of the Mingoes, Shawnees and Ohio Indians, at Logstown. It was pretended

Lieut. Gov. Dinwiddie of Virginia, to Gov. Glen, 23 May, 1753.

that chiefs of the Six Nations were present; but at a general meeting at Onondaga, they had resolved that it did not suit their customs to treat of affairs in the woods and weeds.

Col. William Johnson to Governor Clinton, 26 March, 1753, in New York Documentary History, II. 624. Plain Facts, 38, 44.

We never understood, said the Half-King, that the lands sold in 1744, were to extend farther to the sunsetting than the hill on the other side the Alleghany Hill. We now see and know that the French design to cheat us out of our lands. They plan nothing but mischief, for they have struck our friends, the Miamis; we therefore desire our brothers of Virginia may build a strong house at the fork of Monongahela.

The permission to build a fort at the junction of the two rivers that form the Ohio, was due to the alarm awakened by the annually increasing power of France, which already ruled Lake Ontario with armed vessels, held Lake Erie by a fort at Niagara, and would suffer no Western tribe to form alliances but with themselves. The English were to be excluded from the valley of the Miamis; and in pursuance of that resolve, on the morning of the summer solstice, two Frenchmen, with two hundred and forty French Indians, leaving thirty Frenchmen as a reserve, sud- chap. IV.} 1752. denly appeared before the town of Picqua, when most of the people were absent, hunting, and demanded the surrender of the English traders and their effects. The king of the Piankeshaws replied: They are here at our invitation; we will not do so base a thing as to deliver them up. The French party made an assault on the fort; the Piankeshaws bravely defended themselves and their guests, till they were overwhelmed by numbers. One white man was killed, and five were taken prisoners; of the Miamis, fourteen were killed; the king of the Piankeshaws, the great chief of the whole confederacy, was taken captive, and, after the manner of savages, was sacrificed and eaten.

Lieut. Gov. Dinwiddie to Lords of Trade, Dec., 1752. Message from the Twightwees to the Gov. of Pennsylvania. Indian Treaties, 19. Mitchell's Contest in America, 221, where the date is 1751, instead of 1752. Dr. Wm. Clarke's Observations, 9.

When William Trent, the messenger of Virginia, proceeded from the council-fires at Logstown to the village of Picqua, he found it deserted, and the French colors flying over the ruins.

Mr. Trent's Report and Journal. Board of Trade Papers.

Having substituted the English flag, he returned to the Shawnee town, at the mouth of the Scioto, where the messengers of the allied tribes met for condolence and concert in revenge.

Brothers, said the Delawares to the Miamis, we desire the English and the Six Nations to put their hands upon your heads, and keep the French from hurting you. Stand fast in the chain of friendship with the government of Virginia. Brothers, said the Miamis to the English, your country is smooth; your hearts are good; the dwellings of your governors are like the spring in its chap. IV.} 1752. bloom.

Brothers, they added to the Six Nations, holding aloft a calumet ornamented with feathers, the French and their Indians have struck us, yet we kept this pipe unhurt; and they gave it to the Six Nations, in token of friendship with them and with their allies.

A shell and a string of black wampum were given to signify the unity of heart; and that, though it was darkness to the westward, yet towards the sun-rising it was bright and clear. Another string of black wampum announced that the war-chiefs and braves of the Miamis held the hatchet in their hand, ready to strike the French. The widowed queen of the Piankeshaws sent a belt of black shells intermixed with white. Brothers, such were her words, I am left a poor, lonely woman, with one son, whom I commend to the English, the Six Nations, the Shawnees, and the Delawares, and pray them to take care of him.

The Weas produced a calumet. We have had this feathered pipe, said they, from the beginning of the world; so that when it becomes cloudy, we can sweep the clouds away. It is dark in the west, yet we sweep all clouds away towards the sun-rising, and leave a clear and serene sky.

Thus, on the alluvial lands of Western Ohio, began the contest that was to scatter death broadcast through the world. All the speeches were delivered again to the deputies of the nations, represented at Logstown, that they might be correctly repeated to the head council at Onondaga. An express messenger from the Miamis hurried across the mountains, bearing to the shrewd and able Dinwiddie, the lieutenant- chap. IV.} 1752. governor of Virginia, a belt of wampum, the scalp of a French Indian, and a feathered pipe, with letters from the dwellers on the Maumee and on the Wabash. Our good brothers of Virginia, said the former, we must look upon ourselves as lost, if our brothers, the English, do not stand by us and give us arms.

Message of the Twightwees to Dinwiddie, 21 June, 1752.

Eldest brother, pleaded the Picts and Windaws, this string of wampum assures you, that the French king's servants have spilled our blood, and eaten the flesh of three of our men. Look upon us, and pity us, for we are in great distress, Our chiefs have taken up the hatchet of war. We have killed and eaten ten of the French and two of their negroes. We are your brothers; and do not think this is from our mouth only; it is from our very hearts.

Message of the Picts and Windaws to Dinwiddie.

Thus they solicited protection and revenge.

In December, 1752, Dinwiddie made an elaborate report to the Board of Trade, and asked specific instructions to regulate his conduct in resisting the French. The possession of the Ohio valley he foresaw would fall to the Americans, from their numbers and the gradual extension of their settlements, for whose security he recommended a barrier of Western forts; and, urging the great advantage of cultivating an alliance with the Miamis, he offered to cross the mountains, and deliver a present to them in person, in their own remote dwelling-places.

The aged and undiscerning German prince who still sat on the British throne, methodically narrow, swayed by his mistress more than by his minister, meanly avaricious and spiritless, was too prejudiced to chap. IV.} 1752. gather round him willingly the ablest statesmen, and cared more for Hanover than for America. His ministers were intent only on keeping in power. To be well together with Lady Yarmouth, Pelham wrote, is the best ground to stand on.

Pelham to Newcastle, 12-24 October, 1752, in Coxe's Pelham, Ad. II. 463.

If the good-will of the king's mistress, continued England's primeminister to its principal secretary of state, if that shakes, we have no resource. The whig aristocracy had held exclusive possession of the government for nearly forty years; its authority was now culminating; and it had nothing better to offer the British people, than an administration which openly spoke of seats in parliament as a marketable commodity,

Bubb Dodington's Diary.

and governed the king by paying court to his vices.

The heir to the throne was a boy of fourteen, of whose education royalists and the more liberal aristocracy were disputing the charge. His birth was probably premature, as it occurred within less than ten months of that of his oldest sister; and his organization was marked by a nervous irritability, which increased with years. He shows no disposition to any great excess, said Dodington to his mother. He is a very honest boy, answered the princess, who still wished him more forward and less childish. The young people of quality, she added, are so ill educated and so very vicious, that they frighten me; and she secluded her son from their society-The prince, from his own serious nature, favored this retirement; when angry, he would hide his passion in the solitude of his chamber; and as he grew up, his strict sobriety and also his constitutional fondness for domes- chap. IV.} 1752. tic life were alike observable. He never loved study; but when he excused his want of application as idleness, Yours, retorted Scott, is not idleness; you must not call being asleep all day being idle.

Waldegrave's Memoirs.

I really do not well know, said his mother,

Dodington's Diary.

what his receptors teach him; but, to speak freely, I am afraid not much; and she thought logic, in which the bishop, his tutor, instructed him, a very odd study for a child of his condition. I do not much regard books, rejoined her adviser, Dodington; but his Royal Highness should be informed of the general frame of this government and constitution, and the general course of business. I am of your opinion, answered the princess; and Stone tells me, upon those subjects the prince seems to give a proper attention, and make pertinent remarks. I know nothing, she added, of the Jacobitism attempted to be instilled into the child; I cannot conceive what they mean; for to a German princess the supremacy of regal authority seemed a tenet very proper to be inculcated. But Lord Harcourt, the governor, complained strongly to the king, that dangerous notions and arbitrary principles were instilled into the prince; that he could be of no use, unless the instillers of that doctrine, Stone, Cresset, and Scott, were dismissed; and the Earl of Waldegrave, Harcourt's successor, found Prince George uncommonly full of princely prejudices, contracted in the nursery, and improved by the society of bed-chamber women, and pages of the back stairs. A right system of education seemed impracticable.

Waldegrave's Memoirs.

Neither the king nor the court of the Prince of chap. IV.} 1753. Wales was, therefore, ready to heed the communication of Dinwiddie; but it found the Lords of Trade bent on sustaining the extended limits of America. In the study of the Western World no one of them was so persevering and indefatigable as Charles Townshend. The elaborate memorial on the limits of Acadia, delivered in Paris, by the English commissioners, in January, 1753, was entirely his work,

Reply of the English Commissaries, in All the Memorials, &c. Note to page 195. Jasper Mauduit to the Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, 12 March, 1763.

and, though unsound in its foundation, won for him great praise

North Briton, No. 20.

for research and ability. He now joined with his colleagues in advising the secretary of state to the immediate occupation of the eastern bank of the Ohio, lest the valley of the beautiful river should be gained by France.

Many proposals, too, were made for laying taxes on North America. The Board of Trade had not ceased to be urgent for a revenue with which to fix settled salaries on the Northern governors, and defray the cost of Indian alliances. Persons of consequence, we are told, had repeatedly, and without concealment, expressed undigested notions of raising revenues out of the colonies.

Thomas Penn to James Hamilton, 9 January, 1753. Wm. Bollan to Secretary Willard, 10 July, 1752, and 24 May, 1753.

Some proposed to obtain them from the post-office, a modification of the acts of trade, and a general stamp act for America.

Political Register, i. 248. The paper, here referred to, mixes error with much that is confirmed from more trustworthy sources.

With Pelham's concurrence, the Board of Trade

Walpole's Memoirs of George II. Letter of Wm. Bollan, of Charles, the New York Agent of the Proprietary of Pennsylvania.

on the eighth day of March, 1753, announced to the chap. IV.} 1753. House of Commons the want of a colonial revenue; as the first expedient, it was proposed to abolish the export duty in the British West Indies, from which no revenue accrued; and with a slight discrimination in their favor, to substitute imposts on all West Indian produce brought into the northern colonies. This project was delayed at that time for the purpose of inquiries, that were to serve to adjust its details; but the measure itself was already looked upon as the determined policy of Great Britain.

Meantime, the Indians of Ohio were growing weary with the indecision of England and its colonies. A hundred of them, at Winchester, in 1753, renewed to Virginia the proposal for an English fort on the Ohio, and promised aid in repelling the French.

Dinwiddie to Glen of S. C. 23 May, 1753.

They repaired to Pennsylvania with the same message, and were met by evasions. The ministry which had, from the first, endeavored to put upon America the expenses of Indian treaties and of colonial defence, continued to receive early and accurate intelligence from Dinwiddie.

Lieutenant Gov. Dinwiddie to Lords of Trade, 16 June, 1753.

The system they adopted gave evidence not only of the reckless zeal of the Lords of Trade to extend the jurisdiction of Great Britain beyond the Alleghanies, but also of the imbecility of the cabinet. The king in council, swayed by the representations of the Board, decided, that the valley of the Ohio was in the western part of the colony of Virginia; and that the march of certain Europeans to erect a fort in parts claimed to be of his dominions, was to be resisted as an act of hostility. Having thus invited a conflict chap. IV.} 1753. with France by instructions necessarily involving war, the cabinet took no effective measures to sustain the momentous claims on which it solemnly resolved to insist. The governor of Virginia was reminded of the great number of men enrolled in the militia of that province. These he was to draw forth in whole or in part; with their aid, and at the cost of the colony itself, to build forts on the Ohio; to keep the Indians in subjection; and to repel and drive out the French by force. But neither troops, nor money, nor ships of war were sent over; nor was any thing, but a few guns from the ordnance stores, contributed by England. The Old Dominion was itself to make the conquest of the West. France was defied and attacked: and no preparation was made beyond a secretary's letters,

Earl of Holdernesse to Lieut. Gov. Dinwiddie, August, 1751.

and the king's instructions.

Instructions to Lieut. Governor Dinwiddie, August, 1753.

A general but less explicit circular was also sent to every one of the colonies, vaguely requiring them to aid each other in repelling all encroachments of France on the undoubted

Circular of Holdernesse to the American Governors, 28 August, 1753.

territory of England. Such was the mode in which Holdernesse and Newcastle gave effect to the intimations of the Board of Trade.

That Board, of itself, had as yet no access to the king; but still it assumed the direction of affairs in its department. Busily persevering in the plan of reforming the government of the colonies, it made one last great effort to conduct the American administration by means of the prerogative. New York remained the scene of the experiment, and Sir Danvers Os- chap. IV.} 1753. borne, brother-in-law to the Earl of Halifax, having Thomas Pownall for his secretary, was commissioned as its governor, with instructions which were principally advised

Representation of Halifax and Townshend, &c 5 July, 1753.

by Halifax and Charles Townshend, and were confirmed by the Privy Council,

Order in Council, 10 August, 1753.

in the presence of the king.

The new governor, just as he was embarking, was also charged to apply his thoughts very closely to Indian affairs;

Thomas Penn to James Hamilton, 12 August, 1753.

and hardly had he sailed, when, in September, the Lords of Trade directed commissioners from the northern colonies to meet the next summer at Albany, and make a common treaty with the Six Nations. On the relations of France and England with those tribes and their Western allies, hung the issues of universal peace and American union.

During the voyage across the Atlantic, the agitated mind of Osborne, already reeling with private grief, brooded despondingly over the task he had assumed. On the tenth of October, he took the oaths of office at New York; and the people who welcomed him with acclamations, hooted his predecessor. I expect the like treatment, said he to Clinton, before I leave the government. On the same day, he was startled by an address from the city council, who declared they would not brook any infringement of their inestimable liberties, civil and religious. On the next, he communicated to the Council his instructions, which required the Assembly to recede from all encroachments on the prerogative, and to consider, without delay, of a proper law for a perma- chap. IV.} 1753. nent revenue, solid, definite, and without limitation. All public money was to be applied by the governor's warrant, with the consent of Council, and the Assembly should never be allowed to examine accounts. With a distressed countenance and a plaintive voice, he asked if these instructions would be obeyed.

Smith's History of New York, II. 159, 160.

All agreed that the Assembly never would comply. He sighed, turned about, reclined against the windowframe, and exclaimed, Then, why am I come here?

Being of morbid sensitiveness, honest, and scrupulous of his word, the unhappy man spent the night in arranging his private affairs, and towards morning hanged himself against the fence in the garden. Thus was British authority surrendered by his despair. His death left the government in the hands of James Delancey, a man of ability and great possessions. A native of New York, of Huguenot ancestry, he had won his way to political influence as the leader of opposition in the colonial Assembly; and Newcastle had endeavored to conciliate his neutrality by a commission as lieutenant-governor. He discerned, and acknowledged, that the custom of annual grants could never be surrendered. Dissolve us as often as you will, said his old associates in opposition, we will never give it up. But they relinquished claims to executive power, and consented that all disbursements of public money should require the warrant of the governor and council, except only for the payment of their own clerk and their agent in England. Nor did public opinion in Great Britain favor the instructions. Charles Townshend was, indeed, ever ready to defend them to the last; but to the younger Horace Walpole chap. IV.} 1753. they seemed better calculated for the latitude of Mexico and for a Spanish tribunal, than for free, rich British settlements, in such opulence and haughtiness, that suspicions had long been conceived of their meditating to throw off their dependence on the mother country.

Walpole's Memoires of George II.

Chapter 5:

Franklin plans union for the American people.— Pelham's administration continued.

1753-1754.

New York offered no resistance to the progress chap. V.} 1753. of the French in America. From Virginia the Ohio Company, in 1753, opened a road by Will's Creek, into the Western valley; and Gist established a plantation near the Youghiogeny, just beyond Laurel Hill. Eleven families settled in his vicinity; a town and fort were marked out on Shurtee's Creek; but the British government did nothing to win the valley of the Ohio, leaving the feeble company exposed to the wavering jealousy of the red men, and without protection against the impending encroachments of France.

The young men of the Six Nations had been hunting, in April, near the rapids of the St. Lawrence. Suddenly they beheld a large body of French and Indians, equipped for war, marching towards Ontario; and their two fleetest runners hurried through the forest as messengers to the grand council at Onondaga. In eight-and-forty hours the decision of the council was borne by fresh posts to the nearest English station; and on the nineteenth of April, at midnight, the two Indians from Canajoharie, escorted by Mohawk warriors, that filled the air with their whoops chap. V.} 1753 and halloos, presented to Johnson the belt of warning which should urge the English to protect the Ohio Indians and the Miamis.

Col. Johnson to the Governor of New York, 20 April, 1753.

In May more than thirty canoes were counted as they passed Oswego; part of an army going to the Beautiful River of the French.

Stoddard to Johnson, 15 May, 1753. Holland to Clinton, 15 May, 1753. Smith to Shirley, 24 December, 1753.

The Six Nations foamed with eagerness to take up the hatchet; for, said they, Ohio is ours.

On the report that a body of twelve hundred men had been detached from Montreal, by the brave Duquesne, the successor of La Jonquiere, to occupy the Ohio valley, the Indians on the banks of that river,—promiscuous bands of Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingoes, or emigrant Iroquois,—after a council at Logstown, resolved to stay the progress of the white men. Their envoy met the French, in April, at Niagara, and gave them the first warning to turn back. As the message sent from the council-fires of the tribes was unheeded, Tanacharisson, the Half-King, himself repaired to them at the newly discovered harbor of Erie, and, undismayed by a rude reception, delivered his speech.

Fathers! you are disturbers in this land, by taking it away unknown to us and by force. This is our land, and not yours. Fathers! both you and the English are white; we live in a country between. Therefore the land belongs to neither the one nor the other of you. But the Great Being above allowed it to be a dwelling-place for us; so, Fathers, I desire you to withdraw, as I have done our brothers, the English; and he gave the belt of wampum.

The French officer treated with derision the sim- chap. V.} 1753. ple words of the red chieftain of vagrants of the wilderness, men who belonged to no confederacy, except as they were subordinate to the Six Nations. Child, he replied, you talk foolishly; you say this land belongs to you; but not so much of it as the black of your nail is yours. It is my land; and I will have it, let who will stand up against it; and he threw back the belt of wampum in token of contempt.

The words of the French commander filled the Half-King with dismay. In September, the mightiest men of the Mingo clan, of the Delawares, the Shawnees, the Wyandots, and the Miamis, met Franklin, of Pennsylvania, with two colleagues, at Carlisle. They wished neither French nor English to settle in their country; if the English would lend aid, they would repel the French. The calm statesman distributed presents to all, but especially gifts of condolence to the tribe that dwelt at Picqua;

Hazard's Register, IV. 236.

and returning, he made known that the French had successively established posts at Erie, at Waterford, and at Venango, and were preparing to occupy the banks of the Monongahela.

Sanctioned by the orders from the king, Dinwiddie,

Dinwiddie to Sharpe, of Maryland, 24 Nov., 1753.

of Virginia, resolved to send a person of distinction to the commander of the French forces on the Ohio River, to know his reasons for invading the British dominions, while a solid peace subsisted. The envoy whom he selected was George Washington. The young man, then just twenty-one, a pupil of the wilderness, and as heroic as La Salle, entered with chap. V.} 1753. alacrity on the perilous winter's journey from Williamsburg to the streams of Lake Erie.

In the middle of November, with an interpreter and four attendants, and Christopher Gist, as a guide, he left Will's Creek, and following the Indian trace through forest solitudes, gloomy with the fallen leaves and solemn sadness of late autumn, across mountains, rocky ravines, and streams, through sleet and snows, he rode in nine days to the fork of the Ohio. How lonely was the spot, where, so long unheeded of men, the rapid Alleghany met nearly at right angles the deep and still water of the Monongahela! At once Washington foresaw the destiny of the place. I spent some time, said he, in viewing the rivers; the land in the Fork has the absolute command of both. The flat, well timbered land all around the point lies very convenient for building. After creating in imagination a fortress and a city, he and his party swam their horses across the Alleghany, and wrapt their blankets around them for the night, on its northwest bank.

From the Fork the chief of the Delawares conducted Washington through rich alluvial fields to the pleasing valley at Logstown. There deserters from Louisiana discoursed of the route from New Orleans to Quebec, by way of the Wabash and the Maumee, and of a detachment from the lower province on its way to meet the French troops from Lake Erie, while Washington held close colloquy with the Half-King; the one anxious to gain the West as a part of the territory of the Ancient Dominion, the other to preserve it for the red men. We are brothers, said the Half King in council; we are one people; I will send back the French speech-belt, and will make the Shawnees chap. V.} 1753. and the Delawares do the same.

On the night of the twenty-ninth of November, the council-fire was kindled; an aged orator was selected to address the French; the speech which he was to deliver was debated and rehearsed; it was agreed, that, unless the French would heed this third warning to quit the land, the Delawares also would be their enemies; and a very large string of black and white wampum was sent to the Six Nations as a prayer for aid.

After these preparations the party of Washington, attended by the Half-King, and envoys of the Delawares, moved onwards to the post of the French at Venango. The officers there avowed the purpose of taking possession of the Ohio; and they mingled the praises of La Salle with boasts of their forts at Le Boeuf and Erie, at Niagara, Toronto, and Frontenac. The English, said they, can raise two men to our one; but they are too dilatory to prevent any enterprise of ours. The Delawares were intimidated or debauched; but the Half-King clung to Washington like a brother, and delivered up his belt as he had promised.

The rains of December had swollen the creeks. The messengers could pass them only by felling trees for bridges. Thus they proceeded, now killing a buck and now a bear, delayed by excessive rains and snows, by mire and swamps, while Washington's quick eye discerned all the richness of the meadows.

At Waterford, the limit of his journey, he found Fort Le Boeuf defended by cannon. Around it stood the barracks of the soldiers, rude log-cabins, roofed with bark. Fifty birch-bark canoes, and one hundred and seventy boats of pine were already prepared chap. V.} 1753. for the descent of the river, and materials were collected for building more. The commander, Gardeur de St. Pierre, an officer of integrity

La Galissoniere to the minister, 23 Oct. 1748.

and experience, and, for his dauntless courage, both feared and beloved by the red men, refused to discuss questions of right. I am here, said he, by the orders of my general, to which I shall conform with exactness and resolution. And he avowed his purpose of seizing every Englishman within the Ohio valley. France was resolved on possessing the great territory which her missionaries and travellers had revealed to the world.

Breaking away from courtesies, Washington hastened homewards to Virginia. The rapid current of French Creek dashed his party against rocks; in shallow places they waded, the water congealing on their clothes; where the ice had lodged in the bend of the rivers, they carried their canoe across the neck. At Venango, they found their horses, but so weak, the travellers went still on foot, heedless of the storm. The cold increased very fast; the paths grew worse by a deep snow continually freezing. Impatient to get back with his despatches, the young envoy, wrapping himself in an Indian dress, with gun in hand and pack on his back, the day after Christmas quitted the usual path, and, with Gist for his sole companion, by aid of the compass, steered the nearest way across the country for the Fork. An Indian, who had lain in wait for him, fired at him from not fifteen steps' distance, but, missing him, became his prisoner. I would have killed him, wrote Gist, but Washington forbade. Dismissing their captive at night, they chap. V.} 1753. walked about half a mile, then kindled a fire, fixed their course by the compass, and continued travelling all night, and all the next day, till quite dark. Not till then did the weary wanderers think themselves safe enough to sleep, and they encamped, with no shelter but the leafless forest-tree.

On reaching the Alleghany, with one poor hatchet and a whole day's work, a raft was constructed and launched. But before they were half over the river, they were caught in the running ice, expecting every moment to be crushed, unable to reach either shore. Putting out the setting-pole to stop the raft, Washington was jerked into the deep water, and saved himself only by grasping at the raft-logs. They were obliged to make for an island. There lay Washington, imprisoned by the elements; but the late December night was intensely cold, and in the morning he found the river frozen. Not till he reached Gist's settlement, in January, 1754, were his toils lightened. 1754.

Washington's report was followed by immediate activity. The Ohio Company agreed to build a fort at the Fork, and he himself was stationed at Alexandria to enlist recruits. In February, the General Assembly,

Hening's Statutes at large, VI. 417.

unwilling to engage with France, yet ready to protect the settlers beyond the mountains, agreed to borrow ten thousand pounds, taking care to place the disbursement of the money under the superintendence of their own committee. The House of Burgesses, Dinwiddie complained, were in a republican way of thinking; but he confessed himself unable to bring them to order. The As- chap. V.} 1754. sembly of Virginia, pleading their want of means, single-handed, to answer all the ends designed, appealed to the royal beneficence.

Virginia Address to the King. Knox, Controversy Reviewed, 129, 130.

In England, it was the opinion of the greatest men, that the colonies should do something for themselves, and contribute jointly towards their defence.

Penn to Hamilton, 29 Jan. 1754. H. Sharpe to Calvert, Secretary for Maryland in England, 3 May, 1754.

The ministry as yet did nothing but order the independent companies, stationed at New York and at Charleston, to take part in defence of Western Virginia. Glen, the governor of South Carolina, proposed a meeting, in Virginia, of all the continental governors, to adjust a quota from each colony, to be employed on the Ohio. The Assembly of this Dominion, observed Dinwiddie,

Dinwiddie to H. Sharpe, 3 April, 1754.

will not be directed what supplies to grant, and will always be guided by their own free determinations; they would think it an insult on their privileges, that they are so very fond of, to be under any restraint or direction. North Carolina voted twelve thousand pounds of its paper money for the service; yet little good came of it. Maryland accomplished nothing, for it coupled its offers of aid with a diminution of the privileges of the proprietary.

H. Sharpe to Lord Baltimore, 2 May, 1754. Same to C. Calvert 29 Nov. 1753. 3 May, 1754.

Massachusetts saw the French taking post on its eastern frontier, and holding Crown Point on the northwest. The province had never intrusted its affairs to so arbitrary

Opinion of Samuel Adams.

a set of men, as the Council and Assembly of that day. They adopted the recommendations of Hutchinson and Oliver. The chap. V.} 1754. French, said they, have but one interest; the English governments are disunited; some of them have their frontiers covered by their neighboring governments, and, not being immediately affected, seem unconcerned. They therefore solicited urgently the interposition of the king, that the French forts within his territories might be removed. We are very sensible,

Message from the General Assembly of Massachusetts Bay to Governor Shirley, 4 January, 1754.

they added, of the necessity of the colonies affording each other mutual assistance; and we make no doubt but this province will, at all times, with great cheerfulness, furnish their just and reasonable quota towards it. Shirley was at hand to make the same use of this message, as of a similar petition six years before. But his influence was become greater. He had conducted the commission for adjusting the line of boundary with France, had propitiated the favor of Halifax and Cumberland by flattery, and had been made acquainted with the designs of the Board of Trade. His counsels, which were now, in some sense, the echo of the thoughts of his superiors, were sure to be received with deference, and to be cited as conclusive; and he repeatedly assured the ministry, that unless the king should himself determine for each colony the quota of men or money, which it should contribute to the common cause, and unless the colonies should be obliged, in some effectual manner, to conform to that determination, there could be no general plan for the defence of America. Without such a settlement, and a method to enforce it, there could be no union.

Shirley to the Lords of Trade, month is not given. Referred to January, 1754. The day of the Secretary, to be laid before the King, 4 April, 1754.

Thus was the opinion, which was one day to lead to momentous conse- chap. V.} 1754. quences, more and more definitively formed.

Pennsylvania, like Maryland, fell into a strife with the proprietaries, and, incensed at their parsimony, the province, at that time, perfected no grant, although the French were within its borders, and were preparing to take possession of all that part of it that lay west of the Alleghany. Ignorant of the unequivocal orders to Virginia, they seized on the strict injunctions of Holdernesse, in his circular, not to make use of armed force, excepting within the undoubted limits of his Majesty's dominions; of which they thought it would be highly presumptuous in them to judge.

In April, the Assembly of New York voted a thousand pounds to Virginia, but declined assisting to repel the French from a post which lay within the proprietary domain of Pennsylvania.

New York Assembly Journals for April, 1754. Smith's New York, II. 173.

The Assembly of New Jersey would not even send commissioners to the congress at Albany. In the universal reluctance of the single colonies, all voices began to demand a union. A gentle land-tax, said Kennedy, through the press of New York and of London, a gentle land-tax, being the most equitable, must be our last resort. He looked forward with hope to the congress at Albany, but his dependence was on the parliament; for with parliament there would be no contending. And when their hands are in, he added, who knows but that they may lay the foundation of a regular government amongst us, by fixing a support for the officers of the crown, independent of chap. V.} 1754. an assembly?

James Alexander, of New York,

T. Sedgwick's Life of W. Livingston.

the same who, with the elder William Smith, had limited the prerogative, by introducing the custom of granting but an annual support, thought that the British parliament should establish the duties for a colonial revenue, which the future American Grand Council, to be composed of deputies from all the provinces, should have no power to diminish. The royalist, Colden, saw no mode of obtaining the necessary funds but by parliamentary taxation; the members of the Grand Council, unless removable by the crown, might become dangerous. The privilege of fixed meetings at. stated times and places, was one which neither the parliament nor the Privy Council enjoyed, and would tend to subvert the constitution. England, he was assured, will, and can, keep its colonies dependent. But Franklin looked for greater liberties than such as the British parliament might inaugurate. Having for his motto, Join or die, he busied himself in sketching to his friends the outline of a confederacy which should truly represent the whole American people.

Dinwiddie was all the while persevering in his plans at the West. Trent was already there; and Washington, now a lieutenant-colonel, with a regiment of but one hundred and fifty self-willed, ungovernable men, was ordered to join him at the fork of the Ohio, to finish the fort already begun there by the Ohio Company; and to make prisoners, kill, or destroy all who interrupted the English settlements.

Kennedy's Serious Considerations, 21, 23, &c.

But as soon as spring opened the Western rivers, chap. V.} 1754. and before Washington could reach Will's Creek, the French, led by Contrecoeur, came down from Venango, and summoned the English at the Fork to surrender. Only thirty-three in number, they, on the seventeenth of April, capitulated and withdrew. Contrecoeur occupied the post, which he fortified, and, from the governor of New France, named Duquesne. The near forest-trees were felled and burned; cabins of bark, for barracks, were built round the fort, and at once, among the charred stumps, wheat and maize sprung up on the scorched fields where now is Pittsburgh.

Come to our assistance as soon as you can; such was the message sent by the Half-King's wampum to Washington; come soon, or we are lost, and shall never meet again. I speak it in the grief of my heart. And a belt in reply announced the approach of the Half-King's brother and friend. The raw recruits, led by their young commander, could advance but slowly, fording deep streams, and painfully dragging their few cannon. In the cold and wet season, they were without tents or shelter from the weather; without a supply of clothes; often in want of provisions; without any thing to make the service agreeable. On the twenty-fifth of May, the wary Half-King sent word, Be on your guard; the French army intend to strike the first English whom they shall see.

The same day, another report came, that the French were but eighteen miles distant, at the crossing of the Youghiogeny. Washington hurried to the Great Meadows, where, with nature's assistance, he made a good intrenchment, and, by clearing chap. V} 1754. the bushes out of the meadows, prepared what he called a charming field for an encounter. A small, light detachment, sent out on wagon-horses to reconnoitre, returned without being able to find any one. By the rules of wilderness warfare, a party that skulks and hides is an enemy. At night the little army was alarmed, and remained under arms from two o'clock till near sunrise. On the morning of the twenty-seventh, Gist arrived. He had seen the trail of the French within five miles of the American camp.

In the evening of that day, about nine o'clock, an express came from the Half-King, that the armed body of the French was not far off. Through a heavy rain, in a night as dark as can be conceived, with but forty men, marching in single file along a most narrow trace, Washington made his way to the camp of the Half-King. After council, it was agreed to go hand in hand, and strike the invaders. Two Indians, following the trail of the French, discovered their lodgment, away from the path, concealed among rocks. With the Mingo chiefs Washington made arrangements to come upon them by surprise. Perceiving the English approach, they ran to seize their arms. Fire! said Washington, and, with his own musket, gave the example. That word of command kindled the world into a flame. It was the signal for the first great war of revolution. There, in the Western forest, began the battle which was to banish from the soil and neighborhood of our republic the institutions of the Middle Age, and to inflict on them fatal wounds throughout the continent of Europe. In repelling France from the basin of the Ohio, Washington broke the repose of mankind, and waked a chap. V.} 1754. struggle, which could admit only of a truce, till the ancient bulwarks of Catholic legitimacy were thrown down.

An action of about a quarter of an hour ensued. Ten of the French were killed; among them Jumonville, the commander of the party; and twenty-one were made prisoners.

When the tidings of this affray crossed the Atlantic, the name of Washington was, for the first time, heard in the saloons of Paris. The partisans of absolute monarchy pronounced it with execration. They foreboded the loss of the Western World; and the flatterers of Louis the Fifteenth and of Madame Pompadour, the high-born panders to royal lust, outraged the fair fame of the spotless hero as a violator of the laws of nations. What courtier, academician, or palace menial would have exchanged his hope of fame with that of the calumniated American? The death of Jumonville became the subject for loudest complaint; this martyr to the cause of feudalism and despotism was celebrated in heroic verse, and continents were invoked to weep for his fall. And at the very time when the name of Washington became known to France, the child was just born who was one day to stretch out his hand for the relief of America and the triumph of popular power and freedom. How many defeated interests bent over the grave of Jumonville! How many hopes clustered round the cradle of the infant Louis!

See the last part of the last volume of Chateaubriand's Etudes Historiques, the Analyse Raisonnee de l'histoire de France. Quel est l'homme de cour ou d'academie, qui auroit voulu changer à cette époque son nom contre celui de ce planteur Americain, &c. &c.

The dead were scalped by the Indians, and the chap. V.} 1754. chieftain, Monacawache, bore a scalp and a hatchet to each of the tribes of the Miamis, inviting their great war-chiefs and braves to go hand in hand with the Six Nations and the English.

While Washington was looking wistfully for aid from the banks of the Muskingum, the Miami, and the Wabash, from Maryland and Pennsylvania, and from all the six provinces to which appeals had been made, no relief arrived. An independent company came, indeed, from South Carolina; but its captain, proud of his commission from the king, weakened the little army by wrangling for precedence over the provincial commander of the Virginia regiment; and it is the sober judgment of the well-informed,

Lieut. Gov. Sharpe to Lord Bury, 5 November, 1754.

that, if Washington had remained undisputed chief, the defeat that followed would have been avoided. While he, with his Virginians, constructed a road for about thirteen miles through the gorge in the mountains to Gist's settlement, and a party was clearing a path as far as the mouth of the Redstone, the Half-King saw with anger that the independent company remained in idleness at Great Meadows from one full moon to the other;

Hazard's Register.

and, foreboding evil, he removed his wife and children to a place of safety. The numbers of the French were constantly increasing. Washington, whom so many colonies had been vainly solicited to succor, was, on the first day of July, compelled to fall back upon Fort Necessity, the rude stockade at Great Meadows. The royal troops had done nothing to make it tenable. The little intrenchment was in a glade between two eminences covered with trees, except within sixty yards chap. V.} 1754. of it. On the third day of July, about noon, six hundred French, with one hundred Indians, came

Journal of De Villiers in New York Paris Documents. Varin to Bigot, 24 July, 1754. Correspondence of H. Sharpe.

in eight, and took possession of one of the eminences, where every soldier found a large tree for his shelter, and could fire in security on the troops beneath. For nine hours, in a heavy rain, the fire was returned. The tranquil courage of Washington spread its influence through the raw provincial levies, so inferior to the French in numbers and in position. At last,

H. Sharpe to his Brother, Annapolis, 19 April, 1755.

after thirty of the English, and but three of the French had been killed, De Villiers himself fearing his ammunition would give out, proposed a parley. The terms of capitulation which were offered were interpreted to Washington, who did not understand French, and, as interpreted, were accepted. On the fourth day of July, the English garrison, retaining all its effects, withdrew from the basin of the Ohio. In the whole valley of the Mississippi, to its head-springs in the Alleghanies, no standard floated but that of France.

Hope might dawn from Albany. There, on the nineteenth day of June, 1754, assembled the memorable congress

Massachusetts Historical Collections, XXX. New York Documentary History, II.

of commissioners from every colony north of the Potomac. The Virginia government, too, was represented by the presiding officer, Delancey, the lieutenant-governor of New York. They met to concert measures of defence, and to treat with the Six Nations and the tribes in their alliance. America had never seen an assembly so venerable for the States that were represented or for the great and chap. V.} 1754. able men who composed it. Every voice declared a union of all the colonies to be absolutely necessary. And, as a province might recede at will from an unratified covenant, the experienced Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, proud of having rescued that colony from thraldom to paper money, Hopkins, a patriot of Rhode Island, the wise and faithful Pitkin, of Connecticut, Tasker, of Maryland, the liberal Smith, of New York, and Franklin, the most benignant of statesmen, were deputed to prepare a constitution for a perpetual confederacy of the continent; but Franklin had already projected a plan, and had brought the heads of it with him.

Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, III. 21.

The representatives of the Six Nations assembled tardily, but urged union and action. They accepted the tokens of peace. They agreed to look upon Virginia and Carolina as also present. We thank you, said Hendrick, the great Mohawk chief, we thank you for renewing and brightening the covenant chain. We will take this belt to Onondaga, where our council-fire always burns, and keep it so securely that neither the thunderbolt nor the lightning shall break it. Strengthen yourselves, and bring as many as you can into this covenant chain. You desired us to open our minds and hearts to you, added the indignant brave. Look at the French; they are men; they are fortifying every where. But, we are ashamed to say it, you are like women, without any fortifications. It is but one step from Canada hither, and the French may easily come and turn you out of doors.

The distrust of the Six Nations was still stronger than was expressed. Though presents in unusual chap. V.} 1754. abundance had been provided, and a general invitation had been given, but one hundred and fifty warriors appeared. Half of the Onandagas had withdrawn, and joined the settlement formed at Oswegatchie under French auspices. Even Mohawks went to the delegates from Massachusetts to complain of fraudulent transfers of their soil,—that the ground on which they slept, and where burned the fires by which they sat, had never been sold, but had yet been surveyed and stolen from them in the night.

Alexander Colden to C. Golden, July, 1754.

The lands on the Ohio they called their own; and as Connecticut was claiming a part of Pennsylvania, because by its charter its jurisdiction extended west to the Pacific, they advised the respective claimants to remain at peace.

The red men having held their last council, and the congress, by its president, having spoken to them farewell, the discussion of the federative compact was renewed, and the project of Franklin being accepted, he was deputed alone to make a draught of it. On the tenth day of July, he produced the finished plan of perpetual union, which was read paragraph by paragraph, and debated all day long.

The seat of the proposed federal government was to be Philadelphia, a central city, which it was thought could be reached even from New Hampshire or South Carolina in fifteen or twenty days. The constitution was a compromise between the prerogative and popular power. The king was to name and to support a governor-general, who should have a negative on all laws; the people of the colonies, through chap. V.} 1754. their legislatures, were to elect triennially a grand council, which alone could originate bills. Each colony was to send a number of members in proportion to its contributions, yet not less than two, nor more than seven. The governor-general was to nominate military officers, subject to the advice of the council, which, in turn, was to nominate all civil officers. No money was to be issued but by their joint order. Each colony was to retain its domestic constitution; the federal government was to regulate all relations of peace or war with the Indians, affairs of trade, and purchases of lands not within the bounds of particular colonies; to establish, organize, and temporarily to govern new settlements; to raise soldiers, and equip vessels of force on the seas, rivers, or lakes; to make laws, and levy just and equal taxes. The grand council were to meet once a year, to choose their own speaker, and neither to be dissolved nor prorogued, nor continue sitting longer than six weeks at any one time, but by their own consent.

The warmest friend of union and the principal hand in forming the plan,

Shirley to Sir Thomas Robinson, 24 December, 1754.

was Benjamin Franklin. He encountered a great deal of disputation about it; almost every article being contested by one or another.

Ms. Letter from Benjamin Franklin, of 21 July, 1754.

His warmest supporters were the delegates from New England; yet Connecticut feared the negative power of the governor-general. On the royalist side none opposed but Delancey. He would have reserved to the colonial governors a negative on all elections to the grand council; but it was answered, that the colonies would then be virtually taxed by a chap. V.} 1754. congress of governors. The sources of revenue suggested in debate were a duty on spirits and a general stamp-tax.

Smith's New York, II. 185. Gordon's History of the American Revolution, i.

At length after much debate, in which Franklin manifested consummate address, the commissioners agreed on the proposed confederacy pretty unanimously. It is not altogether to my mind, said Franklin, giving an account of the result; but it is as I could get it,

Ms. Letter of Franklin.

and copies were ordered, that every member might lay the plan of union before his constituents for consideration; a copy was also to be transmitted to the governor of each colony not represented in the congress.

New England colonies in their infancy had given birth to a confederacy. William Penn, in 1697, had proposed an annual congress of all the provinces on the continent of America, with power to regulate commerce. Franklin revived the great idea, and breathed into it enduring life. As he descended the Hudson, the people of New York thronged about him to welcome him;

Letter from New York, 17 July, 1754, Gentlemen have, for this hour past, been going in and coming out from paying their compliments to Mr. Franklin.

and he, who had first entered their city as a runaway apprentice, was revered as the mover of American union.

Yet the system was not altogether acceptable either to Great Britain or to America. The fervid attachment of each colony to its own individual liberties repelled the overruling influence of a central power. Connecticut rejected it; even New York showed it little favor; Massachusetts charged her agent to oppose it.

Massachusetts to Bollan, December, 1754.

The Board of Trade, on receiving the chap. V.} 1754. minutes of the congress, were astonished at a plan of general government complete in itself.

Representation of the Board of 31 Trade, 29 October, 1754, in Plantations Gen. B. 7. XLII.; and at Albany London Documents, XXXI. 64.

Reflecting men in England dreaded American union as the keystone of independence.

But in the mind of Franklin the love for union assumed still more majestic proportions, and comprehended the great country back of the Apalachian mountains. He directed attention to the extreme richness of its land; the healthy temperature of its air; the mildness of the climate; and the vast convenience of inland navigation by the Lakes and great rivers. In less than a century, said he with the gift of prophecy, it must undoubtedly become a populous and powerful dominion. And through Thomas Pownall, who had been present at Albany during the deliberations of the congress, he advised the immediate organization of two new colonies in the west; with powers of self-direction and government like those of Connecticut and Rhode Island: the one on Lake Erie; the other in the valley of the Ohio, with its capital on the banks of the Scioto.

Thus did the freedom of the American colonies, their union, and their extension through the west, become the three great objects of the remaining years of Franklin. Heaven, in its mercy, gave the illustrious statesman length of days, so that he lived to witness the fulfilment of his hopes in all their grandeur.

Chapter 6:

The Old thirteen colonies.—Newcastle's administration.

1754.

in 1754 David Hume, whose penetrating mind chap. VI.} 1754. had discovered the hollowness of the prevailing systems of thought in Europe, yet without offering any better substitute in philosophy than a selfish ideal skepticism, or hoping for any other euthanasia to the British constitution than its absorption in monarchy, said of America in words which he never need have erased, and in a spirit which he never disavowed, The seeds of many a noble state have been sown in climates, kept desolate by the wild manners of the ancient inhabitants, and an asylum is secured in that solitary world for liberty and science. The thirteen American colonies, of which the union was projected, contained, at that day, about one million one hundred and sixty-five thousand white inhabitants, and two hundred and sixty thousand negroes; in all, one million four hundred and twenty-five thousand souls. The Board of Trade

The representation of the Board to the king, founded in part on muster-rolls and returns of taxables, included Nova Scotia, and according to the authority of Chalmers in the History of the Revolt, estimated the population of British Continental America, in 1754, at 1,192,896whites,292,738blacks,———1,485,634souls.

Thomas Pownall, whose brother was secretary to the Board of Trade, adhering more closely to the lists as they were made out, states the amount, for the thirteen colonies, at 1,250,000. See A Memorial most humbly addressed to the sovereigns of Europe on the present state of affairs between the Old and the New World. The Report of the Board of Trade on the 29 August, 1755, constructed in part from conjecture, makes the whole number of white inhabitants, 1,062,000. Shirley, in a letter to Sir Thomas Robinson, 15 August, 1755, writes that the inhabitants may be now set at 1,200,000 whites at least. The estimate in the text rests on the consideration of many details and opinions of that day, private journals and letters, reports to the Board of Trade, and official papers of the provincial governments. Nearly all are imperfect. The greatest discrepancy in judgments relates to Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. He who like H. C. Carey, in his Principles of Political Economy, part III. 25, will construct retrospectively general tables from the rule of increase in America, since 1790, will err very little. From many returns and computations I deduce the annexed table, as some approximation to exactness. Population of the united States, from 1750 to 1790.White.Black.Total1750,1,040,000,220,000,1,260,000.1754,1,165,000,260,000,1,425,000.1760,1,385,000,310,000,1,695,000.1770,1,850,000,462,000,2,312,000.1780,2,383,000,562,000,2,945,000.1790,3,177,257,752,069,3,929,326.

The estimates of the Board of Trade in 1714, on the accession of George the First, in 1727, on that of George the Second, and in 1754, were, according to Chalmers, White.Black.Total.1714,375,750,58,850,434,600.1727,502,000,78,000,580,000.1754,1,192,896,292,738,1,485,634.

sometimes reckoned a few thousands more; and some, on revising their judgment, stated chap. VI.} 1754. the amount at less.

Of persons of European ancestry, perhaps fifty thousand dwelt in New Hampshire, two hundred and seven thousand in Massachusetts, thirty-five thousand in Rhode Island, and one hundred and thirty-three thousand in Connecticut; in New England, therefore, four hundred and twenty-five thousand souls. Of the Middle Colonies, New York may have had eighty-five thousand; New Jersey, seventy-three thou sand; Pennsylvania, with Delaware, one hundred and chap. VI.} 1754. ninety-five thousand; Maryland, one hundred and four thousand; in all, not far from four hundred and fiftyseven thousand.

For the Southern Provinces, where the mild climate invited emigrants to the inland glades,—where the crown lands were often occupied on warrants of surveys without patents, or even without warrants,— where the people were never assembled but at musters, there was room for glaring mistakes in the enumerations. To Virginia may be assigned one hundred and sixty-eight thousand white inhabitants; to North Carolina, scarcely less than seventy thousand; to South Carolina, forty thousand; to Georgia, not more than five thousand; to the whole country south of the Potomac, two hundred and eighty-three thousand.

The Board of Trade in August, 1755, assign to Georgia, 3,000 white inhabitants; to South Carolina, 25,000; to North Carolina, 50,000; to Virginia, 125,000; to Maryland, 100,000; to Pennsylvania, with Delaware, 220,000; to New Jersey, 75,000; to New-York, 55,000; to Connecticut, 100,000; to Rhode Island, 30,000; to Massachusetts Bay, 200,000; to New Hampshire, 75,000.

The white population of any one of five, or perhaps even of six of the American provinces, was greater singly than that of all Canada, and the aggregate in America exceeded that in Canada fourteen fold.

Of persons of African lineage the home was chiefly determined by climate. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine may have had three thousand negroes; Rhode Island, four thousand five hundred; Connecticut, three thousand five hundred; all New England, therefore, about eleven thousand.

New York alone had not far from eleven thousand;

O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New-York, III., 843.

New Jersey, about half that number; Pennsyl- chap. VI.} 1754. vania, with Delaware, eleven thousand; Maryland, forty-four thousand; the Central Colonies, collectively, seventy-one thousand.

In Virginia there were not less than one hundred and sixteen thousand; in North Carolina, perhaps more than twenty thousand; in South Carolina, full forty thousand; in Georgia, about two thousand; so that the country south of the Potomac, may have had one hundred and seventy-eight thousand.

Of the Southern group, Georgia

Chalmers' Revolt, II., 803.

—the chosen asylum of misfortune–had been languishing under the guardianship of a corporation, whose benefits had not equalled the benevolence of its designs. The council of its trustees had granted no legislative rights to those whom they assumed to protect, but, meeting at a London tavern,

Knox, 162, 164. Stokes on the Colonies, 164.

by their own power imposed taxes on its Indian trade. Industry was disheartened by the entail of freeholds; summer, extending through months not its own, engendered pestilent vapors from the lowlands, as they were opened to the sun; American silk, it is true, was admitted into London duty-free, but the wants of the wilderness left no leisure to feed the silkworm and reel its thread; nor had the cultivator learned to gather cotton from the down of the cotton plant; the indigent, for whom charity had proposed a refuge, murmured at an exile that had sorrows of its own; the few men of substance withdrew to Carolina. In December, 1751, the trustees unanimously desired to surrender their charter, and, with the approbation of Murray,

Chalmers' Opinions of Eminent Lawyers, i., 187, 188.

all chap. VI.} 1754. authority for two years emanated from the king alone. In 1754,

Lords of Trade to Governor Reynolds, 24 July, 1754. Sir James Wright to Hillsborough, 28 Feb., 1771.

when the first royal governor with a royal council entered upon office, a legislative assembly convened under the sanction of his commission. The crown instituted the courts, and appointed executive officers and judges, with fixed salaries paid by England; but the people, intrenching itself in the representative body, and imitating the precedents of older colonies, gained vigor in its infancy to restrain every form of delegated authority.

South Carolina prospered and was happy. Its fiery people, impatient of foreign restraint, easily kindling into a flame, had increased their power by every method of encroachment on the executive, and every claim to legislative self-direction; but they did not excite English jealousy by competing with English industry, or engaging largely in illicit trade; and British legislation was ever lenient to their interests. In favor of rice, whose culture annually covered their inexhaustibly fertile swamps with its expanse of verdure, the Laws of Navigation were mitigated; the planting of indigo, which grew wild among their woodlands, was cherished, like the production of naval stores, by a bounty from the British exchequer; and they thought it in return no hardship to receive through, England even foreign manufactures, which, by the system of partial drawbacks, came to them burdened with a tax, yet at a less cost than to the consumer in the metropolis. They had desired and had obtained the presence of troops to chap. VI.} 1754. intimidate the wild tribes on their frontiers and to overawe their slaves. The people were yeomen, owing the king small quitrents, which could, never be rigorously exacted; a title to portions of the royal domain was granted on easy terms; and who would disturb the adventurer that, at his own will, built his cabin and pastured his herds in savannas and forests which had never been owned in severalty? The slave-merchant too willingly supplied laborers on credit. Free from excessive taxation, protected by soldiers in British pay, the frugal planter enjoyed the undivided returns of his enterprise, and might double his capital in three or four years. The love for rural life prevailed universally; the thrifty mechanic exchanged his workshop, the merchant abandoned the exciting risks of the sea, to plant estates of their own.

North Carolina, with nearly twice as many white inhabitants as its southern neighbor, had not one considerable village. Its rich swamps near the sea produced rice; its alluvial lands teemed with maize; free labor, little aided by negroes, busily drew turpentine and tar from the pines of its white, sandy plains; a hardy and rapidly increasing people, masters of their own free wills, lay scattered among its fertile uplands. There, through the boundless wilderness, hardy emigrants, careless of the strifes of Europe, ignorant of deceit, free from tithes, answerable to no master, fearlessly occupied lands that seemed without an owner. Their swine had the range of the forest; the open greenwood was the pasture of their untold herds; their young men, disciplined to frugality and patient of toil, trolled along the brooks that chap. VI.} 1754. abounded in fish, and took their pleasant sleep under the forest-tree; or trapped the beaver; or, with gun and pouch, lay in wait for the deer, as it slaked its thirst at the running stream; or, in small parties, roved the spurs of the Alleghanies, in quest of marketable skins. How could royal authority force its way into such a region? If Arthur Dobbs, the royal governor, an author of some repute, insisted on introducing the king's prerogative, the legislature did not scruple to leave the whole expense of government unprovided for. Did he attempt to establish the Anglican Church? The children of nature, free from bigotry and from sectarian prejudices, were ready to welcome the institution of public worship, if their own vestries might choose their ministers. Did he seek to collect quitrents from a people who were nearly all tenants of the king? They deferred indefinitely the adjustment of the rent-roll.

For the Carolinas and for Virginia, as well as other royal governments, the king, under his sign manual, appointed the governor and the council; these constituted, also, a court of chancery; the provincial judges, selected by the king or the royal governor, held office at the royal pleasure;

Opinions of Eminent Lawyers, i. 222, 223.

for the courts of vice-admiralty the Lords of the Admiralty named a judge, register, and marshal; the commissioners of the customs appointed the comptrollers and the collectors, of whom one was stationed at each considerable harbor; the justices and the militia officers were named by the governor in council. The freeholders elected but one branch of the legislature, chap. VI.} 1754. and here, as in every royal government, the council formed another. In Virginia there was less strife than elsewhere between the executive and the Assembly, partly because the king had a permanent revenue from quitrents and perpetual grants, partly because the governor resided in England, and was careful that his deputy should not hazard his sinecure by controversy. In consequence, the Council, by its weight of personal character, gained unusual influence. The Church of England was supported by legislative authority, and the plebeian sects were as yet proscribed, but the great extent of the parishes prevented all unity of public worship. Bedford, when in office, had favored the appointment of an Anglican bishop in America; but, as his decisive opinion and the importunities of Sherlock and Secker had not prevailed, the benefices were filled by priests ordained in England, and for the most part of English birth, too often ill-educated and licentious men, whose crimes quickened Virginia to assume the advowson of its churches. The province had not one large town; the scattered mode of life made free schools not easily practicable. Sometimes the sons of wealthy planters repaired to Europe; here and there a man of great learning, some Scottish loyalist, some exile around whom misfortune spread a mystery, sought safety and gave instruction in Virginia. The country within tide-water was divided among planters, who, in the culture of tobacco, were favored by British legislation. Insulated on their large estates, they were cordially hospitable. In the quiet of their solitary life, unaided by an active press, they learned from nature what others caught from philosophy, to reason boldly, to bound their freedom of mind only chap. VI.} 1754. by self-circumscribed limits. They were philosophers after the pattern of Montaigne, without having heard of him. The horse was their pride; the county courts their holidays; the race-course their delight. On permitting the increase of negro slavery opinions were nearly equally divided; but England kept slave-marts open at every court-house, as far, at least, as the Southwest Mountain,—partly to enrich her slave-merchants, partly, by balancing the races, to weaken the power of colonial resistance. The industry of the Virginians did not compete with that of the mother country; they had few mariners, took no part in the fisheries, and built no ships for sale. British factors purchased their products and furnished their supplies. Their connection with the metropolis was more intimate than with the northern colonies. England was their market and their storehouse, and was still called their home.

Yet the prerogative had little support in Virginia. Its Assembly sent, when it would, its own special agent to England, elected the colonial treasurer, and conducted its deliberations with dignity and independence. Among the inhabitants, the pride of individual freedom paralyzed all royal influence. They were the more independent, because they were the oldest colony, the most numerous, the most opulent, and, in territory, by far the most extensive. The property of the crown in its unascertained domain was admitted, yet the mind easily made theories that invested the ownership rightfully in the colony itself. Its people spread more and more widely over the mild, productive, and enchanting territory They ascended rivers to the uplands, and gathered in numbers in the valleys of its lovely chap. VI.} 1754. mountain ranges, where the productive red soil bore wheat luxuriantly, and gave to fruits the most delicate flavor. In the pleasant region of Orange County, among its half-opened forests, in a home of plenty,

The illustrious Madison detailed to me incidents in his career from his boyhood to his old age. He was sent to school in King and Queen's County to Donald Robertson, a good scholar, an emigrant from the Highlands of Scotland, suspected of having joined in the rebellion of 1745, and of being a Roman Catholic. Madison, when at school, had a pony, and the whole charge for keeping the boy and his horse was eight pounds, Virginia currency, for the year; for tuition, forty shillings a year, In the former generation. Madison's father went to school to Chancellor Pendleton's elder brother, a good teacher, and the whole cost of board and instruction was five pounds per annum.

there sported already on the lawn the child, Madison, round whose gentle nature clustered the hopes of American union. Deeper in the wilderness, on the Highlands of Albemarle, Thomas Jefferson, son of a surveyor, of whose ancestral descent memory preserved but one generation, dwelt on the skirt of forest life, and from boyhood gazed on the loveliest of scenes, with no intercepting ridge between his dwelling-place and the far distant ocean; a diligent student of the languages of Greece and Rome, and of France, treading the mountain-side with elastic step in pursuit of game. Beyond the Blue Ridge men came southward from the glades of Pennsylvania; of most various nations, Irish, Scottish, and German; ever in strife with the royal officers; occupying lands without allotment, or on mere warrants of survey, without patents or payment of quitrents; baffling to the last the settled policy of England. Everywhere in Virginia the sentiment of individuality was the parent of its republicanism. Its dauntless mind, not dissenting from established forms, was impatient of restraint, and submitted only to self-direction.

North of the Potomac, at the centre of America, chap. VI.} 1754. were the proprietary governments of Maryland and of Pennsylvania, with Delaware. There the king had no officers but in the customs and the admiralty courts; his name was hardly known in the acts of government, and could not set bounds to popular influence.

During the last war, Maryland enjoyed unbroken quiet, furnishing no levies of men for the army, and very small contributions of money. Its legislature hardly looked beyond its own internal affairs; and its rapid increase in numbers proved its prosperity. The youthful Frederic, Lord Baltimore, sixth of that title, dissolute and riotous, fond of wine to madness, and of women to folly, as a prince zealous for prerogative, though negligent of business, was the sole landlord of the province. To him seemed to belong the right of initiating all laws, though the popular branch of the legislature had assumed that power, leaving only to the proprietary a triple veto, by his council, by his deputy, and by himself. He established courts and appointed all their officers; punished convicted offenders, or pardoned them; appointed at pleasure councillors, all officers of the colony, and all the considerable county officers; and possessed exclusively the unappropriated domain. Reserving choice lands for his own manors, he had the whole people for his tenants on quitrents, which, in 1754, exceeded twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and were rapidly increasing. On every new grant from the wild domain he received caution money; his were all escheats, wardships, and fruits of the feudal tenures. Fines of alienation, though abolished in England, were paid for his benefit on every transfer, and fines upon devises were still exacted. He chap. VI.} 1754. enjoyed a perpetual port duty of fourteen pence a ton, on vessels not owned in the province, yielding not far from five thousand dollars a year; and he also exacted a tribute for licenses to hawkers and pedlers, and to ordinaries.

These were the private income of Lord Baltimore. For the public service he needed no annual grants. By an act of 1704,

Bacon's Laws of Maryland, 1704, c. x. 211.

which was held to be permanent, an export tax of a shilling on every hogshead of tobacco gave an annually increasing income of already not much less than seven thousand dollars, more than enough for the salary of his lieutenantgovernor; while other officers were paid by fees and perquisites. Thus the Assembly scarcely had occasion to impose taxes, except for the wages of its own members.

Beside the power of appointing colonial officers, independent of the people, Lord Baltimore, as prince palatine, could raise his liegemen to defend his province. His was also the power to pass ordinances for the preservation of order; to erect towns and cities; to grant titles of honor; and his the advowson of every benefice.

Trott's Collection of Laws, &c., 172.

The colonial act of 1702 had divided Maryland into parishes, and established the Anglican Church by an annual tax of forty pounds of tobacco on every poll. The parishes were about forty in number, increasing in value, some of them promising soon to yield a thousand pounds sterling a year. Thus the lewd Lord Baltimore had more church patronage than any landholder in England; and, as there was no bishop in America, ruffians, fugitives from justice, men stained by intemperance chap. VI.} 1754. and lust,

Several Letters of the Lieutenant-governor Sharpe. But see in particular H. Sharpe to Hammersly, 22 June, 1768, and T. B. Chandler to S. Johnson, 9 June, 1767.

(I write with caution, the distinct allegations being before me,) nestled themselves, through his corrupt and easy nature, in the parishes of Maryland.

The king had reserved no right of revising the laws of Maryland, nor could he invalidate them, except as they should be found repugnant to those of England. Though the Acts of Trade were in force, the royal power was specially restrained from imposing or causing to be imposed any customs or other taxations, quotas, or contributions whatsoever, within the province, or upon any merchandise, whilst being laden or unladen in its ports.

Charter for Maryland, § XVII. and § XX.

The people, of whom about one-twelfth were Roman Catholics,

The estimate is that of Lieutenant-governor Sharpe.

shared power through the Assembly; and as their soil had never been ravaged, their wealth never exhausted by taxation, the scattered planters enjoyed, in their delightful climate, as undisturbed and as happy a life as was compatible with the prevalence of negro slavery and the limitations on popular power.

In Pennsylvania with the counties on Delaware, the people, whose numbers appeared to double in sixteen years,

Franklin's Works, IV. 40.

were already the masters, and to dispute their authority was but to introduce an apparent anarchy. Of the noble territory the joint proprietors were Thomas and Richard Penn; the former holding three quarters of the whole. Inheritance might subdivide it indefinitely. The political power that had chap. VI.} 1754. been bequeathed to them brought little personal dignity or benefit. The wilderness domain was theirs; though Connecticut, which claimed to extend to the Pacific, was already appropriating to itself a part of their territory, and, like the Penns, sought to confirm its claim by deeds from the Six Nations.

Treaty between the Connecticut Susquehanna Company and Chiefs of the Six Nations, Albany, 11 July, 1754.

The lieutenant-governor had a negative on legislation, but he himself depended on the Assembly for his annual support, and had often to choose between compliance and poverty. To the Council, whom the proprietaries appointed, and to the proprietaries themselves, the right to revise legislative acts was denied, and long usage confirmed the denial.

Proud's Pennsylvania, II. 284.

In the land of the Penns, the legislature had but one branch, and of that branch Benjamin Franklin was the soul. It had an existence of its own; could meet on its own adjournments, and no power could prorogue or dissolve it; but a swift responsibility brought its members annually before their constituents. The Assembly would not allow the proprietaries in England to name judges; they were to be named by the lieutenant-governor on the spot, and like him depended on the Assembly for the profit of their posts. All sheriffs and coroners were chosen by the people. Moneys were raised by an excise, and were kept and were disbursed by provincial commissioners. The land-office was under proprietary control, and, to balance its political influence, the Assembly passionately insisted on continuing under their own supervision the loan-office of paper chap. VI.} 1754. money.

The laws established for Pennsylvania complete enfranchisement in the domain of thought. Its able press developed the principles of civil rights; its principal city cherished science; and, by private munificence, a ship, at the instance of Franklin, had attempted to discover the Northwestern passage.

Ms. Letter of B. Franklin, Philadelphia, 28 Feb. 1753.

A library, too, was endowed, and an academy chartered, giving the promise of intellectual activity and independence. No oaths or tests barred the avenue to public posts. The Church of England, unaided by law, competed with all forms of dissent. The Presbyterians, who were willing to fight for their liberties, began to balance the enthusiasts, who were ready to suffer for them. Yet the Quakers, humblest amongst plebeian sects, and boldest of them all,—disjoined from the Middle Age without even a shred or a mark of its bonds,—abolishing not the aristocracy of the sword only, but all war,—not prelacy and priestcraft only, but outward symbols and ordinances, external sacraments and forms,—pure spiritualists, and apostles of the power and the freedom of mind,—still swayed legislation and public opinion. Ever restless of authority, they were jealous of the new generation of proprietaries who had fallen off from their society, regulated the government with a view to their own personal profit, shunned taxation of their colonial estates, and would not answer as equals to the plain, untitled names, which alone the usages of the Society of Friends allowed.

Letters of T. & J. Penn to the Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania.

New Jersey, now a royal government, enjoyed, chap. VI.} 1754. with the aged Belcher, comparative tranquillity. The generality of the people he found to be very rustical, and deficient in learning.

Gov. Belcher to the Earl of Leven.

To the Calvinist governor the Quakers of this province seemed to want orthodoxy in the principles of religion; but he parried for them the oppressive disposition of the Board of Trade, and the rapacity of the great claimants of lands, who held seats in the Council. I have to steer, he would say, between Scylla and Charybdis; to please the king's ministers at home, and a touchy people here; to luff for one, and bear away for another.

Belcher to Sir Peter Warren.

Sheltered by its position, New Jersey refused to share the expense of Indian alliances, often left its own annual expenses unprovided for, and, instead of showing zeal in assuming the burdens of war, its gentle and most obstinate enthusiasts trusted in the extension of the peaceable kingdom from sea to sea, and the completion of the prophecies, that nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, nor learn war any more.

There, too, on the banks of the Delaware, men that labored for inward stillness, and to live in the spirit of truth, learned to love God in all his manifestations in the visible world; and they testified against cruelty towards the least creature in whom his breath had kindled the flame of life. Conscious of an enlargement of gospel love, John Woolman, a tailor by trade, content in the happiness of humility, stood up like a trumpet, through which the Lord speaks to his people,

A testimony of the Monthly Meeting of Friends, held in Burlington, N. J.

to make the negro masters sensible of the evil of holding the people of Africa in slavery;

The Testimony of Friends in Yorkshire.

and chap VI.} 1754 by his testimony at the meetings of Friends, recommended that oppressed part of the creation to the notice of each individual and of the society. Having discerned by a bright and radiant light the certain evidence of divine truth, and not fearing to offend man by its simplicity, he travelled much on the continent of America, and would say to thoughtful men, that a people used to labor moderately for their living, training up their children in frugality and business, have a happier life than those who live on the labor of slaves; that freemen find satisfaction in improving and providing for their families; but negroes, laboring to support others who claim them as their property, and expecting nothing but slavery during life, have not the like inducement to be industrious. Men having power, he continued, too often misapply it; though we make slaves of the negroes, and the Turks make slaves of the Christians, liberty is the natural right of all men equally.

The Life and Travels of John Woolman. 5th edition, 25, 28, 47, 50, 51. I am indebted to some unnamed friend for a copy of this uncommonly beautiful specimen of spiritual autobiography.

The slaves, said he, look to me like a burdensome stone to such who burden themselves with them. The burden will grow heavier and heavier, till times change in a way disagreeable to us. It may be just, answered one of his hearers, for the Almighty so to order it. And while he had fresh and heavenly openings in respect to the care and providence of the Almighty over man, as the most noble amongst his creatures which are visible, and was fully persuaded, that as the life of Christ comes to reign in the earth, all abuse and unnecessary oppression will draw towards an end, yet, under the sense of the overflow- chap. VI.} 1754. ing stream of unrighteousness, his life was often a life of mourning; and it was a matter fixed in his mind, that this trade of importing slaves, and way of life in keeping them, were dark gloominess hanging over the land. Though many willingly ran into it, yet the consequences would be grievous to posterity. Therefore he went about, environed with heavenly light and consolation, persuading men that the practice of continuing slavery was not right; and in calmest and most guarded words he endeavored, through the press,

The works of John Woolman. Part the Second. Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. First printed in the year 1754.

to raise an idea of a general brotherhood, and a disposition easy to be touched with a feeling of each other's afflictions. The men whom he addressed on both banks of the Delaware were not agreed, in all the branches of the question, on the propriety of keeping negroes; yet generally the spirit of emancipation was prevailing, and their masters began the work of setting them free, because they had no contract for their labor, and liberty was their right.

But New-York was at this time the central point of political interest. Its position invited it to foster American union. Having the most convenient harbor on the Atlantic, with bays expanding on either hand, and a navigable river penetrating the interior, it held the keys of Canada and the Lakes. Crown Point and Niagara, monuments of French ambition, were encroachments upon its limits. Its unsurveyed inland frontier, sweeping round on the north, disputed with New Hampshire the land between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut, and extended into unmea- chap. VI.} 1754. sured distances in the west. Within its bosom, at Onondaga, burned the council-fire of the Six Nations, whose irregular bands had seated themselves near Montreal, on the northern shore of Ontario, and on the Ohio; whose hunters roamed over the Northwest and the West; whose war-parties had for ages strolled to Carolina. Here were concentrated by far the most important Indian relations, round which the great idea of a general union was shaping itself into a reality. It was to still the hereditary warfare of the Six Nations with the Southern Indians, that South Carolina and Massachusetts first met at Albany; it was to confirm friendship with them and their allies, that New England, and all the Central States but New Jersey, had assembled in congress. But a higher principle was needed to blend the several colonies under one sovereignty; that principle also existed on the banks of the Hudson, and the statesmen of New York clung perseveringly and without wavering to faith in a united American empire.

England never possessed the affection of the country which it had acquired by conquest. British officials sent home complaints of the Dutch republicans as disloyal. The descendants of the Huguenot refugees were taunted with their origin, and invited to accept English liberties gratefully as a boon. Nowhere was the collision between the royal governor and the colonial Assembly so violent or so inveterate. Nowhere had the legislature, by its method of granting money, so nearly exhausted and appropriated to itself all executive authority. Nowhere had the relations of the province to Great Britain been more sharply controverted. The Board of Trade esteemed chap. VI.} 1754. the provincial legislature to be subordinate, resting for its existence on acts of the royal prerogative, the king's commissions and the king's instructions, and possessed of none of the attributes of sovereignty; while the people looked upon their representatives as a body participant in sovereignty, existing by an inherent right, and co-ordinate with the British House of Commons.

Affairs of religion also involved political strife. In a province chiefly of Calvinists, the English Church was favored, though not established by law; but an act of the prerogative, which limited the selection of the president of the provincial college to those in communion with the Church of England, agitated the public mind, and united the Presbyterians in distrust of the royal authority.

The Laws of Trade excited still more resistance. Why should a people, of whom one half were of foreign ancestry, be cut off from all the world but England? Why must the children of Holland be debarred from the ports of the Netherlands? Why must their ships seek the produce of Europe, and, by a later law, the produce of Asia, in English harbors alone? Why were negro slaves the only considerable object of foreign commerce which England did not compel to be first landed on its shores? The British restrictive system was never acknowledged by New York as valid, and was transgressed by all America, but most of all by this province, to an extent that could not easily be imagined. Especially the British ministry had been invited, in 1752, to observe, that, while the consumption of tea was annually increasing in America, the export from England was decreasing.

Clinton to Board of Trade, 4 October, 1752. The faction in this province consists chiefly of merchants. Entire disregard of the Laws of Trade. It is not easy to imagine to what an enormous height this transgression of the Laws of Trade goes in North America, &c., &c. N. Y. London Documents, XXX. 43.

For the next twenty years, England chap. VI.} 1754. sought for a remedy; and, meantime, the little island of St. Eustatia, a heap of rocks, but two leagues in length by one in breadth, without a rivulet or a spring, gathered in its storehouses the products of Holland, of the Orient, of the world; and its harbor was more and more filled with fleets of colonial trading-vessels, which, if need were, completed their cargoes by entering the French islands with Dutch papers. The British statutes, which made the commercial relations of America to England not a union, but a bondage, did but disguise the foreign trade which they affected to prevent. America bought of England hardly more than she would have done on the system of freedom; and this small advantage was dearly purchased by the ever-increasing cost of cruisers, custom-house officers, and vice-admiralty courts; so that Great Britain, after deducting its expenses, received, it was said, less benefit from the trade of New York than the Hanse Towns and Holland; while the oppressive character of the metropolitan legislature made the merchants principal supporters of what royalists called faction.

The large landholders—whose grants, originally prodigal, irregular, and ill-defined, promised opulence for generations—were equally jealous of British authority, which threatened to bound their pretensions, or question their titles, or, through parliament, to impose a land-tax. The lawyers of the colony, chiefly Presbyterians, and educated in Connecticut, joined heartily with the merchants and the great proprietors to resist every encroachment from Eng- chap. VI.} 1754. land; meeting the political theories of colonial subordination at the threshold; teaching the method of increasing colonial power by the system of annual grants; demanding permanent commissions for their judicial officers; opposing the extension of the admiralty jurisdiction; and vehemently resisting the admission of bishops, as involving ecclesiastical courts and new prerogatives. In no province was the near approach of independence discerned so clearly, or so openly predicted.

New York had been settled under large patents of lands to individuals; New England under grants to towns; and the institution of towns was its glory and its strength. The inhabited part of Massachusetts was recognised as divided into little territories, each of which, for its internal purposes, constituted a separate integral government, free from supervision, having power to choose annually its own officers; to hold meetings of all freemen at its own pleasure; to discuss in those meetings any subject of public interest; to see that every able-bodied man within its precincts was duly enrolled in the militia and always provided with arms, ready for immediate use; to elect and to instruct its representatives; to raise and appropriate money for the support of the ministry, of schools, of highways, of the poor, and for defraying other necessary expenses within the town. It was incessantly deplored by royalists of later days, that the law which confirmed these liberties had received the unconscious sanction of William the Third, and the most extensive interpretation in practice. Boston, even, on more than one occasion, ventured in town meeting to appoint its own agent to present a remonstrance to the chap. VI.} 1754. Board of Trade.

Shirley to the Board of Trade, January, 1755.

New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine, which was a part of Massachusetts, had similar regulations; so that all New England was an aggregate of organized democracies. But the complete development of the institution was to be found in Connecticut and the Massachusetts Bay. There each township was also substantially a territorial parish; the town was the religious congregation; the independent church was established by law, the minister was elected by the people, who annually made grants for his support. There, too, the system of free schools was carried to great perfection; so that there could not be found a person born in New England unable to write and read. He that will understand the political character of New England in the eighteenth century, must study the constitution of its towns, its congregations, its schools, and its militia.

John Adams: Works, v. 495.

Yet in these democracies the hope of independence, as a near event, had not dawned. Driven from England by the persecution of the government, its inhabitants still clung with confidence and persevering affection to the land of their ancestry, the people of their kindred, and the nationality of their language. They were of homogeneous origin, nearly all tracing their descent to English emigrants of the reigns of Charles the First and Charles the Second. They were a frugal and industrious race. Along the seaside, wherever there was a good harbor, fishermen, familiar with the ocean, gathered in hamlets; and each returning season saw them with an ever increasing number of mariners and vessels, taking the cod and mackerel, and sometimes pursuing the whale into chap. VI.} 1754. the icy labyrinths of the Northern seas; yet loving home, and dearly attached to their modest freeholds. At Boston a society was formed for promoting domestic manufactures: on one of its anniversaries, three hundred young women appeared on the common, clad in homespun, seated in a triple row, each with a spinning-wheel, and each busily transferring the flax from the distaff to the spool. The town built a manufacturing house, and there were bounties to encourage the workers in linen. How the Board of Trade were alarmed at the news! How they censured Shirley for not having frowned on the business! How committees of the House of Commons examined witnesses, and made proposals for prohibitory laws, till at last the Boston manufacturing house, designed to foster home industry, fell into decay, a commentary on the provident care of England for her colonies! Of slavery there was not enough to affect the character of the people, except in the southeast of Rhode Island, where Newport was conspicuous for engaging in the slave-trade, and where, in two or three towns, negroes composed even a third of the inhabitants.

In the settlements which grew up in the interior, on the margin of the greenwood, the plain meetinghouse of the congregation for public worship was every where the central point; near it stood the public school, by the side of the very broad road, over which wheels enough did not pass to do more than mark the path by ribbons in the sward. The snug farm-houses, owned as freeholds, without quitrents, were dotted along the way; and the village pastor among his people, enjoying the calm raptures of devotion, appeared like such a little white flower as we chap. VI.} 1754. see in the spring of the year, low and humble on the ground, standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of the flowers round about; all, in like manner, opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun.

Autobiographical Sketch of Jonathan Edwards in Works, i. 28. Worcester Edition. The late Dr. Channing called my attention to this sketch; he used to speak of it, page 35, 36, as containing the most vivid expression of an overpowering sense of God's omnipresence.

In every hand was the Bible; every home was a house of prayer; in every village all had been taught, many had comprehended, a methodical theory of the divine purpose in creation, and of the destiny of man.

Child of the Reformation, closely connected with the past centuries and with the greatest intellectual struggles of mankind, New England had been planted by enthusiasts who feared no sovereign but God. In the universal degeneracy and ruin of the Roman world, when freedom, laws, imperial rule, municipal authority, social institutions, were swept away,— when not a province, nor city, nor village, nor family was safe, Augustin, the African bishop, with a burning heart, confident that, though Rome tottered, the hope of man would endure, rescued from the wreck of the old world the truths that would renew humanity, and sheltered them in the cloister, among successive generations of men, who were insulated by their vows from decaying society, bound to the state neither by ambition, nor by allegiance, nor by the sweet attractions of wife and child.

After the sighs and sorrows of centuries, in the dawn of serener days, an Augustine monk, having also a heart of flame, seized on the same great ideas, and he and his followers, with wives and children, restored them to the world. At his bidding, truth chap. VI.} 1754. leaped over the cloister walls, and challenged every man to make her his guest; aroused every intelligence to acts of private judgment; changed a dependent, recipient people into a reflecting, inquiring people; lifted each human being out of the castes of the Middle Age, to endow him with individuality, and summoned man to stand forth as man. The world heaved with the fervent conflict of opinion. The people and their guides recognised the dignity of labor; the oppressed peasantry took up arms for liberty; men reverenced and exercised the freedom of the soul. The breath of the new spirit moved over the earth; it revived Poland, animated Germany, swayed the North; and the inquisition of Spain could not silence its whispers among the mountains of the Peninsula. It invaded France; and though bonfires, by way of warning, were made of heretics at the gates of Paris, it infused itself into the French mind, and led to unwonted free discussions. Exile could not quench it. On the banks of the Lake of Geneva, Calvin stood forth the boldest reformer of his day; not personally engaging in political intrigues, yet, by promulgating great ideas, forming the seedplot of revolution; bowing only to the Invisible; acknowledging no sacrament of ordination but the choice of the laity, no patent of nobility but that of the elect of God, with its seals of eternity.

Luther's was still a Catholic religion; it sought to instruct all, to confirm all, to sanctify all; and so, under the shelter of principalities, it gave established forms to Protestant Germany, and Sweden, and Denmark, and England. But Calvin taught an exclusive doctrine, which, though it addressed itself to all, rested only on the chosen. Lutheranism was, there- chap. VI.} 1754. fore, not a political party; it included prince, and noble, and peasant. Calvinism was revolutionary; wherever it came, it created division; its symbol, as set upon the Institutes of its teacher, was a flaming sword. By the side of the eternal mountains, and the perennial snows, and the arrowy rivers of Switzerland, it established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king. Fortified by its faith in fixed decrees, it kept possession of its homes among the Alps. It grew powerful in France, and invigorated, between the feudal nobility and the crown, the long contest, which did not end, till the subjection of the nobility, through the central despotism, prepared the ruin of that despotism, by promoting the equality of the commons. It entered Holland, inspiring an industrious nation with heroic enthusiasm; enfranchising and uniting provinces; and making burghers, and weavers, and artisans, victors over the highest orders of Spanish chivalry, over the power of the inquisition, and the pretended majesty of kings. It penetrated Scotland: and while its whirlwind bore along persuasion among glens and mountains, it shrunk from no danger, and hesitated at no ambition; it nerved its rugged but hearty envoy to resist the flatteries of the beautiful Queen Mary; it assumed the education of her only son; it divided the nobility; it penetrated the masses, overturned the ancient ecclesiastical establishment, planted the free parochial school, and gave a living energy to the principle of liberty in a people. It infused itself into England, and placed its plebeian sympathies in daring resistance to the courtly hierarchy: dissenting from dissent; longing to introduce the reign of righteousness, it invited every man to read the chap. VI.} 1754. Bible, and made itself dear to the common mind, by teaching, as a divine revelation, the unity of the race and the natural equality of man; it claimed for itself freedom of utterance, and through the pulpit, in eloquence imbued with the authoritative words of prophets and apostles, spoke to the whole congregation; it sought new truth, denying the sanctity of the continuity of tradition; it stood up against the Middle Age and its forms in church and state, hating them with a fierce and unquenchable hatred.

Imprisoned, maimed, oppressed at home, its independent converts in Great Britain looked beyond the Atlantic for a better world. Their energetic passion was nurtured by trust in the divine protection, their power of will was safely intrenched in their own vigorous creed; and under the banner of the gospel, with the fervid and enduring love of the myriads who in Europe adopted the stern simplicity of the discipline of Calvin, they sailed for the wilderness, far away from popery and prelacy, from the traditions of the church, from hereditary power, from the sovereignty of an earthly king,—from all dominion but the Bible, and what arose from natural reason and the principles of equity.

The ideas which had borne the New England emigrants to this transatlantic world were polemic and republican in their origin and their tendency. And how had the centuries matured the contest for mankind! Against the authority of the church of the Middle Ages Calvin arrayed the authority of the Bible; the time was come to connect religion and philosophy, and show the harmony between faith and chap. VI.} 1754. reason. Against the feudal aristocracy the plebeian, reformer summoned the spotless nobility of the elect, foreordained from the beginning of the world; but New England, which had no hereditary caste to beat down, ceased to make predestination its ruling idea, and, maturing a character of its own,

Saw love attractive every system bind. The transition had taken place from the haughtiness of its self-assertion against the pride of feudalism, to the adoption of Love as the benign spirit which was to animate its new teachings in politics and religion.

From God were derived its theories of ontology, of ethics, of science, of happiness, of human perfectibility, and of human liberty.

God himself is in effect universal Being. Nature in its amplitude is but an emanation of his own infinite fulness; a flowing forth and expression of himself in objects of his benevolence. In every thing there is a calm, sweet cast of divine glory. He comprehends all entity and all excellence in his own essence. Creation proceeded from a disposition in the fulness of Divinity to flow out and diffuse its existence. The infinite Being is Being in general. His existence being infinite, comprehends universal existence. There are and there can be no beings distinct and independent. God is All and alone.

End for which God created the World, in Works of Edwards, VI. 83, 53, 58, 59, and Works, i. 85.

The glory of God is the ultimate end of moral goodness, which in the creature is love to the Creator. Virtue consists in public affection or general benevolence. But as to the New England mind God included universal being, to love God seemed to in- chap. VI.} 1754. clude love to all that exists; and was, therefore, in opposition to selfishness, the sum of all morality, the universal benevolence comprehending all righteousness.

J . Edwards' Works, VI. 53, 73, &c.

God is the fountain of light and knowledge, so that truth in man is but a conformity to God; knowledge in man, but the image of God's own knowledge of himself. Nor is there a motive to repress speculative inquiry. There is no need, said Edwards, that the strict philosophic truth should be at all concealed from men. The more clearly and fully the true system of the universe is known the better. Nor can any outward authority rule the mind; the revelations of God, being emanations from the infinite fountain of knowledge, have a certainty and reality; they accord with reason and common sense; and give direct, intuitive, and all-conquering evidence of their divinity.

Edwards' Works, VI. 33, &c., i. 61, v. 348, IV. 230, 238.

God is the source of happiness. His angels minister to his servants; the vast multitudes of his enemies are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind. Against his enemies the bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at their heart, and strains the bow.

Edwards' Works, VII. 488, 490.

God includes all being and all holiness. Enmity with him is enmity with all true life and power; an infinite evil, fraught with infinite and endless woe. To exist in union with him is the highest well-being, that shall increase in glory and joy throughout eternity. God is his own chief end in creation. But as he chap. VI.} 1754. includes all being, his glory includes the glory and the perfecting of the universe. The whole human race, throughout its entire career of existence, hath oneness and identity, and constitutes one complex person, one moral whole.

Edwards' Works, VI. 437, 439, v. 129, &c., II. 377.

The glory of God includes the redemption and glory of humanity. From the moment of creation to the final judgment, it is all one work. Every event which has swayed the state of the world of mankind, all its revolutions, proceed as it was determined, towards the glorious time that shall be in the latter days, when the new shall be more excellent than the old.

God is the absolute sovereign, doing according to his will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants on earth. Scorning the thought of free agency as breaking the universe of action into countless fragments, the greatest number in New England held that every volition, even of the humblest of the people, is obedient to the fixed decrees of Providence, and participates in eternity.

Yet while the common mind of New England was inspired by the great thought of the sole sovereignty of God, it did not lose personality and human freedom in pantheistic fatalism. Like Augustin, who made war both on Manicheans and Pelagians,—like the Stoics, whose morals it most nearly adopted, it asserted by just dialectics, or, as some would say, by a sublime inconsistency, the power of the individual will. In every action it beheld the union of the motive and volition. The action, it saw, was according to the strongest motive, and it knew that what proves the strongest motive depends on the character chap. VI.} 1754. of the will. Hence, the education of that faculty was, of all concerns, the most momentous. The Calvinist of New England, who longed to be morally good and excellent, had no other object of moral effort than to make the will truly lovely and right.

Action, therefore, as flowing from an energetic, right, and lovely will, was the ideal of New England. It rejected the asceticism of entire spiritualists, and fostered the whole man, seeking to perfect his intelligence and improve his outward condition. It saw in every one the divine and the human nature. It did not extirpate, but only subjected the inferior principles.

Edwards' Works, VI. 428, 480.

It placed no merit in vows of poverty or celibacy, and spurned the thought of non-resistance. In a good cause its people were ready to take up arms and fight, cheered by the conviction that God was working in them both to will and to do.

Chapter 7:

The ministers are advised to tax America by act of parliament.—Newcastle's administration.

1754-1755.

such was America, where the people was rapidly chap VII.} 1754 becoming sovereign. It was the moment when the aristocracy of England, availing itself of the formulas of the Revolution of 1688, controlled the election of the House of Commons, and possessed the government.

To gain a seat in parliament, the Great Commoner himself

Mr. Pitt to the duke of Newcastle, in Chatham Correspondence, i. 85, 86.

was forced to solicit the nomination and patronage of the duke of Newcastle. On the death of Henry Pelham, in March, 1754, Newcastle, to the astonishment of all men, declaring he had been second minister long enough, placed himself at the head of the treasury;

Orford's Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George Second, i. 331.

and desired Henry Fox, then secretary at war, to take the seals and conduct chap. VII.} 1754. the House of Commons. The political adventurer, who had vigor of mind and excelled in quick and concise replication, asked to be made acquainted with the disposition of the secret service money. My brother, said Newcastle, never disclosed the disposal of that money, neither will I. Then, rejoined Fox, I shall not know how to talk to members of parliament, when some may have received gratifications, others not. He further inquired, how the next parliament, of which the election drew near, was to be secured. My brother, answered Newcastle, had settled it all.

Fox declining the promotion offered him, the inefficient Holdernesse was transferred to the Northern Department; and Sir Thomas Robinson, a dull pedant, lately a subordinate at the Board of Trade, was selected for the Southern, with the management of the new House of Commons. The duke, said Pitt, might as well send his jackboot to lead us. The House abounded in noted men. Besides Pitt, and Fox, and Murray, the heroes of a hundred magnificent debates, there was the universally able

Mr. Pitt to the Earl of Hardwicke, 6 April, 1764, in Chatham Correspondence, i. 106.

George Grenville; the solemn Sir George Lyttleton, known as a poet, historian and orator; Hillsborough, industrious, precise, well meaning, but without sagacity; the arrogant, unstable Sackville, proud of his birth, ambitious of the highest stations; the amiable, candid, irresolute Conway; Charles Townshend, confident in his ability, and flushed with chap. VII.} 1754. success. Then, too, the young Lord North, welleducated, abounding in good-humor, made his entrance into public life with such universal favor, that every company resounded with the praises of his parts and merit. But Newcastle had computed what he might dare; at the elections, corruption had returned a majority devoted to the minister who was incapable of settled purposes or consistent conduct. The period when the English aristocracy ruled with the least admixture of royalty or popularity was the period when the British empire was the worst governed.

One day, a member, who owed his seat to bribery, defended himself in a speech full of wit, humor, and buffoonery, which kept the House in a continued roar of laughter. With all the fire of his eloquence, and in the highest tone of grandeur, Pitt, incensed against his patron, gave a rebuke to their mirth. The dignity of the House of Commons, he cried, has, by gradations, been diminishing for years, till now we are brought to the very brink of the precipice, where, if ever, a stand must be made, unless you will degenerate into a little assembly, serving no other purpose than to register the arbitrary edicts of one too powerful subject.

Fox in Waldegrave's Memoirs, 147.

We are designed to be an appendix to——I know not what; I have no name for it,—meaning the House of Lords.

Thus did Pitt oppose to corrupt influence his genius and his gift of speaking well. Sir Thomas Robinson, on the same day, called on his majority to show spirit. Can gentlemen, he demanded, can merchants, can the House bear, if eloquence alone is chap. VII.} 1754. to carry it? I hope words alone will not prevail;

Walpole's Memoirs of George II. i. 355.

and the majority came to his aid. Even Fox, who despised care for the constitution as the object of narrow minds,

Chesterfield on Fox.

complained to the heir of the Duke of Devonshire, that, taking all share of power from the Commons is not the way to preserve Whig liberty. The Lords stand between the crown and the privilege of both peers and commons; after we are nothing, he continued, addressing the great chieftains of the Whig clans, you will not long continue what you wish to be.

Waldegrave's Memoirs, 20 and 152.

George the Second, the aged king, was even more impatient of this thraldom to the aristocracy, which would not leave him a negative, still less an option in the choice of his servants. The English notions of liberty, thought he, must be somewhat singular, when the chief of the nobility choose rather to be the dependents and followers of a Duke of Newcastle than to be the friends and counsellors of their sovereign.

Ibid. 133.

The king was too old to resist; but the first political lessons which his grandson, Prince George, received at Leicester House, were such a use of the forms of the British constitution as should emancipate the royal authority from its humiliating dependence on a few great families. Thus Pitt and Prince George became allies, moving from most opposite points against the same influence—Pitt wishing to increase the force of popular representation, and Leicester House to recover independence for the prerogative.

These tendencies foreshadowed an impending change in the great Whig party of England. The chap. VII.} 1754. fires had gone out; the ashes on its altars were grown cold. It must be renovated or given over to dissolution. It had accomplished its original purposes, and was relapsing into a state of chaos. Now that the principle of its former cohesion and activity had exhausted its power, and that it rested only on its traditions, intestine divisions and new combinations would necessarily follow. The Whigs had, by the Revolution of 1688, adjusted a compromise between the liberty of the industrial classes and the old feudal aristocracy, giving internal rest after a long conflict. With cold and unimpassioned judgment they had seated the House of Hanover on the English throne, in the person of a lewd, vulgar and ill-bred prince, who was neither born nor educated among them, nor spoke their language, nor understood their constitution; and who yet passively gave the nameof his House as a watchword for toleration in the church, freedom of thinking and of speech, the security of property under the sanction of law, the safe enjoyment of English liberty. They had defended this wise and deliberate act against the wounded hereditary affections and the monarchical propensities of the rural districts of the nation; till at last their fundamental measures had ceased to clash with the sentiment of the people, and the whole aristocracy had accepted their doctrines. Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, called himself a Whig, was one of the brightest ornaments of the party, and after Hardwicke, their oracle on questions of law. Cumberland, Newcastle, Devonshire, Bedford, Halifax, and the Marquis of Rockingham, were all reputed Whigs. So were George and Charles Townshend, the young Lord North, Grenville, Conwayand Sackville. On the vital elements chap. VII.} 1754. of civil liberty, the noble families which led the several factions had no systematic opinions. They knew not that America, which demanded their attention, would amalgamate the cause of royalty and oligarchy, and create parties in England on questions which the Revolution of 1688 had not even considered.

It was because the Whig party at this time had proposed to itself nothing great to accomplish, that it was possible for a man like Newcastle to be at its head; with others like Holdernesse, and the dull Sir Thomas Robinson, for the secretaries of state. The new system of governing America became one of the first objects of their attention; and, with the inconsiderate levity, rashness, and want of principle that mark imbecile men in the conduct of affairs, they were ever ready to furnish precedents for future measures of oppression. The Newcastle ministry proceeded without regard to method, consistency, or law.

The province of New York had replied to the condemnation of its policy, contained in Sir Danvers Osborne's instructions, by a well-founded impeachment of Clinton for embezzling public funds and concealing it by false accounts; for gaining undue profits from extravagant grants of lands, and grants to himself under fictitious names; and for selling civil and military offices. These grave accusations were neglected.

But the province had also complained that its legislature had been directed to obey the king's instructions. They insisted that such instructions, though a rule of conduct to his governor, were not the measure of obedience to the people; that the rule of obedience was positive law; that a command to grant chap. VII.} 1754. money was neither constitutional nor legal; being inconsistent with the freedom of debate and the rights of the assembly, whose power to prepare and pass the bills granting money, was admitted by the crown.

See the case prepared by Mr. Charles, the New York agent, in Smith's New York, II. 195.

It was under these influences that the Assembly of New York, in a loyal address to the king, had justified their conduct. The Newcastle administration trimmed between the contending parties. It did not adopt effective measures to enforce its orders; while it yet applauded the conduct of the Board of Trade,

Representation of the Board of Trade, 4 April, 1754, in N. Y. London Documents, XXXI. 39.

and summarily condemned the colony by rejecting its address.

Smith's New York, II.

But the opinion of the best English lawyers

Opinion of Hay in Smith, II. 197. No doubt this was also George Grenville's opinion.

became more and more decided against the legality of a government by royal instructions; encouraging the Americans to insist on the right of their legislatures to deliberate freely and come to their own conclusions; and on the other hand leading British statesmen to the belief, that the rule for the colonies must be prescribed by an act of the British parliament.

The feebleness of the ministry, in which there was not one single statesman of talent enough to avoid a conflict with France, encouraged the ambition of that power. At the same time it was seen that the people of America, if they would act in concert, could advance the English flag through Canada and to the Mississippi; and, as a measure of security against French encroachments, Halifax, by the king's command,

Sir Thomas Robinson to the Board of Trade, 14 June, 1754.

proposed an American union.

Lords of Trade to Sir Thomas Robinson, 3 July, 1754. Same to same, 9 August, 1754, inclosing project for general concert, August, 1754. Representation of the Board of Trade to the king, 9 August, 1754.

A certain chap. VII.} 1754. and permanent revenue, with a proper adjustment of quotas, was to be determined by a meeting of one commissioner from each colony. In electing the commissioners, the council, though appointed by the king, was to have a negative on the assembly, and the royal governor to have a negative on both. The colony that failed of being represented was yet to be bound by the result. Seven were to be a quorum, and of these a majority, with the king's approbation, were to bind the continent. The executive department was to be intrusted to one commander-in-chief, who should, at the same time, be the commissary-general for Indian affairs. To meet his expenses, he was to be empowered to draw on the treasuries of the colonies for sums proportionate to their respective quotas. A disobedient or neglectful province was to be reduced by the authority of parliament; and the interposition of that authority was equally to be applied for, if the whole plan of union should be defeated.

Representation of the Board of Trade to the king, 9 August, 1754.

Such was the despotic, complicated, and impracticable plan of Halifax, founded so much on prerogative, as to be at war with the principles of the English aristocratic revolution. Nor was any earnest effort ever made to carry it into effect. It does but mark in the mind of Halifax and his associates, the moment of that pause, which preceded the definitive purpose of settling all questions of an American revenue, government, and union, by what seemed the effective, simple, and uniform system of a general taxation of America by the British legislature. The secretary of chap. VII.} 1754. state and the Board continued, as before, to enjoin a concert among the central provinces for their defence, and, as before, the king's command was regarded only as proposing subjects for consideration to the colonial legislatures.

If the several assemblies, wrote Penn from England, will not make provision for the general service, an act of parliament may oblige them here.

Thomas Penn to Hamilton, 10 June, 1754.

The assemblies, said Dinwiddie, of Virginia, are obstinate, self-opinionated; a stubborn generation; and he advised a poll-tax on the whole subjects in all the provinces, to bring them to a sense of their duty.

Lieut. Gov. Dinwiddie to the Lords of Trade, 23 September, 1754.

Other governors, also, applied home for compulsory legislation;

Dinwiddie to H. Sharpe, of Maryland.

and Sharpe, of Maryland, who was well informed, held it possible, if not probable, that parliament, at its very next session, would raise a fund in the several provinces by a poll-tax, or by imposts, or by a stamp-duty, which last method he at that time favored.

Lieut. Gov. H. Sharpe to the Secretary, C. Calvert, 15 September, 1754.

These measures were under consideration while the news was fresh of Washington's expulsion from the Ohio valley. Listening to the instance of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, the king instructed the Earl of Albemarle, then governor-in-chief of that Dominion, to grant lands west of the great ridge of mountains which separates the rivers Roanoke, James, and Potomac from the Mississippi, to such persons as should be desirous of settling them, in small quantities of not more than a thousand acres for any one person. chap. VII.} 1754 From the settlement of this tract it was represented that great additional security would be derived against the encroachments of the French.

Representation of the Board of Trade to the king, 10 June, 1768.

Thus Virginia seemed to have in charge the colonization of the west; and became the mother of states on the Ohio and the Tennessee.

But the ministry still doubting what active measures to propose, sought information

Walpole's Memoires of George the Second.

of Horatio Gates, a young and gallant officer just returned from Nova Scotia. He was ready to answer questions, but they knew not what to ask. On the advice of Hanbury, the quaker agent in England for the Ohio Company, they appointed Sharpe, of Maryland, their general. Newcastle would have taken Pitt's opinion. Your Grace knows, he replied, I have no capacity for these things.

Dodington's Diary.

Horace Walpole, the elder, advised energetic measures to regain the lost territory.

Coxe's Life of Horace Waxpole, II. 67.

Charles Townshend would have sent three thousand regulars with three hundred thousand pounds, to New England, to train its inhabitants in war, and, through them, to conquer Canada. After assuming the hero, and breathing nothing but war, the administration confessed its indecision; and in October, while England's foolish prime minister was sending pacific messages to the French administration, particularly to Madame de Pompadour and the Duke de Mirepoix,

Newcastle to Walpole, 20 Oct., 1754. Walpole's Memoires, i. 347. Compare Flassan: Hist. de la Diplomatie Francaise.

the direction and conduct of American affairs was left entirely to the Duke of Cumberland, then the captaingeneral of the British army.

The French ministry desired to put trust in the chap. VII.} 1754. solemn assurances of England. Giving discretionary power in case of a rupture, they instructed Duquesne to act only on the defensive;

Le Garde des Sceaux to Duqaesne, 1754. New York Paris Doc., x., 44.

to shun effusion of blood, and to employ Indian war-parties only when indispensable to tranquillity. Yet Canada, of which the population was but little above eighty thousand, sought security by Indian alliances. Chiefs of the Six Nations were invited to the colony,

Holland to Lieut. Gov. Delancey, 1 Jan., 1755.

and, on their arrival, were entreated, by a very large belt of wampum from six nations of French Indians, to break the sale of lands to the English on the Ohio. Have regard, they cried, for your offspring; for the English, whom you call your brothers, seek your ruin. Already the faithless Shawnees,

Duquesne to De Drucourt, 8 March, 1755.

the most powerful tribe on the Ohio, made war on the English, and distributed English scalps and prisoners among the nations who accepted their hatchet.

Fond of war, the cruel and sanguinary Cumberland entered on his American career with eager ostentation. He was heroically brave and covetous of military renown, hiding regrets at failure under the aspect of indifference.

Waldegrave's Memoirs, 21-23.

Himself obedient to the king, he never forgave a transgression of the minutest precept of the military rubric.

Walpole's Memoires of Geo. II., i., 86.

In Scotland, in 1746, his method against rebellion was threatening military execution. Our success, he at that time complained to Bedford, has been too rapid. It would have been better for the extirpation of this rabble, if they had stood. All the good we have chap. VII.} 1754. done, he wrote to Newcastle, has been a little bloodletting.

Coxe's Pelham Ad., i., 303.

His attendant, George Townshend, afterwards to be much connected with American affairs, promised his friends still more entertainment in the way of beheading Scotchmen on Tower Hill; and he echoed Cumberland, as he wrote, I wish the disaffection was less latent, that the land might be more effectually purged at once.

Jesse's George Selwyn, i., 114.

For the American major-general and commanderin-chief, Edward Braddock was selected, a man in fortunes desperate, in manners brutal, in temper despotic; obstinate and intrepid; expert in the niceties of a review; harsh in discipline.

Walpole's Memoires of Geo. II., i., 390, confirmed by many letters of Washington, the younger Shirley, and others.

As the duke had confidence only in regular troops, it was ordered

Orders for governing his Majesty's Forces in America, in Two Letters to a Friend, 1755, pp. 14, 15.

that the general and field officers of the provincial forces should have no rank, when serving with the general and field-officers commissioned by the king. Disgusted at being thus arrogantly spurned, Washington retired from the service, and his regiment was broken up.

The active participation in affairs by Cumberland again connected Henry Fox with their direction. This unscrupulous man, having privately foresworn all connection with Pitt, entered the cabinet without appointment to office, and, as the most efficient man in the ministry, undertook the conduct of the House of Commons. Desiring to introduce into the English service the exactness of the German discipline, and to ground his despotism in an appearance of law, Cum- chap. VII.} 1754. berland had caused the English Mutiny Bill to be revised, and its rigor doubled. On a sudden, at a most unusual period in the session, Fox showed Lord Egmont a clause for extending the Mutiny Bill to America, and subjecting the colonial militia, when in actual service, to its terrible severity.

Calvert to Lieut. Gov. Sharpe. Walpole's Memoires, i., 365.

Egmont interceded to protect America from this new grievance of military law; but Charles Townshend defended the measure, and, turning to Lord Egmont, exclaimed, Take the poor American by the hand and point out his grievances. I defy you, I beseech you, to point out one grievance. I know not of one. He pronounced a panegyric on the Board of Trade, and defended all their acts, in particular the instructions to Sir Danvers Osborne. The petition of the agent of Massachusetts was not allowed to be brought up. That to the House of Lords no one would offer;

Letter of W. Bollan to Secretary Willard, 21 Dec., 1754; and to the Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, 29 Jan., 1755.

and the bill, with the clause for America, was hurried through parliament.

It is confidently stated, by the agent of Massachusetts, that a noble lord had then a bill in his pocket, ready to be brought in, to ascertain and regulate the colonial quotas.

W. Bollan to the Speaker, 30 May, 1755.

All England was persuaded of the perverseness of the assemblies,

Secretary Calvert to Lt. Gov. Sharpe, 20 Dec., 1754.

and inquiries were instituted relating to the easiest method of taxation by parliament. But, for the moment, the prerogative was employed; Braddock was ordered to exact a common revenue; and all the governors received the king's pleasure that a fund be established chap. VII.} 1754. for the benefit of all the colonies collectively in North America.

Sir T. Robinson's Circular of 26 Oct., 1754.

Men in England expected obedience; but in December, Delancey referred to the general opinion of the congress at Albany, that the colonies would differ in their measures and disagree about their quotas; without the interposition of the British parliament to oblige them, nothing would be done.

Lieut. Gov. Delancey to the Lords of Trade, 15 Dec. 1754.

In the same moment, Shirley, at Boston, was planning how the common fund could be made efficient; and to Franklin—who, in December, 1754, revisited the region in which he drew his first breath, and spent his earliest and most pleasant days,—he submitted a new scheme of union. A congress of governors and delegates from the councils was to be invested with power at their meetings to adopt measures of defence, and to draw for all necessary moneys on the treasury of Great Britain, which was to be reimbursed by parliamentary taxes on America.

The people in the colonies, replied Franklin,

Franklin to Shirley, 17 Dec. and 18 Dec. 1754, in Works, III, 57, 58.

are better judges of the necessary preparations for defence, and their own abilities to bear them. Governors often come to the colonies merely to make fortunes, with which they intend to return to Britain; are not always men of the best abilities or integrity; have no natural connection with us, that should make them heartily concerned for our welfare. The councillors in most of the colonies are appointed by the crown, on the recommendation of governors, fre- chap. VII.} 1754. quently depend on the governors for office, and are therefore too much under influence. There is reason to be jealous of a power in such governors. They might abuse it merely to create employments, gratify dependents, and divide profits. Besides, the mercantile system of England already extorted a secondary tribute from America. In addition to the benefit to England from the increasing demand for English manufactures, the whole wealth of the colonies, by the British Acts of Trade, centred finally among the merchants and inhabitants of the metropolis.

Against taxation of the colonies by parliament, Franklin urged, that it would lead to dangerous animosities and feuds, and inevitable confusion; that parliament, being at a great distance, was subject to be misinformed and misled, and was, therefore, unsuited to the exercise of this power; that it was the undoubted right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own consent, through their representatives; that to propose taxation by parliament, rather than by a colonial representative body, implied a distrust of the loyalty, or the patriotism, or the understanding of the colonies; that to compel them to pay money without their consent, would be rather like raising contributions in an enemy's country than taxing Englishmen for their own benefit; and, finally, that the principle involved in the measure would, if carried out, lead to a tax upon them all by act of parliament for support of government and to the dismission of colonial assemblies, as a useless part of the constitution.

Shirley next proposed for consideration the plan of uniting the colonies more intimately with Great Britain, by allowing them representatives in parlia- chap. VII.} 1754. ment; and Franklin replied, that unity of government should be followed by a real unity of country; that it would not be acceptable, unless a reasonable number of representatives were allowed, all laws restraining the trade or the manufactures of the colonies were repealed, and England ceasing to regard the colonies as tributary to its industry, were to foster the merchant, the smith, the hatter, in America not less than those on her own soil.

Unable to move Franklin from the deeply-seated love of popular liberty and power which was at once his conviction and a sentiment of his heart, Shirley turned towards the Secretary of State, and renewed his representations of the necessity of a union of the colonies, to be formed in England and enforced by act of parliament. At the same time he warned against the plea of Franklin in behalf of the Albany plan, which he described as the application of the old charter system, such as prevailed in Rhode Island and Connecticut, to the formation of an American confederacy.

It has been thought probable, that Shirley was not particularly hostile to the Albany plan of union. His correspondence proves his bitter enmity to the scheme. See Shirley to Sir Thomas Robinson, 24 December, 1754; 24 January, 1755, and 4 Feb. 1755, but particularly the letter of Dec. 1754.

The system, said he, is unfit for ruling a particular colony; it seems much more improper for establishing a general government over all the colonies to be comprised in the union. The prerogative is not sufficiently secured by the reservation to the crown of the appointment of a President of the Union with a negative power on all acts of legislation. As the old charter governments subjected the prerogative to the people, and had little or no appearance of dependency, so the Albany plan of union chap. VII.} 1754. would, in like manner, annihilate royal authority in the collective colonies, and endanger their dependency upon the crown.

Franklin and Shirley parted, each to persevere in 1755. his own opinions. Early in 1755, Shirley wrote to the Secretary of State, that he was convinced of the necessity not only of a parliamentary union but taxation.

Shirley to Sir Thomas Robinson, 4 February, 1755.

During the winter, Sharpe, who had been appointed temporarily to the chief command in America, vainly solicited

H. Sharpe's Letters in 1755 to his brothers William Sharpe and John Sharpe, and to Lord Baltimore.

aid from every province. New Hampshire, although weak and young, took every opportunity to force acts contrary to the king's instructions and prerogative. The character of the Rhode Island government gave no great prospect of assistance. New York hesitated in providing quarters for British soldiers, and would contribute to a general fund only when others did. New Jersey showed the greatest contempt for the repeated solicitations of its aged governor. In Pennsylvania, in Maryland, in South Carolina, the grants of money by the assemblies were negatived, because they were connected with the encroachments of popular power on the prerogative, schemes of future independency, the grasping at the disposition of all public money and filling all offices; and in each instance the veto excited a great flame. The Assembly of Pennsylvania in March borrowed money and issued bills of credit by their own resolves, without the assent of the governor. They are the more dangerous, said Morris, because a future Assembly may use those chap. VII.} 1755. powers against the government by which they are now protected; and he openly and incessantly solicited the interference of England. The provincial press engaged in the strife. Redress, said the Pennsylvania royalists, if it comes, must come from his Majesty and the British parliament.

Brief State of Pennsylvania.

The Quakers also looked to the same authority, not for taxation, but for the abolition of the proprietary rule.

Answer to Brief State of Pennsylvania.

The contest along the American frontier was raging fiercely, when, in January, 1755, France proposed to England to leave the Ohio valley in the condition in which it was at the epoch before the last war, and at the same time inquired the motive of the armament which was making in Ireland. Braddock, with two regiments, was already on the way to America, when Newcastle gave assurances that defence only was intended, that the general peace should not be broken; at the same time, England on its side, returning the French proposition but with a change of epoch, proposed to leave the Ohio valley as it had been at the treaty of Utrecht. Mirepoix, in reply, was willing that both the French and English should retire from the country between the Ohio and the Alleghanies, and leave that territory neutral, which would have secured to his sovereign all the country north and west of the Ohio. England, on the contrary, demanded that France should destroy all her forts as far as the Wabash, raze Niagara and Crown Point, surrender the peninsula of Nova Scotia, with a strip of land twenty leagues wide along the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic, and leave the intermediate country to chap. VII.} 1755. the St. Lawrence a neutral desert. Proposals so unreasonable could meet with no acceptance; yet both parties professed a desire—in which France appears to have been sincere—to investigate and arrange all disputed points. The credulous diplomatist put trust in the assurances

Stanley to Pitt, in Thackeray's Chatham, II. 581.

of friendly intentions, which Newcastle lavished upon him, and Louis the Fifteenth, while he sent three thousand men to America, held himself ready to sacrifice for peace all but honor and the protection due to his subjects;

Instructions to Varin, N. Y. Paris Documents, XI. 2.

consenting that New England should reach on the east to the Penobscot, and be divided from Canada on the north by the crest of the intervening highlands.

Secret Instructions to Vandreuil, 1 April, 1754, Ibid. x. 8.

While the negotiations were pending, Braddock arrived in the Chesapeake. In March, he reached Williamsburg, and visited Annapolis; on the fourteenth day of April, he, with Commodore Keppel, held a congress at Alexandria. There were present, of the American governors, Shirley, now next to Braddock in military rank; Delancey, of New York; Morris, of Pennsylvania; Sharpe, of Maryland; and Dinwiddie, of Virginia. Braddock directed their attention, first of all, to the subject of colonial revenue,

H. Sharpe to Lord Baltimore, 19 April, 1754.

on which his instructions commanded him to insist, and his anger kindled that no such fund was already established. The governors present, recapitulating their strifes with their assemblies, made answer, Such a fund can never be established in the colonies without the aid of parliament. Having found it impracticable to obtain in their respective chap. VII.} 1755. governments the proportion expected by his Majesty towards defraying the expense of his service in North America, they are unanimously of opinion that it should be proposed to his Majesty's ministers to find out some method of compelling them to do it, and of assessing the several governments in proportion to their respective abilities.

Minutes of Council, held at the camp at Alexandria, in Virginia, April 14, 1755, [and following days]. My copy is from that inclosed in Major General Braddock's Letter of 19 April, 1755, to the Secretary of State.

This imposing document Braddock sent forthwith to the ministry, himself also

Memoire contenant le Precis des Faits avec les pieces justificatives, 188. Une taxe sur les domaines de sa majestie. Braddock to Sir Thomas Robinson, 14 April, 1755, in the State Paper Office, Am. and W. I. LXXXII.

urging the necessity of some tax being laid throughout his Majesty's dominions in North America. Dinwiddie reiterated his old advice. Sharpe recommended that the governor and council, without the assembly, should have power to levy money after any manner that may be deemed most ready and convenient. A common fund, so Shirley assured his American colleagues, on the authority of the British secretary of state, must be either voluntarily raised, or assessed in some other way.

I have had in my hands vast masses of correspondence, including letters from servants of the crown in every royal colony in America; from civilians, as well as from Braddock, and Dunbar, and Gage; from the popular Delancey and the moderate Sharpe, as well as from Dinwiddie and Shirley; and all were of the same tenor. The British ministry heard one general clamor from men in office for taxation by act of parliament. Even men of liberal tendencies looked to acts of English authority for aid. I hope that Lord Halifax's plan may be good and take place, said chap. VII.} 1755. Alexander, of New York. Hopkins, governor of Rhode Island, elected by the people, complained of the men who seemed to love and understand liberty better than public good and the affairs of state. Little dependence, said he, can be had on voluntary union. In an act of parliament for a general fund, wrote Shirley, I have great reason to think the people will readily acquiesce.

In England, the government was more and more inclined to enforce the permanent authority of Great Britain. No Assembly had with more energy assumed to itself all the powers that spring from the management of the provincial treasury than that of South Carolina; and Richard Lyttleton, brother of Sir George Lyttelton, who, in November, 1755, entered the cabinet as chancellor of the exchequer, was sent to recover the authority which had been impaired by the unmanly facilities of former rulers. Pennsylvania had, in January, 1755, professed the loyalty of that province, and explained the danger to their chartered liberties from proprietary instructions; but, after a hearing before the Board of Trade, the address of the colonial legislature to their sovereign, like that of New York in the former year, was disdainfully rejected. Petitions for reimbursements and aids were received with displeasure; the people of New England were treated as Swiss ready to sell their services, desiring to be paid for protecting themselves. The reimbursement of Massachusetts for taking Louisburg was now condemned, as a subsidy to subjects who had only done their duty. You must fight for your own altars and firesides, was Sir Thomas Robinson's answer to the American agents, chap. VII.} 1755. as they were bandied to himself from Newcastle and from both to Halifax. Halifax alone had decision and a plan. In July, 1755, he insisted with the ministry on a general system to ease the mother country of the great and heavy expenses with which it of late years was burdened.

Board to Secretary of State, July, 1755.

The letters from America found the English Administration resolved to raise funds for American affairs by a stamp-duty, and a duty on products of the Foreign West Indies, imported into the continental colonies.

Charles to Committee of New York, 15 Aug., 1755.

The English press advocated an impost in the northern colonies on West India products, and likewise that, by act of parliament, there be a further fund established from stamped paper.

A miscellaneous Essay, concerning the courses pursued by Great Britain in the Affairs of her Colonies, &c., &c. London, 1755, at pages 89 and 92.

This tax, it was conceived, would yield a very large sum. Huske, an American, writing under the patronage of Charles Townshend, urged a reform in the colonial administration, and moderate taxation by parliament, as free from the risks and disadvantages of the Albany plan of union.

Huske's Present State of the Colonies.

Delancey, in August, had hinted to the New York Assembly, that a stamp-duty would be so diffused as to be in a manner insensible.

Delancey to the New York Assembly, 6 Aug., 1755.

That province objected to a stamp-tax as oppressive, though not to a moderate impost on West India products; and the voice of Massachusetts was unheeded, when, in November, it began to be thoroughly alarmed, and instructed its agent to oppose every thing that should have the remotest tendency to raise a revenue in the plantations. Every body in chap. VII.} 1755. parliament seemed in favor of an American revenue that should come under the direction of the government in England. Those who once promised opposition to the measure resolved rather to sustain it, and the very next winter was to introduce the new policy.

Bollan to the Speaker of Mass. Assembly.

The civilized world was just beginning to give to the colonies the attention due to their futurity. Hutcheson, the greatest British writer on ethics of his generation,—who, without the power of thoroughly reforming the theory of morals, knew that it needed a reform, and was certain that truth and right have a foundation within us, though, swayed by the material philosophy of his times, he sought that foundation not in pure reason, but in a moral sense,—saw no wrong in the coming independence of America. When, he inquired, have colonies a right to be released from the dominion of the parent state? And this year his opinion saw the light:—Whenever they are so increased in numbers and strength as to be sufficient by themselves for all the good ends of a political union.

Chapter 8:

England and France Contend for the Ohio valley and for Acadia.—Newcastle's administration continued.

1755.

anarchy lay at the heart of the institutions of chap. VIII.} 1755. Europe; the germ of political life was struggling for its development in the people of America. While doubt was preparing the work of destruction in the Old World, faith in truth and the formative power of order were controlling and organizing the free and expanding energies of the New. As yet, America refused union, not from unwillingness to devote life and fortune for the commonwealth, but from the firm resolve never to place its concentrated strength under an authority independent of itself. It desired not union only, but self-direction.

The events of the summer strengthened the purpose, but delayed the period, of taxation by parliament. Between England and France peace existed under ratified treaties; it was proposed not to invade Canada, but only to repel encroachments on the frontier from the Ohio to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. For this end, four expeditions were concerted by Braddock at Alexandria. Lawrence, the lieutenanternor of Nova Scotia, was to reduce that province chap. VIII.} 1755. according to the English interpretation of its boundaries; Johnson, from his long acquaintance with the Six Nations, was selected to enroll Mohawk warriors in British pay, and to conduct an army of provincial militia and Indians against Crown Point; Shirley proposed to win laurels by driving the French from Niagara; while the commander-in-chief himself was to recover the Ohio Valley and the Northwest.

Soon after Braddock sailed from Europe, the French also sent a fleet with reinforcements for Canada, under the veteran Dieskau. Boscawen, with English ships, pursued them, though England had avowed only the intention to resist encroachments on her territory; and when the French ambassador at London expressed some uneasiness on the occasion, he was assured that certainly the English would not begin.

Flassan: Histoire de la Diplomatie Francoise, VI., 84.

At six o'clock, on the evening of the 7th of June, the Alcide, the Lys, and the Dauphin, that had for several days been separated from their squadron, fell in with the British fleet off Cape Race, the southernmost point of Newfoundland. Between ten and eleven in the morning of the eighth, the Alcide, under Hocquart, was within hearing of the Dunkirk, a vessel of sixty guns, commanded by Howe. Are we at peace or war? asked Hocquart. The French affirm, that the answer to them was, Peace, Peace; till Boscawen gave the signal to engage.

Precis des Faits, 278. Walpole's Memoires of Geo. II., i., 889. Barrow's Life of Howe.

Howe, who was as brave as he was taciturn, obeyed the order promptly; and the Alcide and Lys yielded to superior force. The Dauphin, being a good sailer, scud safely for Louisburg. Nine more of the French chap. VIII.} 1755. squadron came in sight of the British, but were not intercepted; and, before June was gone, Dieskau and his troops, with De Vaudreuil, who superseded Duquesne as governor of Canada, landed at Quebec, Vaudreuil was a Canadian by birth, had served in Canada, and been governor of Louisiana. The Canadians flocked about him to bid him welcome.

From Williamsburg, Braddock had promised Newcastle to be beyond the mountains of Alleghany by the end of April; at Alexandria, in April, he prepared the ministry for tidings of his successes by an express in June. At Fredericktown, where he halted for carriages, he said to Franklin, After taking Fort Duquesne, I am to proceed to Niagara, and, having taken that, to Frontenac. Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days, and then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara. The Indians are dexterous in laying and executing ambuscades, replied Franklin, who remembered the French invasion of the Chickasaws, and the death of Artaguette and Vincennes. The savages, answered Braddock, may be formidable to your raw American militia; upon the king's regulars and disciplined troops it is impossible they should make any impression. Still the little army was unable to move, for want of horses and carriages; but Franklin, by his great influence in Pennsylvania, supplied both, with a promptitude and probity which extorted praise from Braddock and unanimous thanks from the Assembly of his province.

Franklin to Shirley, 22 May, 1755. Braddock to Secretary of State, 5 June, 1755. Votes of Pennsylvania Assembly, v., 397.

Among the wagoners was Daniel Morgan, famed in village chap. VIII.} 1755. groups as a wrestler; skilful in the use of the musket; who emigrated, as a day-laborer, from New Jersey to Virginia, and husbanded his wages so that he had been able to become the owner of a team; all unconscious of his future greatness. At Will's Creek, which took the name of Cumberland, Washington, in May, joined the expedition as one of the generals aids.

Seven-and-twenty days passed in the march of the army from Alexandria to Cumberland, where, at last, two thousand effective men were assembled; among them, two independent companies from New York, under the command of Horatio Gates. The American troops, wrote Braddock, have little courage, or good-will. I expect from them almost no military service, though I have employed the best officers to drill them;

Braddock's Letter of 2 June, 1756, in the Precis, &c., 198.

and losing all patience, he insulted the country as void of ability, honor, and honesty. The general is brave, said his secretary, young Shirley,

Shirley the younger to R. H. Morris.

and in pecuniary matters honest, but disqualified for the service he is employed in; and Washington found him incapable of arguing without warmth, or giving up any point he had asserted, be it ever so incompatible with reason or common sense.

From Cumberland to the fork of the Ohio the distance is less than one hundred and thirty miles. In the last day of May, five hundred men were sent forward to open the roads, and store provisions at Little Meadows. Sir Peter Halket followed with the first brigade, and June was advancing before the general was in motion with the second. Braddock is not at all impatient to be scalped, thought men in chap. VIII.} 1755. England. Meantime Fort Duquesne was receiving reinforcements. We shall have more to do, said Washington, than to go up the hills and come down.

The army moved forward slowly and with military exactness, but in a slender line, nearly four miles long; always in fear of Indian ambuscades; exposed, by attacks on its flanks, to be cut in pieces like a thread. The narrow road was made with infinite toil across mountains and masses of lofty rocks, over ravines and rivers. As the horses, for want of forage, must feed on the wild grasses, and the cattle browse among the shrubs, they grew weak, and began to give out. The regular troops pined under the wilderness fare.

On the nineteenth of June, Braddock, by Washington's advice, leaving Dunbar behind with the residue of the army, resolved to push forward with twelve hundred chosen men. The prospect, says Washington, conveyed to my mind infinite delight; and he would not suffer excessive illness to detain him from active service. Yet still they stopped to level every molehill, and erect bridges over every creek. On the eighth of July they arrived at the fork of the Monongahela and Youghiogeny Rivers. The distance to Fort Duquesne was but twelve miles, and the Governor of New France gave it up as lost.

Vandreuil to the Minister, 24 July, 1755.

Early in the morning of the ninth of July, Braddock set his troops in motion. A little below the Youghiogeny they forded the Monongahela, and chap. VIII.} 1755. marched on the southern bank of that tranquil stream, displaying outwardly to the forests the perfection of military discipline, brilliant in their dazzling uniform, their burnished arms gleaming in the bright summer's sun, but sick at heart, and enfeebled by toil and unwholesome diet. At noon they forded the Monongahela again, and stood between the rivers that form the Ohio, only ten miles distant from their junction. A detachment of three hundred and fifty men, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Gage,

Gage to Albemarle, 24 July, 1755, in Keppel's Keppel, i. 213.

and closely attended by a working party of two hundred and fifty, under St. Clair, advanced cautiously, with guides and flanking parties, along a path but twelve feet wide, towards the uneven woody country that was between them and Fort Duquesne.

Journal of General Braddock's Expedition, in British Museum, King's Lib. vol. 212.

The general was following with the columns of artillery, baggage, and the main body of the army, when a very heavy and quick fire was heard in the front.

Aware of Braddock's progress by the fidelity of their scouts, the French had resolved on an ambuscade. Twice in council the Indians declined the enterprise. I shall go, said De Beaujeu, and will you suffer your father to go alone? I am sure we shall conquer; and, sharing his confidence, they pledged themselves to be his companions.

Relation depuis le Depart des Troupes du Quebec, jusqu'au 30 Sept. 1755.

At an early hour, Contrecoeur, the commandant at Fort Duquesne, detached De Beaujeu, Dumas, and De Lignery, with less than two hundred and thirty French and Canadians, and six hundred and thirty-seven savages,

Zzz of the troops, and on the hills which overhung the chap. VIII.} 1755. right flank, invisible, yet making the woods re-echo their war-whoop, fired irregularly, but with deadly aim, at the fair mark offered by the compact body of men beneath them. None of the English that were engaged would say they saw a hundred of the enemy,

H. Sharpe to Baltimore. Aug. 1755.

and many of the officers, who were in the heat of the action the whole time, would not assert that they saw one.

H. Sharpe to Secretary Calvert, 11 August, 1755.

The combat was obstinate, and continued for two hours with scarcely any change in the disposition of either side.

Memorandum. On the Sketch of the Field of Battle, No. 2.

Had the regulars shown courage, the issue would not have been doubtful; but terrified by the yells of the Indians, and dispirited by a manner of fighting such as they had never imagined, they would not long obey the voice of their officers, but fired in platoons almost as fast as they could load, aiming among the trees, or firing into the air. In the midst of the strange scene, nothing was so sublime as the persevering gallantry of the officers. They used the utmost art to encourage the men to move upon the enemy; they told them off into small parties of which they took the lead; they bravely formed the front; they advanced sometimes at the head of small bodies, sometimes separately, to recover the cannon, or to get possession of the hill; but were sacrificed by the soldiers who declined to follow them, and even fired upon them from the rear.

Letter of Wm. Smith, of New-York, of 27 July, 1755. Account sent to Lord Albemarle,—in particular, the Report of the Court of Inquiry. So too, Sharpe to Lord Baltimore, August, 1755.

Of eighty-six officers, twenty-six were killed,—among them, Sir Peter Hal- chap. VIII.} 1755. ket,—and thirty-seven were wounded, including Gage 1755 and other field-officers. Of the men, one half were killed or wounded. Braddock braved every danger. His secretary was shot dead; both his English aids were disabled early in the engagement

Washington to his mother, 18 July, 1755.

leaving the American alone to distribute his orders. I expected every moment, said one whose eye was on Washing ton, to see him fall.

Craik, in Marshall's Life of Washington, II. 19.

Nothing but the superin tending care of Providence could have saved him. An Indian chief—I suppose a Shawnee—singled him out with his rifle; and bade others of his warriors do the same. Two horses were killed under him; four balls penetrated his coat. Some potent Manitou guards his life, exclaimed the savage.

Same to Mr. Custis, of Arlington.

Death, wrote Washington, was levelling my companions on every side of me; but, by the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected.

Washington to his brother, 18 July, 1755.

To the public, said Davies, a learned divine, in the following month, I point out that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country. Who is Mr. Washington? asked Lord Halifax a few months later. I know nothing of him he added, but that they say he behaved in Braddock's action as bravely as if he really loved the whistling of bullets.

Halifax to Sir Charles Hardy 31 March, 1756.

The Virginia troops showed great valor, and were nearly all massacred. Of three companies, scarcely thirty men were left alive. Captain Peyronney and all his officers, chap. VIII.} 1755. down to a corporal, were killed; of Polson's, whose bravery was honored by the Legislature of the Old Dominion, only one was left. But those they call regulars, having wasted their ammunition, broke and ran, as sheep before hounds, leaving the artillery, provisions, baggage, and even the private papers of the general, a prey to the enemy. The attempt to rally them was as vain as to attempt to stop the wild bears of the mountain.

Report of the Court of Inquiry and Washington's Letters.

Thus were the English most scandalously beaten. Of privates, seven hundred and fourteen were killed or wounded; while of the French and Indians, only three officers and thirty men fell, and but as many more were wounded.

Braddock had five horses disabled under him; at last a bullet entered his right side, and he fell mortally wounded.

Robert Orme to Gov. Morris, 18 July, 1755.

He was with difficulty brought off the field, and borne in the train of the fugitives. All the first day he was silent; but at night he roused himself to say, Who would have thought it The meeting at Dunbar's camp made a day of confusion. On the twelfth of July, Dunbar destroyed the remaining artillery, and burned the public stores and the heavy baggage, to the value of a hundred thousand pounds,—pleading in excuse that he had the orders

Sir John Sinclair to Sir T. Robinson, 3 Sept. 1755.

of the dying general, and being himself resolved, in midsummer, to evacuate Fort Cumberland, and hurry to Philadelphia for winter-quarters. Accordingly, the next day they all retreated. At night Braddock roused from his lethargy to say, We shall better know how to deal with them another time, and died.

Orme in Franklin's Autobiography.

His grave may still be seen, near the na- chap. VIII.} 1755. tional road, about a mile west of Fort Necessity.

The forest field of battle was left thickly strewn with the wounded and the dead. Never had there been such a harvest of scalps and spoils. As evening approached, the woods round Fort Duquesne rung with the halloos of the red men; the constant firing of small arms, mingled with a peal from the cannon at the fort. The next day the British artillery was brought in, and the Indian warriors, painting their skin a shining vermilion, with patches of black, and brown, and blue, gloried in the laced hats and bright apparel of the English officers.

Personal Narrative of Colonel James Smith, in J. Pritt's Mirror of Olden Time Border Life. 385.

At Philadelphia nothing but victory had been anticipated. All looks well, wrote Morris; the force of Canada has vanished away in an instant; and of a sudden the news of Braddock's defeat, and the shameful evacuation of Fort Cumberland by Dunbar, threw the people of the central provinces into the greatest consternation.

Lt. Gov. Dinwiddie to Lords of Trade, 6 Sept. 1755. H. Sharpe to C. Calvert, July, 1755.

The Assembly of Pennsylvania immediately resolved to grant fifty thousand pounds to the king's use, in part by a tax on all estates, real and personal, within the province. Morris, obeying his instructions from the proprietaries, claimed exemption for their estates. The Assembly rejected the demand with disdain; for the annual income of the proprietaries from quitrents, groundrents, rents of manors, and other appropriated and settled lands, was nearly thirty thousand pounds.

True and Impartial State of Pennsylvania, 125.

Sharpe would not convene the Assembly of Maryland, be- chap. VIII.} 1755. cause it was fond of imitating the precedents of Pennsylvania. And the governors, proprietary as well as royal, reciprocally assured each other that nothing could be done in their colonies without an act of parliament.

Correspondence of Morris and Sharpe. Lt. Gov. Sharpe to Shirley, 24 August, 1755.

The months that followed were months of sorrow. Happily, the Catawbas at the South remained faithful; and in July, at a council of five hundred Cherokees assembled under a tree in the highlands of Western Carolina, Glen renewed the covenant of peace, obtained a cession of lands, and was invited to erect Fort Prince George near the villages of Conasatchee and Keowee.

At the North, New England was extending British dominion. Massachusetts cheerfully levied about seven thousand nine hundred men, or nearly one-fifth of the able-bodied men in the colony. Of these, a detachment took part in establishing the sovereignty of England in Acadia. That peninsular region—abounding in harbors and in forests; rich in its ocean fisheries and in the product of its rivers; near to a continent that invited to the chase and the fur-trade; having, in its interior, large tracts of alluvial soil—had become dear to its inhabitants, who beheld around them the graves of their ancestors for several generations. It was the oldest French colony in North America. There the Bretons had built their dwellings sixteen years before the Pilgrims reached the shores of New England. With the progress of the respective settlements, sectional jealousies and religious bigotry had renewed their warfare; the off- chap. VIII.} 1755. spring of the Massachusetts husbandmen were taught to abhor Popish cruelties and Popish superstitions; while Roman Catholic missionaries persevered in propagating the faith of their church among the villages of the Abenakis.

At last, after repeated conquests and restorations, the treaty of Utrecht conceded Acadia, or Nova Scotia, to Great Britain. Yet the name of Annapolis, the presence of a feeble English garrison, and the emigration of hardly five or six English families, were nearly all that marked the supremacy of England. The old inhabitants remained on the soil which they had subdued, hardly conscious that they had changed their sovereign. They still loved the language and the usages of their forefathers, and their religion was graven upon their souls. They promised submission to England; but such was the love with which France had inspired them, they would not fight against its standard or renounce its name. Though conquered, they were French neutrals.

For nearly forty years from the peace of Utrecht they had been forgotten or neglected, and had prospered in their seclusion. No tax-gatherer counted their folds, no magistrate dwelt in their hamlets. The parish priest made their records and regulated their successions. Their little disputes were settled among themselves, with scarcely an instance of an appeal to English authority at Annapolis. The pastures were covered with their herds and flocks; and dikes, raised by extraordinary efforts of social industry, shut out the rivers and the tide from alluvial marshes of exuberant fertility. The meadows, thus reclaimed, were covered by richest grasses, or fields of wheat, that yielded fifty and thirty fold at the bar- chap. VIII.} 1755. vest. Their houses were built in clusters, neatly constructed and comfortably furnished, and around them all kinds of domestic fowls abounded. With the spinning-wheel and the loom, their women made, of flax from their own fields, of fleeces from their own flocks, coarse, but sufficient clothing. The few foreign luxuries that were coveted could be obtained from Annapolis or Louisburg, in return for furs, or wheat, or cattle.

Thus were the Acadians happy in their neutrality and in the abundance which they drew from their native land. They formed, as it were, one great family. Their morals were of unaffected purity. Love was sanctified and calmed by the universal custom of early marriages. The neighbors of the community would assist the new couple to raise their cottage, while the wilderness offered land. Their numbers increased, and the colony, which had begun only as the trading station of a company, with a monopoly of the fur-trade, counted, perhaps, sixteen or seventeen thousand inhabitants.

Shirley said 16,000, Raynal and Haliburton, 17,000. The Board of Trade, in 1721, put the number vaguely at nearly 3,000; these, in 1755, but for emigration to French America, would hardly have become more than 10,000; but there were more. Mascarene to Lords of Trade, 17 Oct., 1748, says, there were 4,000 or 5,000 French inhabitants, able to bear arms. Lieutenant-Governor Lawrence, in his circular to the different governors, 11 August, 1755, refers to those only who remained after large emigrations. Compare too Lawrence's State of the English and French Forts, quoted in Sir Thomas Robinson to Lieutenant-Governor Lawrence, 13 August, 1755. The number there given was 8,000.

When England began vigorously to colonize Nova Scotia, the native inhabitants might fear the loss of their independence. The enthusiasm of their priests was kindled into fervor at the thought that heretics, chap. VIII.} 1755. of a land which had disfranchised Catholics, were to surround, and perhaps to overwhelm, the ancient Acadians. Better, said the priests, surrender your meadows to the sea, and your houses to the flames, than, at the peril of your souls, take the oath of allegiance to the British government. And they, from their very simplicity and anxious sincerity, were uncertain in their resolves; now gathering courage to flee beyond the isthmus, for other homes in New France, and now yearning for their own houses and fields, their herds and pastures.

The haughtiness of the British officers aided the priests in their attempts to foment disaffection. The English regarded colonies, even when settled by men from their own land, only as sources of emolument to the mother country; colonists as an inferior caste. The Acadians were despised because they were helpless. Ignorant of the laws of their conquerors, they were not educated to the knowledge, the defence, and the love of English liberties; they knew not the way to the throne, and, given up to military masters, had no redress in civil tribunals. Their papers and records, the titles to their estates and inheritances, were taken away from them. Was their property demanded for the public service? they were not to be bargained with for the payment.

Haliburton's History of Nova Scotia, i. 169.

The order may still be read on the Council records at Halifax. They must comply, it was written, without making any terms, immediately, or the next courier would bring an order for military execution upon the delinquents. And when they delayed in fetching firewood for their oppressors, it was told them from the governor, If chap. VIII.} 1755. they do not do it in proper time, the soldiers shall absolutely take their houses for fuel. The unoffending sufferers submitted meekly to the tyranny. Under pretence of fearing that they might rise in behalf of France, or seek shelter in Canada, or convey provisions to the French garrisons, they were directed to surrender their boats and their firearms;

Memorials of the Deputies of Minas and Pisiquid, delivered to Captain Murray, 10 June, 1755.

and, conscious of innocence, they gave up their barges and their muskets, leaving themselves without the means of flight, and defenceless. Further orders were afterwards given to the English officers, if the Acadians behaved amiss to punish them at discretion; if the troops were annoyed, to inflict vengeance on the nearest, whether the guilty one or not,—taking an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

The French had yielded the sovereignty over no more than the peninsula. They established themselves on the isthmus in two forts,—one, a small stockade at the mouth of the little river Gaspereaux, near Bay Verde; the other, the more considerable fortress of Beau-Sejour, built and supplied at great expense, upon an eminence on the north side of the Messagouche, on the Bay of Fundy. The isthmus is here hardly fifteen miles wide, and formed the natural boundary between New France and Acadia.

The French at Beau-Sejour had passed the previous winter in unsuspecting tranquillity, ignorant of the preparations of the two crowns for war. As spring approached, suspicions were aroused; but De Vergor, the inefficient commander, took no vigorous measures for strengthening his works, nor was he fully roused to his danger, till, from the walls of his chap. VIII.} 1755. fort, he himself beheld the fleet of the English sailing fearlessly into the bay, and anchoring before his eyes.

The provincial troops, about fifteen hundred in number, strengthened by a detachment of three hundred regulars and a train of artillery, were disembarked without difficulty. A day was given to repose and parade; on the fourth of June, they forced the passage of the Messagouche, the intervening river. No sally was attempted by De Vergor; no earnest defence was undertaken. On the twelfth, the fort at Beau-Sejour, weakened by fear, discord, and confusion, was invested, and in four days it surrendered.

Lieutenant-Governor Lawrence to the Lords of Trade, 28 June, 1755.

By the terms of the capitulation, the garrison was to be sent to Louisburg; for the Acadian fugitives, inasmuch as they had been forced into the service, amnesty was stipulated. The place received an English garrison, and, from the brother of the king, then the soul of the regency, was named Cumberland.

The petty fortress near the river Gaspereaux, on Bay Verde, a mere palisade, flanked by four blockhouses, without mound or trenches, and tenanted by no more than twenty soldiers, though commanded by the brave De Villerai, could do nothing but capitulate on the same terms. Meantime, Captain Rous sailed, with three frigates and a sloop, to reduce the French fort on the St. John's. But before he arrived there, the fort and dwellings of the French had been abandoned and burned, and he took possession of a deserted country. Thus was the region east of the St. Croix annexed to England, with a loss of but twenty men killed, and as many more wounded.

No further resistance was to be feared. The Acadians cowered before their masters, hoping forbear- chap. VIII.} 1755. ance; willing to take an oath of fealty to England; in their single-mindedness and sincerity, refusing to pledge themselves to bear arms against France. The English were masters of the sea, were undisputed lords of the country, and could exercise clemency without apprehension. Not a whisper gave a warning of their purpose, till it was ripe for execution.

But it had been determined upon after the ancient device of Oriental despotism, that the French inhabitants of Acadia should be carried away into captivity to other parts of the British dominions. They have laid aside all thought of taking the oaths of allegiance voluntarily; thus in August, 1754, Lawrence, the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, had written of them to Lord Halifax. They possess the best and largest tract of land in this province; if they refuse the oaths, it would be much better that they were away.

Lawrence to the Lords of Trade, 1 August, 1754.

The Lords of Trade in reply veiled their wishes under the decorous form of suggestions. By the treaty of Utrecht, said they of the French Acadians, their becoming subjects of Great Britain is made an express condition of their continuance after the expiration of a year; they cannot become subjects but by taking the oaths required of subjects; and therefore it may be a question, whether their refusal to take such oaths will not operate to invalidate their titles to their lands. Consult the Chief Justice of Nova Scotia upon that point; his opinion may serve as a foundation for future measures.

Halifax and his colleagues to Lieutenant-Governor Lawrence, 29 October, 1754.

France remembered the descendants of her sons in the hour of their affliction, and asked that they chap. VIII.} 1755. might have time to remove from the Peninsula with their effects, leaving their lands to the English; but the answer of the British minister claimed them as useful subjects, and refused them the liberty of transmigration.

Proposition of the French Ambassador to the British Secretary of State, May, 1755, and answer.

The inhabitants of Minas and the adjacent country pleaded with the British officers for the restitution of their boats and their guns, promising fidelity, if they could but retain their liberties, and declaring that not the want of arms, but their conscience, should engage them not to revolt. The memorial, said Lawrence in council, is highly arrogant, insidious, and insulting. The memorialists, at his summons, came submissively to Halifax. You want your canoes for carrying provisions to the enemy: said he to them, though he knew no enemy was left in their vicinity. Guns are no part of your goods, he continued, as by the laws of England all Roman Catholics are restrained from having arms, and are subject to penalties if arms are found in their houses. It is not the language of British subjects to talk of terms with the crown, or capitulate about their fidelity and allegiance. What excuse can you make for your presumption in treating this government with such indignity, as to expound to them the nature of fidelity? Manifest your obedience, by immediately taking the oaths of allegiance in the common form before the council.

Record of a council holden at the Governor's House in Halifax, on Thursday the 3d July, 1755. It has been supposed, that these records of the council are no longer in existence. But I have authentic copies of them.

The deputies replied that they would do as the generality of the inhabitants should determine; and chap. VIII.} 1755. they merely entreated leave to return home and consult the body of their people.

The next day, the unhappy men, foreseeing the sorrows that menaced them, offered to swear allegiance unconditionally; but they were told that by a clause in a British statute

Geo. II. c. XIII.

persons who have once refused the oaths cannot be afterwards permitted to take them, but are to be considered as Popish Recusants; and as such they were imprisoned.

The Chief Justice, on whose opinion hung the fate of so many hundreds of innocent families, insisted that the French inhabitants were to be looked upon as confirmed rebels; who had now collectively and without exception become recusants. Besides: they still counted in their villages eight thousand souls, and the English not more than three thousand; they stood in the way of the progress of the settlement; by their non-compliance with the conditions of the treaty of Utrecht, they had forfeited their possessions to the crown; after the departure of the fleet and troops the province would not be in a condition to drive them out. Such a juncture as the present might never occur; so he advised against receiving any of the French inhabitants to take the oath, and for the removal of all of them from the province.

Mr. Chief Justice Belcher's Opinion in Council as to the removal of the French Inhabitants in Nova Scotia, 28 July, 1755.

That the cruelty might have no palliation, letters arrived, leaving no doubt, that the shores of the Bay of Fundy were entirely in the possession of the British;

Council holden at the Governor's House in Halifax, on Thursday the 15th July, 1755.

and yet at a council, at which Viceral Boscawen and the Rear-Admiral Mostyn were chap. VIII.} 1755. present by invitation,

Lieut. Governor Lawrence to Vice-Admiral Boscawen, and Rear-Admiral Mostyn, Halifax, 14 July, 1755.

it was unanimously determined to send the French inhabitants out of the province; and after mature consideration it was further unanimously agreed that, to prevent their attempting to return and molest the settlers that may be set down on their lands, it would be most proper to distribute them amongst the several colonies on the continent.

Council holden at the Governor's House in Halifax, on Monday the 28th July, 1755.

To hunt them into the net was impracticable; artifice was therefore resorted to. By a general proclamation, on one and the same day, the scarcely conscious victims, both old men and young men, as well as all the lads of ten years of age, were peremptorily ordered to assemble at their respective posts. On the appointed fifth of September, they obeyed. At Grand Pre, for example, four hundred and eighteen unarmed men came together. They were marched into the church and its avenues were closed, when Winslow, the American commander, placed himself in their centre, and spoke:—

You are convened together to manifest to you his Majesty's final resolution to the French inhabitants of this his province. Your lands and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the crown, and you yourselves are to be removed from this his province. I am, through his Majesty's goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off your money and household goods, as many as you can, without discommoding the vessels you go chap. VIII.} 1755. in. And he then declared them the king's prisoners. Their wives and families shared their lot; their sons, five hundred and twenty-seven in number, their daughters, five hundred and seventy-six; in the whole, women and babes and old men and children all included, nineteen hundred and twenty-three souls. The blow was sudden; they had left home but for the morning, and they never were to return. Their cattle were to stay unfed in the stalls, their fires to die out on their hearths. They had for that first day even no food for themselves or their children, and were compelled to beg for bread.

The tenth of September was the day for the embarkation of a part of the exiles. They were drawn up six deep, and the young men, one hundred and sixty-one in number, were ordered to march first on board the vessel. They could leave their farms and cottages, the shady rocks on which they had reclined, their herds and their garners; but nature yearned within them, and they would not be separated from their parents. Yet of what avail was the frenzied despair of the unarmed youth? They had not one weapon; the bayonet drove them to obey; and they marched slowly and heavily from the chapel to the shore, between women and children, who, kneeling, prayed for blessings on their heads, they themselves weeping, and praying, and singing hymns. The seniors went next; the wives and children must wait till other transport vessels arrive. The delay had its horrors. The wretched people left behind, were kept together near the sea, without proper food, or raiment, or shelter, till other ships came to take them away; and December with its appalling cold, had struck the shivering, half-clad, broken-hearted sufferers, before chap. VIII.} 1755. the last of them were removed. The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but slowly, wrote Monckton, from Fort Cumberland, near which he had burned three hamlets; the most part of the wives of the men we have prisoners are gone off with their children, in hopes I would not send off their husbands without them. Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis, a hundred heads of families fled to the woods, and a party was detached on the hunt to bring them in. Our soldiers hate them, wrote an officer on this occasion, and if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they will. Did a prisoner seek to escape? He was shot down by the sentinel. Yet some fled to Quebec; more than three thousand had withdrawn to Miiramichi, and the region south of the Ristigouche;

Petition of the French Acadians at Miramichi, presented to De Vaudreuil, the Governor of Canada, in July 1756. Compare Lieut. Gov. Belcher to Lords of Trade, 14 April, 1761.

some found rest on the banks of the St. John's and its branches; some found a lair in their native forests; some were charitably sheltered from the English in the wigwams of the savages. But seven

Representation of the Lords of Trade to the King, 20 December, 1756. The resolution being carried into effectual execution by transporting the said French inhabitants to the amount of near seven thousand persons, &c. Compare Lieut. Governor Lawrence's circular to the Governors in America, 11 August, 1755. Their numbers amount to near seven thousand persons.

thousand of these banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the English colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia;——one thousand and twenty to South Carolina alone.

Governor Lyttleton to Sec. H. Fox, 16 June, 1796.

They were cast ashore without resources; hating the poor-house as a shelter for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertise- chap VIII.} 1755 ments of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to reach and relieve their parents, of mothers mourning for their children.

The wanderers sighed for their native country; but, to prevent their return, their villages, from Annapolis to the isthmus, were laid waste. Their old homes were but ruins. In the district of Minas, for instance, two hundred and fifty of their houses, and more than as many barns, were consumed. The live stock which belonged to them, consisting of great numbers of horned cattle, hogs, sheep and horses,

J. Pownall to S. Martin, 25 March, 1760, in Nova Scotia. B. T. 36.

were seized as spoils and disposed of by the English officials. A beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude. There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him. Thickets of forest-trees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over their neglected dikes, and desolated their meadows.

Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles wherever they fled. Those sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot where they were born as strong as that of the captive Jews, who wept by the side of the rivers of Babylon for their own temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and went coasting from harbor to harbor; but when they had reached New England, just as they would have set sail for their native fields, they were stopped by orders from Nova Scotia.

Gov. Lyttleton of S. C. to Fox, 16 June, 1756. Gov. Lawrence, Circular, 1 July, 1756. See also Representations of the Board of Trade against Reynolds, Governor of Georgia.

Those who dwelt on the St. John's were torn once more from their new homes.

Gov. Lawrence to Lords of Trade, 11 May, 1760.

When Canada surrendered, hatred with its worst venom pursued the fifteen hundred, chap. VIII.} 1755. who remained south of the Ristigouche.

Lieut. Gov. Belcher to Lords of Trade, 14 April, 1761.

Once those who dwelt in Pennsylvania presented a humble petition to the Earl of Loudoun, then the British commander-in-chief in America; and the cold-hearted peer, offended that the prayer was made in French, seized their five principal men, who in their own land had been persons of dignity and substance, and shipped them to England, with the request, that they might be kept from ever again becoming troublesome by being consigned to service as common sailors on board ships of war.

Loudoun to Secretary of State, 25 April, 1757.

No doubt existed of the king's approbation.

Lords of Trade to Gov. Lawrence, 25 March, 1756.

The Lords of Trade, more merciless than the savages and than the wilderness in winter, wished very much that every one of the Acadians should be driven out; and when it seemed that the work was done, congratulated the king that the zealous endeavors of Lawrence had been crowned with an entire success.

Lords of Trade to the King, 20 Dec. 1759. Same to Gov. Lawrence. We are extremely sorry to find, that notwithstanding the great expense which the public has been at in removing the French inhabitants, there should yet be many of them remaining. It is certainly very much to be wished, that they could be entirely driven out of the Peninsula.

I know not if the annals of the human race keep the record of sorrows so wantonly inflicted, so bitter and so perennial, as fell upon the French inhabitants of Acadia. We have been true, they said of themselves, to our religion, and true to ourselves; yet nature appears to consider us only as the objects of public vengeance.

From a petition of those at Miramichi, in Memoires sur les Affaires du Canada.

The hand of the English official seemed under a spell with regard to them; and was never uplifted but to curse them.

Chapter 9:

Great Britain unites America under military rule Newcastle's administration continued.

1755-1756.

while the British interpretation of the bounda- chap. IX.} 1755. ries of Acadia was made good by occupation, the troops for the central expeditions had assembled at Albany. The army with which Johnson was to reduce Crown Point consisted of New England militia, chiefly from Connecticut and Massachusetts. A regiment of five hundred foresters of New Hampshire were raising a fort in Coos, on the Connecticut; but, under a new summons, they made the long march through the pathless region to Albany. Among them was John Stark, then a lieutenant, of a rugged nature, but of the coolest judgment; skilled at discovering the paths of the wilderness, and knowing the way to the hearts of the backwoodsmen. The French, on the other hand, called every able-bodied man in the district of Montreal into active service for the defence of Crown Point, so that reapers had to be sent up from Three Rivers and Quebec to gather in the harvest.

Breard to the Minister, 13 August, 1755.

Early in August, the New England men, having Phinehas Lyman for their major-general, were finishing Fort Edward, at the portage between the Hudson chap. IX.} 1755. and the headsprings of the Sorel. The forests were never free from secret danger; American scalps were sought for by the wakeful savage, to be strung together for the adornment of the wigwam. Towards the end of August, the untrained forces, which, with Indians, amounted to thirty-four hundred men, were conducted by William Johnson across the portage of twelve miles, to the southern shore of the Lake, which the French called the Lake of the Holy Sacrament I found, said Johnson, a mere wilderness; never was house or fort erected here before;

Johnson to Lords of Trade, 8 Sept. 1755.

and naming the waters Lake George, he cleared space for a camp of five thousand men. The lake protects him on the north; his flanks are covered by a thick wood and a swamp. The tents of the husbandmen and mechanics, who form his summer army, are spread on a rising ground; but no fortifications are raised, nor is even a trench thrown up.

Elisha Hawley to his brother Joseph Hawley. Seth Pomroy's Journal.

On week-days, the men, accustomed to freedom, saunter to and fro in idleness; or some, weary of inaction, are ready to mutiny and go home. On Sunday, all come forth and collect in the groves for the Worship of God; three hundred red men, also, regularly enlisted under the English flag, and paid from the English treasury, seat themselves on the hillock, and, while the light of a summer's afternoon is shedding its sweetest influence on the tops of the forest-clad mountains and on the still waters of the deep transparent lake, they listen gravely to the interpretation of a long sermon. Meanwhile, wagon after wagon brought artillery, and stores and boats for the troops that were listlessly whiling away chap. IX.} 1755. the season. The enemy was more adventurous.

Boldness wins, was Dieskau's maxim.

Doreil to the Minister, 28 Oct. 1755.

Abandoning the well-concerted plan of an attack on Oswego,

Vaudreuil to the Minister, 24 July, 1755.

Vaudreuil sent him to oppose the army of Johnson. For the defence of the crumbling fortress at Crown Point, seven hundred regulars, sixteen hundred Canadians, and seven hundred savages had assembled. Of these, three hundred or more were emigrants from the Six Nations, domiciliated in Canada. Eager for distinction, Dieskau, taking with him six hundred savages, as many Canadians, and two hundred regular troops, ascended Lake Champlain to its head, and, after a three days march, designed, at nightfall on the fourth, to attack Fort Edward. The guides took a false route; and, as evening came on, the party found itself four miles from the fort, on the road to Lake George. The red men, who never obey implicitly, but insist upon deliberating with the commander and sharing his secrets, refused to attack the fort, but were willing to go against the army at the lake, which was thought to have neither artillery nor intrenchments.

Late in the night following the seventh of September, it was told in the camp at Lake George, that a large party of men had landed at the head of South Bay, and were travelling from Wood Creek to the Hudson. On the next morning, after a council of war, Ephraim Williams, a Massachusetts colonel, the same who, in passing through Albany, had made a bequest of his estate by will to found a free school, was sent with a thousand men to relieve Fort Edward. Among chap. IX.} 1755. them was Israel Putnam, to whom, at the age of thirty-seven, the Assembly at Connecticut had just given the rank of a second lieutenant.

Records at Hartford for 29 Geo. II. Putnam's commission as 2nd Lieut. in the 6th company of the 3rd Regiment of Connecticut, forwarded not before September 2, reached him after the battle.

Two hundred warriors of the Six Nations went also, led by Hendrick, the gray-haired chieftain, famed for his clear voice and flashing eye. They marched with rash confidence, a little less than three miles, to a defile, where the French and Indians had posted themselves on both sides of the way, concealed on the left by the thickets in the swamps, on the right by rocks and the forest that covered the continued rising ground. Before the American party were entirely within the ambush, the French Indians showed themselves to the Mohawks, but without firing on their kindred, leaving the Abenakis and Canadians to make the attack. Hendrick, who alone was on horseback, was killed on the spot. Williams also fell; but Nathan Whiting, of New Haven, conducted the retreat in good order, often rallying and turning to fire.

The camp had still no intrenchments. When the noise of musketry was heard, two or three cannon were hastily brought up from the margin of the lake, and trees were felled for a breastwork. These, all too few to lie contiguously, formed with the wagons and baggage some protection to the New England militia, whose arms were but their fowling-pieces, without a bayonet among them all. It had been Dieskau's purpose to rush forward suddenly, and to enter the camp with the fugitives; but the Iroquois took possession of a rising ground, and stood inactive. At this the Abenakis halted also; and the Canadians became intimidated. Dieskau, who was near the camp, advanced chap. IX.} 1755. with the regular troops to attack the centre, still hoping to be sustained. But the Indians and Canadians scattered themselves through the wilderness of pitch-pines, and ascended a knoll within gun-shot, where they crouched below the undergrowth of shrubs and brakes. Are these the so much vaunted troops? cried Dieskau, bitterly. The battle began between eleven and twelve; Johnson, slightly wounded, left the field at the beginning of the action, and for five hours the New England people, under their own officers, good marksmen and taking sight, kept up the most violent fire that had as yet been known in America. Almost all the French regulars perished; Dieskau was wounded thrice, but would not retire. Two Canadians came to carry him off; one was shot dead by his side; he dismissed the other, and, bidding his servants place his military dress near him, he seated himself on the stump of a tree, exposed to the rattle of the bullets. At last, as the Americans, leaping over their slight defences, drove the enemy to flight, a renegade Frenchman wantonly fired at the unhappy man, and wounded him incurably.

Brief was the American career of the fearless Dieskau. In June his eye had first rested on the cliff of Quebec; he had sailed proudly up the stream which was the glory of Canada; had made his way to the highland sources of the Sorel; and now, mangled and helpless, lay a prisoner within the limits of the pretended French dominion.

Dieskau to the ministers, 14 September, 1755, and also to Vaudreuil. Letters of Montreuil.

Of the Americans there fell on that day about two hundred and sixteen, and ninety-six were wounded; of the French the loss was not much greater. Towards chap. IX.} 1755. sunset, a party of three hundred French, who had rallied, and were retreating in a body, at two miles from the lake, were attacked by McGinnes, of New Hampshire, who, with two hundred men of that colony, was marching across the portage from Fort Edward. Panic-stricken by the well concerted movement, the enemy fled, leaving their baggage; but the brave McGinnes was mortally wounded.

The disasters of the year led the English ministry to exult in the defeat and repulse of Dieskau. The House of Lords, in an elegant address, praised the colonists as brave and faithful; Johnson became a baronet, and received a gratuity of five thousand pounds. But he did little to gain the victory, which was due to the enthusiasm of the New England men. Our all, they cried, depends on the success of this expedition. Come, said Pomeroy, of Massachusetts, to his friends at home, come to the help of the Lord against the mighty; you that value our holy religion and our liberties will spare nothing, even to the one half of your estate. And in all the villages the prayers of God's people went up, that they might be crowned with victory to the glory of God; for the war with France seemed a war for Protestantism and freedom.

But Johnson knew not how to profit by success; with a busy air, he kept the men all day on their arms, and at night, half of the whole were on guard. Shirley and the New England provinces, and his own council of war, urged him to advance; but while the ever active French took post at Ticonderoga, as Duquesne had advised, he loitered away the autumn, expecting very shortly a more formidable attack with artillery, and building Fort William chap. IX.} 1755. Henry, a useless fort of wood near Lake George. When winter approached, he left six hundred men as a garrison, and dismissed the New England militia to their firesides.

Of the enterprise against Western New York Shirley assumed the conduct. The fort at Niagara was but a house, almost in ruins, surrounded by a small ditch and a rotten palisade of seven or eight feet high. The garrison was but of thirty men, most of them scarcely provided with muskets. There Shirley, with an effective force of little less than two thousand men, was to welcome the victor of the Ohio.

But the news of Braddock's defeat overtook and disheartened the party. The boatmen on the Mohawk were intractable; at the carrying place there were not sledges enough to bear the military stores over the morasses. On the twenty-first of August, Shirley reached Oswego. Weeks passed in building boats; on the eighteenth of September, six hundred men were to embark on Lake Ontario, when a storm prevented; afterwards head winds raged; then a tempest made navigation difficult; then sickness prevailed; then the Indians deserted; and then the season gave him an excuse for retreating. So, on the twenty-fourth of October, having constructed a new fort at Oswego, and placed Mercer in command, with a garrison of seven hundred men, he left the borders of Lake Ontario.

At this time a paper by Franklin, published in Boston, and reprinted in London, had drawn the attention of all observers to the rapid increase of the population in the colonies.

Paper annexed to William Clarke's Observations on the late and present conduct of the French, 1755.

Upon the best inquiry chap. IX.} 1755. I can make, wrote Shirley, I have found the calcunations right. The number of the inhabitants is doubled every twenty years; and as the demand for British manufactures, with a corresponding employment of shipping, increased with even greater rapidity, he found in them inexhaustible resources of wealth for a maritime power. But this great increase, combined with the political vigor and sagacity which was displayed in the plan of union framed by the Congress at Albany, excited alarm in England, lest the regions of which she was making the conquest should assert their independence. But Shirley calmed the rising fear. Apprehensions,

Gov. Shirley to Sir Thomas Robinson, 15 August, 1755, received in London 20 November, 1755.

said he, have been entertained, that they will in time unite to throw off their dependency upon their mother country, and set up one general government among themselves. But if it is considered how different the present constitutions of their respective governments are from each other, how much the interests of some of them clash, and how opposed their tempers are, such a coalition among them will seem highly improbable. At all events, they could not maintain such an independency without a strong naval force, which it must for ever be in the power of Great Britain to hinder them from having. And whilst his majesty hath seven thousand troops kept up within them, with the Indians at command, it seems easy, provided his Governors and principal officers are independent of the Assemblies for their subsistence, and commonly vigilant, to prevent any step of that kind from being chap. IX.} 1755. taken. Thus was the jealousy of the British government excited, and thus was it soothed. Little was it foreseen, that the measures proposed to secure the colonies, were to be the means of effecting their union and separate existence.

The topic which Shirley discussed with the ministry, engaged the thoughts of the Americans, who saw visions of coming glory. At Worcester, a thriving village, of about a thousand people, or perhaps less, the whole town was immersed in politics. The interests of nations and the horrors of war made the subject of every conversation. The master of the town school, where the highest wages were sixty dollars for the season, a young man of hardly twenty, just from Harvard College, and at that time meditating to become a preacher, would sit and hear, and, escaping from a maze of observations, would sometimes retire, and, by laying things together, form some reflections pleasing to himself; for he loved the shady thickets and gloomy grottoes, where he would sit by the hour and listen to the falls of water.

John Adams' Diary, 264.

All creation, he would say in his musings, is liable to change. Mighty states are not exempted. Soon after the reformation, a few people came over into this new world for conscience' sake. This apparently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. If we can remove the turbulent Gallics, our people, according to the exactest calculations, will, in another century, become more numerous than England itself. All Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us.

Letter of John Adams, 12 October, 1755. I quote from the original letter, which the late John Quincy Adams had the goodness to leave with me for a time, together with other most interesting manuscripts.

Such were the dreams of John Adams, chap. IX.} 1755 while teacher of a New England free school. Within twenty-one years he shall assist in declaring his country's independence; in less than thirty, this master of the town school of Worcester, after a career of danger and effort, shall stand before the king of Great Britain, the acknowledged Envoy of the free and United States of America.

The military operations in America might be respectively explained as acts of defence, to be settled by an adjustment of boundaries. The capture of the Alcide and the Lys by Boscawen, known in London on the fifteenth of July,

Memoire contenant le Precis des Faits, 54, 55.

was an act of open hostility, and it was considered what instructions should be given to the British marine. The princess, mother of George the Third, inveighed most bitterly against not pushing the French every where; the parliament would never bear the suffering the French to bring home their trade and sailors.

Dodington's Diary.

She wished Hanover in the sea, as the cause of all misfortunes. Newcastle suggested trifles, to delay a decision. If we are convinced it must be war, I, said Cumberland, have no notion of not making the most of the strength and opportunity in our hands. The Earl of Granville was against meddling with trade. It is vexing your neighbors for a little muck. I, said Newcastle, the prime minister, think some middle way may be found out. He was asked what way. To be sure, he replied, Hawke must go out; but he may be ordered not to attack the enemy, unless he thinks chap IX.} 1755. it worth while. He was answered, that Hawke was too wise to do any thing at all, which others, when done, were to pronounce he ought to be hanged for. What, replied the Duke, if he had orders not to fall upon the French, unless they were more in number together than ten? The Brest squadron, it was replied, is but nine. I mean that, resumed Newcastle, of the merchantmen only. Thus he proceeded with inconceivable absurdity.

Dodington's Diary. Walpole's Memoires of George III. and letters. Waldegrave's Memoirs. Flassan: Histoire de la Diplomatie Francoise, VI.

France and England were still at peace; and their commerce was mutually protected by the sanctity of treaties. Of a sudden, hostile orders were issued to all British vessels of war to take all French vessels, private as well as public; and, without warning, ships from the French colonies, the ships bound from Martinico to Marseilles, freighted with the rich products of plantations tilled by the slaves of the Jesuits,

De Tocqueville: Histoire Philosophique du regne de Louis XV. II. 287.

the fishing-smacks in which the humble Breton mariners ventured to Newfoundland, whale-ships returning from their adventures, the scanty fortunes with which poor men freighted the little barks engaged in the coasting trade, were within one month, by violence and by cowardly artifices, seized by the British marine, and carried into English ports. What has taken place, wrote Rouille, under the eye of Louis the Fifteenth, is nothing but a system of piracy on a grand scale, unworthy of a civilized people. In time of full peace, merchant-ships have been seized, to the value of thirty millions of livres. As no declaration of war had taken place, the courts of Admiralty could not then chap. IX.} 1755. interpose, to give a warrant to the outrage. The sum afterwards paid into the British exchequer, as the king's share of the spoils, was about seven hundred thousand pounds. Eight thousand French seamen were held in captivity. All France resented the perfidy. Never, said Louis the Fifteenth, will I forgive the piracies of this insolent nation; and, in a letter to George the Second, he demanded ample reparation for the insult to the flag of France by Boscawen, and for the piracies of the English men-of-war, committed in defiance of international law, the faith of treaties, the usages of civilized nations, and the reciprocal duties of kings.

Louis XV. to Geo. II., 21 October, 1755.

The wound inflicted on France by this robbery of private property on the high seas before a declaration of war, rankled inwardly, and for a whole generation was ready to bleed afresh. At the time, the seizure of so many thousand French seamen was a subject of boast in the British parliament; and the people, proud of their strength on the ocean, were almost unanimous for engaging in war. But its successful conduct seemed to require united activity in America and allies in Europe.

Corruption and force are the instruments of feebleness; the incompetent ministry knew not how to use the one or the other. They turned to Russia; and with as much blindness to the interests of their country, as indifference to every thing but the possession of place, they instructed Sir Hanbury Williams, the new envoy at St. Petersburg, a diplomatist boastful of his powers of observation, and yet credulous and easily deceived, to introduce Russia as supervisor chap. IX.} 1755 of the affairs of Germany. Seize the opportunity, such was the substance of the instructions given

Instructions from Lord Holdernesse to Sir Hanbury Williams, 11 April, 1755. Von Raumer's Beytrage, II. 286.

by the British ministry to the British ambassador of that day, seize the opportunity to convince the Russians, that they will remain only an Asiatic power, if they allow the king of Prussia to carry through his plans of aggrandizement; and full authority was given to effect an alliance with Russia to overawe Prussia, and control the politics of Germany. Yet at that time Frederic manifested no purpose of making conquests.

In this manner a treaty was concluded by which England, on the point of incurring the hostility of the Catholic princes, bound itself to pay to Russia at least half a million of dollars annually, and contingently two and a half million of dollars, in order to balance and paralyze the influence of the only considerable protestant monarchy on the continent. The English king was so eagerly bent on this shameful negotiation, that Bestuchef, the Russian minister, obtained a gratuity of fifty thousand dollars, and one or two others received payments in cash and annuities. A little increase of the money to be paid, said Bestuchef, would be extremely agreeable. Fifty thousand pounds for the private purse of the empress would put her and her court at his majesty's management.

Sir Hanbury Williams to Holdernesse, 9 and 11 August, 1755.

So venal were the princes of that day, that the aid of the Russian empire was for sale; and the empress herself in the market at fifty thousand pounds.

Friedrich von Raumer's Konig Friedrich II. und seine Zeit, 294.

At the same time an extravagant treaty for subsidies was framed with Hesse,

Jenkinson's Collection of Treaties, III. 30-53.

whose Elector bargained at high chap. IX.} 1755. rates for the use of his troops for the defence of Han over, or if needed, of the British dominions. Newcastle was sure of his majority in the House of Commons; but William Pitt, though poor, and recently married, and holding the lucrative office of paymaster, declared his purpose of opposing the treaty with Russia. Newcastle sent for Pitt, offered him kind words from his sovereign, influence, preferment, confidence. Expressing devotion to the king, Pitt was inexorable; he would support the Hessian treaty, which was only a waste of money; but not a system of treaties, dangerous to the liberties of Germany and of Europe. Nervous from fright, Newcastle was disposed at once to resign power to Fox. You are not fit to be first minister, was the sneer of Granville; and Newcastle did not recover courage till in November Fox consented to accept the seals and defend the treaties. At the great debate,

Walpole's Memoires of George I., i. 418.

Pitt taunted the majority, which was as three to one, with corruption and readiness to follow their leader; and, indirectly attacking the subjection of the throne to aristocratic influence, declared that the king owes a supreme service to his people. Pitt was dismissed from office, and George Grenville, with Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Charles Townshend, went into retirement in his company.

Having nothing to rely on but the corrupt influence of the aristocracy, Newcastle now sought to unite it, by a distribution of pensions and places. This is the moment when Hillsborough first obtained an employment, when the family of Yorke named Soame Jenyns for a Lord of Trade; and when Bed- chap IX.} 1755. ford was propitiated by the appointment of his partisan, Richard Rigby, to a seat at the same Board. The administration proceeded, possessing the vote but not the respect of parliament; at variance with the people of England and with the colonies; beaten from the Ohio valley, and in Europe squandering English money to engage armies which were to be used only against England and her allies. The treaty was hardly concluded, before the ministry yielded to the impulse given by Pitt; and, after subsidizing Russia to obtain the use of the Russian troops against Frederic, it negotiated an alliance with Frederic himself, not to permit the entrance of Russian or any other foreign troops into Germany.

At the head of the American forces this ministry had placed Shirley, a worn-out barrister, who knew nothing of war. In the security of a congress of governors at New York, he in December planned a splendid campaign for the following year. Quebec was to be menaced by way of the Kennebec and the Chaudiere; Frontenac and Toronto and Niagara were to be taken; and then Fort. Duquesne and Detroit and Michilimackinac, deprived of their communications, were of course to surrender. Sharpe, of Maryland, thought all efforts vain, unless parliament should interfere; and this opinion he enforced in many letters to his correspondents.

See the Correspondence of Sharpe with his brother in England, and his colleagues in America.

His colleagues and the officers of the army were equally importunate. If 1756 they expect success at home, wrote Gage, in January, 1756, echoing the common opinion of those around him, acts of parliament must be made to tax the chap. IX.} 1756. provinces, in proportion to what each is able to bear; to make one common fund and pursue one uniform plan for America.

Gage to the Earl of Albemarle, 22 Jan., 1756.

You, said Sir Charles Hardy, the new governor of New York to the Lords of Trade, you will be much more able to settle it for us, than we can ourselves.

Sir Charles Hardy to the Lords of Trade, January, 1756.

From the Old Dominion, Dinwiddie continued to urge a general land-tax and poll-tax for all the colonies. Our people, said he, will be inflamed, if they hear of my making this proposal; but he reiterated the hopelessness of obtaining joint efforts of the colonies by appeals to American assemblies. He urged also the subversion of Charter governments; for, said he to the Secretary of State, I am full of opinion we shall continue in a most disunited and distracted condition, till his majesty takes the proprietary governments into his own hands. Till these governments are under his majesty's immediate direction, all expeditions will prove unsuccessful. These dominions, if properly protected, will be the Western and best empire in the world.

Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie to Secretary Fox, 1756.

With more elaborateness and authority, Shirley,

Shirley to Lords of Trade, 5 January, 1756.

by his military rank as commander-in-chief, taking precedence of all the governors, renewed his plans, and still pleading for a general fund, he assured the ministers that the several assemblies would not agree among themselves upon such a fund; that, consequently, it must be done in England; and that the only effectual way of doing it there would be by an act of parliament, in which he professed to chap. IX.} 1756. have great reason to think the people would readily, acquiesce. The success of any other measure would be doubtful; and, suggesting a stamp-duty, as well as an excise and a poll-tax, he advised for the general satisfaction of the people in each colony, to leave it to their choice to raise the sum assessed upon them according to their own discretion; but, in case of failure, proper officers were to collect the revenue by warrants of distress and imprisonment of persons.

See the Pamphlet written jointly by Win. Knox and George Grenville. The Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies Reviewed, pp. 196, 197.

Shirley was a civilian, versed in English law, and now for many years a crown officer in the colonies. His opinion carried great weight, and it became, henceforward, a firm persuasion among the Lords of Trade, especially Halifax, Soame Jenyns, and Rigby, as well as with all who busied themselves with schemes of government for America, that the British parliament must take upon itself the establishment and collection of an American revenue.

While the officers of the Crown were thus conspiring against American liberty, the tomahawk was uplifted along the ranges of the Alleghanies. The governor of Virginia

Dinwiddie to Lords of Trade, 6 September, 1755.

pressed upon Washington the rank of colonel and the command of the volunteer companies which were to guard its frontier, from Cumberland, through the whole valley of the Shenandoah. Difficulties of all kinds gathered in his path. The humblest captain that held a royal commission claimed to be his superior; and, for the pur- chap. IX.} 1756. pose of a personal appeal to Shirley,

Dinwiddie to Shirley, 1756.

he made a winter's journey to Boston. How different was to be his next entry into that town! Shirley, who wished to make him second

Shirley to Sharpe, 16 May, 1756. Halifax to Sir Charles Hardy, 31 March, 1756.

in command in an expedition against Fort Duquesne, sustained his claim.

Shirley to Sharpe, 5 March, 1756.

When his authority was established, his own officers still needed training and instruction, tents, arms, and ammunition. He visited in person the outposts, from the Potomac to Fort Dinwiddie, on Jackson's River; but he had not force enough to protect the region. The low countries could not spare their white men, for these must watch their negro slaves. From the Western Valley every settler had already been driven. From the valley of the Shenandoah they were beginning to retreat, in droves of fifties, till the Blue Ridge became the frontier of Virginia. The supplicating tears of the women and moving petitions of the men, wrote Washington, melt me into such deadly sorrow, that, for the people's ease, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy.

The interior settlements of Pennsylvania were exposed to the same calamities, and domestic faction impeded measures of defence. In that province, where popular power was intrenched impregnably, the proprietaries, acting in concert with the Board of Trade, sought to enlarge their prerogatives; to take into their own hands the management of the revenue from excise; to restrain and regulate the emissions chap. IX.} 1756. of paper money; to make their own will, rather than good behavior, the tenure of office. But the Assembly was inflexible in connecting their grants for the public service with the preservation of their executive influence and the taxation of all estates real and personal, those of the proprietaries not excepted.

While these passionate disputes were raging, it was represented in England that the frontier of the province was desolate and defenceless; that the Shawnees had scaled the mountains, and prowled with horrible ferocity along the branches of the Susquehanna and the Delaware; that, in the time of a yearly meeting of Quakers, the bodies of a German family, murdered and mangled by the savages, had been brought down to Philadelphia; that men had even surrounded the Assembly, demanding protection, which was withheld.

But the Assembly had already, by provincial laws, provided quarters for the British soldiers; had established a voluntary militia; and, when the proprietaries consented to pay five thousand pounds towards the public defence, had granted fifty-five thousand more. Franklin, who was one of the commissioners to apply the money, yielded to the wish of the governor, and took charge of the northwestern border. Men came readily under his command, and he led them through dangerous defiles, to build a fort at Gnadenhutten on the Lehigh. The Indians had made the village a scene of silence and desolation; the mangled inhabitants lay near the ashes of their houses unburied, exposed to birds and beasts of prey. With Franklin came every thing that could restore security; and his prudence, humanity, and pa- chap. IX.} 1756. tience succeeded in establishing the intended line of forts. Recalled to Philadelphia, he found that the voluntary association for defence under the militia law went on with great success. Almost all the inhabitants, who were not Quakers, joined together to form companies which themselves elected their officers. The officers of the companies chose Franklin colonel of their regiment of twelve hundred men, and he accepted the post.

Here again was a new increase of popular power. Franklin, with his military command, might, it was feared, wrest the government from the proprietaries; nor would the metropolis tolerate a militia which had the appointment of its own officers. In the House of Commons, Lord George Sackville charged the situation of affairs in America on the defects of the constitution cf the colonies. He would have one power established there.

Walpole's Memoires of Geo. II., II., 8.

The militia law of Pennsylvania, he said, was designed to be ineffectual. It offered no compulsion, and, moreover, gave the nomination of officers to the people. The administration hearkened to a scheme for dissolving the Assembly of that province by act of parliament, and disfranchising the Quakers for a limited time, till laws for armed defence and for diminishing the power of the people could be framed by others.

After the long councils of indecision, the ministry of Newcastle, shunning altercations with colonial assemblies, gave a military character to the interference of Great Britain in American affairs. To New York

Lords of Trade to Sir Charles Hardy.

chap. IX.} 1756. instructions were sent not to press the establishment of a perpetual revenue for the present. The northern colonies, whose successes at Lake George had mitigated the disgraces of the previous year, were encouraged by a remuneration; and, as a measure of temporary expediency, not of permanent policy or right, as a gratuity to stimulate exertions, and not to subsidize subjects, one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds were granted to them in proportion to their efforts. Of this sum fifty-four thousand pounds fell to Massachusetts, twenty-six thousand to Connecticut, fifteen thousand to New York.

Lords of Trade to Lords of the Treasury, 12 Feb., 1756; and to Secretary of State, 16 January, 1756.

At the same time the military affairs of the continent were consolidated, with some reference to opinions and precedents as old as the reign of William the Third. The Board of Trade, first called into existence in 1696, had hardly been constituted, before it was summoned to plan unity in the military efforts of the provinces; and Locke, with his associates, despaired on beholding them crumbled into little governments, disunited in interests, in an ill posture and much worse disposition to afford assistance to each other for the future. The Board, in 1697, after considering with their utmost care, could only recommend the appointment of a captain-general of all the forces and all the militia of all the provinces on the continent of North America, with power to levy and command them for their defence, under such limitations and instructions as to his Majesty should seem best; to appoint officers to train the inhabitants; from the Quakers to receive in money chap. IX.} 1756. their share of assistance; and to keep the Five Nations firm in friendship. Rewards were to be given for all executions done by the Indians on the enemy, and the scalps they should bring in to be well paid for.

Plantations General, A. 59.

In 1721, this plan of a military dictatorship was, in a most elaborate state paper, revived and modified. All the provinces were to be placed under the government of one lord-lieutenant or captain-general, to be constantly attended by two or more councillors deputed from each plantation, and to have a fixed salary independent of the pleasure of the inhabitants. By this means, it was thought, a general contribution of men or money might be raised upon the several colonies, in proportion to their respective abilities.

See the elaborate Representation of the Lords of Trade to the King, 1721. N. Y. Lon. Documents.

How an American revenue was to flow from such an appointment was not fully disclosed. At that time the Earl of Stair

The Earl of Stair's Plan of Government, is in the British Museum.

was selected as viceroy; but he declined the post before the arrangements were completed. The plan was now to be partially carried into effect. On the instance of Cumberland and Fox, Shirley was superseded and ordered to return to England, and the Earl of Loudoun, a friend of Halifax, passionately zealous for the subordination and inferiority of the colonies, was appointed commander-in-chief of the army throughout the British continental provinces in America. His dignity was enhanced by his appointment as governor of the central, ancient, and populous dominion of Virginia. This commission, which was prepared by the chancel- chap. IX.} 1756. lor, Hardwicke, established a military power throughout the continent, independent of the colonial governors, and superior to them. They in right of their office might claim to be the civil and military representatives of the king; yet they could not give the word within their own respective provinces except in the absence of the continental commander and his representatives;

See the Commission and Instructions.

and this commission, so contrary to the spirit of the British constitution, was renewed successively and without change till the period of independence. Such were the powers with which Loudoun was sent forth to unite America by military rule, to sway its magistrates by his authority, and to make its assemblies distinctly and precisely understand that the king required of them a general fund, to be issued and applied as the commander-in-chief should direct, and provision for all such charges as might arise from furnishing quarters.

The administration was confirmed in its purpose of throwing the burden of furnishing quarters upon the colonies by the authority of Murray. His opinion against the statute of Pennsylvania, which, in extending the act of parliament to punish mutiny, regulated the providing of quarters, drew a distinction between Englishmen and Americans. The law, said he, assumes propositions true in the mother country, and rightly asserted in the reign of Charles the First and Charles the Second, in times of peace, and when soldiers were kept up without the consent of parliament; but the application of such positions, in tine of war, in the case of troops raised for their pro- chap. IX.} 1756. tection by the authority of parliament,—made the first time by an assembly, many of whom plead what they call conscience for not joining in the military operations to resist the enemy,—should not be allowed to stand as law. This act, therefore, was repealed by the king in council; and the rule was established

Order in Council, 7 July, 1756.

without limitation, that troops might be kept up in the colonies and quartered on them at pleasure, without the consent of their American parliaments.

Thus, after sixty years of advice from the Board of Trade, a permanent army was established in America. Nothing seemed wanting but an act of parliament for an American revenue. The obstinacy of Pennsylvania was pleaded as requiring it.

Garth's Report of the Debate in the House of Commons, Feb. 3, 1766.

On the questions affecting that province, the Board of Trade listened to Charles Yorke on the side of prerogative, while Charles Pratt spoke for colonial liberty; and after a long hearing, Halifax and Soame Jenyns, and Bedford's dependent, Richard Rigby, and Talbot joined in advising an immediate act of the British legislature to overrule the charter of the colony. But the ministry was rent by factions, and their fluctuating tenure of office made it difficult to mature novel or daring measures of legislation. There existed no central will, that could conquer Canada, or subvert the liberties of America.

A majority of the Treasury Board, as well as the Board of Trade, favored American taxation by act of parliament; none scrupled as to the power; but the unfit Lyttelton, then chancellor of the exchequer, chap. IX.} 1756. though fixed in his opinions, could not mature schemes of finance; and the British statutes,

29 Geo. II., c. XXVI.; 31 Geo. II., c. XXXVI., § 8; 1 Geo. III., c. IV.

which manifest the settled purpose

Letter of Bollan to Massachusetts, in May, 1756.

of raising a revenue out of the traffic between the American continent and the West India Islands, show that the execution of that purpose was at that session, and twice afterwards, deferred to a quieter period.

Still parliament, in the session of 1756, extended its authority signally over America. There foreign Protestants might be employed as engineers and officers to enlist a regiment of aliens.

29 Geo. II., c. v.

Indented servants might be accepted, and their masters were referred for compensation to the respective assemblies;

29 Geo. II., c. XXXV.

and the naval code of England was extended to all persons employed in the king's service on the lakes, great waters, or rivers of North America.

29 Geo. II., c. XXVII.

The militia law of Pennsylvania was repealed by the king in council; the commissions of all officers elected under it were cancelled; the companies themselves were broken up and dispersed. And while volunteers were not allowed to organize themselves for defence, the humble intercession of the Quakers with the Delawares, the little covenants resting on confidence and ratified by presents, peaceful stipulations for the burial of the tomahawk and the security of the frontier fireside and the cradle, were censured by Lord Halifax as the most daring violation of the royal prerogative. Each northern province also was forbidden to negotiate with the Indians; and their renations were intrusted solely to Sir William Johnson, chap. IX.} 1756. with no subordination but to Loudoun.

Yet all could not prevail. In a few years, said one, who, after a long settlement in New England, had just returned home, the colonies of America will be independent of Britain; and at least one voice was raised to advise the sending out of Duke William of Cumberland to be their sovereign and emancipating them at once.

Chapter 10:

The Whig aristocracy cannot govern England— Newcastle's administration continued.

1756-1757.

The open declaration of war was not made by chap. X.} 1756. England till May; though her navy had all the while been employed in despoiling the commerce of France. At the commencement of avowed hostilities, she forbade neutral vessels to carry merchandise belonging to her antagonist. Frederick of Prussia had insisted, that, by the law of nations, the goods of an enemy cannot be taken from on board the ships of a friend; that free ships make free goods. Against this interpretation of public law, the learning of Murray had been called into service; and, pleading ancient usage against the lessons of wiser times, he gave the elaborate opinion which formed the basis of English policy and Admiralty law,

Representation to the King (drawn by Murray), 18 January, 1753. Duke of Newcastle to Michell, Secretary to the Prussian Embassy at London, 8 February, 1753.

that the effects of an enemy can be seized on board the vessel of a friend. This may be proved, said Murray, by authority; and the illustrious jurist did not know that humanity appeals from the despotic and cruel precedents of the past chap. X.} 1756. to the more intelligent and more humane spirit of advancing civilization. Neutral nations believed in their right to carry in their vessels, unmolested, the property of belligerents; but Britain, to give efficacy to her naval power, seized on the enemy's property which she found on board neutral ships. With the same view, she arbitrarily invaded the sovereignty of Holland, capturing its vessels whose cargoes might be useful for her navy. The treaties between England and Holland

Treaty of Commerce between; England and Holland, 1 December, 1674.

stipulated expressly that free ships should make free goods, that the neutral should enter safely and unmolested all the harbors of the belligerents, unless they were blockaded or besieged; that the contraband of war should be strictly limited to arms, artillery, and horses, and should not include materials for ship-building. But Great Britain, in the exercise of its superior strength, arbitrarily prohibited the commerce of the Netherlands in naval stores; denied them the right to become the carriers of French colonial products, and declared all the harbors of all France to be in a state of blockade, and all vessels bound to them lawful prizes.

Van Kampen's Geschichte der Niederlande, II., 443. Flassan: Histoire de la Diplomatie Francaise, VI., 64, 65. Heeren's Historische Werke, IX., 47.

Such was the rule of 1756. To charge England with ambition, said Charles Jenkinson,

A Discourse on the Conduct of the Government of Great Britain in respect to Neutral Nations, during the present War.

an Oxford scholar, who had given up the thought of entering the church, and hoped for success in public life; to charge England with ambition must appear so absurd to all who understand the nature of her government, that at the bar of reason it ought to be treated rather as calumny than accusation. The chap. X.} 1756. grave confidence of his discourse was by his own countrymen deemed conclusive; but the maritime assumptions of England were turning against her the sympathies of the civilized world.

The genius of the nation was a guarantee against discomfiture on the ocean; the feebleness of the administration appeared conspicuously in America. April was almost gone before Abercrombie, who was to be next in command to the Earl of Loudoun, with Webb and two battalions, sailed from Plymouth for New York. Loudoun waited for his transports, that were to carry tents, ammunition, artillery, and intrenching tools, and at last, near the end of May, sailed without them. The man-of-war which bore one hundred thousand pounds to reimburse the colonies for the expenses of 1755, and stimulate their activity for 1756, did not sail till the middle of June. The cannon for ships on Lake Ontario did not reach America till August. We shall have good reason to sing Te Deum, at the conclusion of this campaign, wrote the Lieutenant-governor of Maryland, if matters are not then in a worse situation than they are at present.

On the fifteenth of June, arrived the forty Ger man officers who were to raise recruits for Loudoun's royal American regiment of four thousand. At the same time came Abercrombie. Letters awaited him in praise of Washington. He is a very deserving gentleman, wrote Dinwiddie, and has from the beginning commanded the forces of this Dominion. He is much beloved, has gone through many hardships in the service, has great merit, and can raise more men here than any one. He therefore urged chap. X.} 1756. his promotion in the British establishment. But England trusted foreigners rather than Americans. I find, said Abercrombie, you will never be able to carry on any thing to any purpose in America, till you have a viceroy or superintendent over all the provinces.

Letter of Alexander Colden. New York, 19 June, 1756.

And Loudoun's arrival was to produce a great change of affairs.

On the twenty-fifth of June, Abercrombie arrived at Albany, firmly resolved that the regular officers should command the provincials, and that the troops should be quartered on private houses. On the next day, Shirley acquainted him with the state of Oswego, advising that two battalions should be sent forward for its protection. The boats were ready; every magazine along the passage plentifully supplied. But the general could not think of the wants of the garrison, and was meditating triumphs of authority. The great, the important day for Albany dawned. On the twenty-seventh, in spite of every subterfuge, the soldiers were at last billeted upon the town.

Journal of A. Golden. Albany, 27 June.

The mayor wished them all to go back again; for, said he, we can defend our frontiers ourselves. Thus Abercrombie dilatorily whiled away the summer, ordering a survey of Albany, that it might be ditched and stockaded round; and men talked of certain victory and conquest.

On the twelfth of July, the brave Bradstreet returned from Oswego, having thrown into the fort six months provision for five thousand men, and a great quantity of stores. He brought intelligence that a French army was in motion to attack the place; and chap. X.} 1756. Webb, with the forty-fourth regiment, was ordered to hold himself in readiness to march to its defence. But nothing was done. The regiments of New England, with the provincials from New York and New Jersey, amounted to more than seven thousand men; with the British regular regiments, to more than ten thousand men, besides the garrison at Oswego. In the previous year the road had been opened, the forts erected. Why delay? But Abercrombie was still lingering at Albany, when, on the twenty-ninth of July, the Earl of Loudoun arrived. There too the viceroy loitered with the rest, doing nothing, having ten or twelve thousand men at his disposition, keeping the provincials idle in their camps, without the skill and experience necessary to take care of themselves, and victims to disease, which want of employment and close quarters generated.

The French were more active; and, while the savages made inroads to the borders of Ulster and Orange counties, they turned all their thoughts to the capture of Oswego. De Lery, leaving Montreal in March with a party of more than three hundred men, hastened over ice and snow along the foot of mountains; by roads known to savages alone, they penetrated to Fort Bull, at the Oneida portage, gained it after a short struggle and a loss of three men, destroyed its stores, and returned with thirty prisoners to Montreal.

Journal, &c., from October, 1755, to June, 1756. Paris Doc., XII., 18.

Near the end of May, eight hundred men, led by the intrepid and prudent De Villiers, made their palisaded camp under the shelter of a thicket near the mouth of Sandy Creek. From this place he could send little parties to hover round chap. X.} 1756. the passes of Onondaga River, and intercept supplies for Oswego.

Of the Six Nations, the four lower ones, the Onondagas, Oneidas, Cayugas, and Mohawks, assembled in council, and sent thirty of their chiefs to Montreal to solicit neutrality. Our young braves, they were answered, seek their foes wherever they are to be found; but if you do not join the English, they shall do you no harm; and the envoys of the neutral tribes returned laden with presents.

Just then, the Field-Marshal Marquis de Montcalm arrived at Quebec; a man of a strong and well-stored memory; of a quick and highly cultivated mind; of small stature; rapid in conversation; and of restless mobility. He was accompanied by the Chevalier de Levis Leran, and by Bourlamarque, colonel of infantry. Travelling day and night, he hurried to Fort Carillon, at Ticonderoga; by two long marches on foot, he made himself familiar with the ground, and took measures for improving its defences.

Montcalm to the minister, 20 July, 1756.

He next resolved by secrecy and celerity to take Oswego. Collecting at Montreal three regiments from Quebec, and a large body of Canadians and Indians, on the fifth of August he was able to review his troops at Frontenac, and on the evening of the same day anchored in Sackett's Harbor.

Fort Oswego, on the right of the river, was a large stone building surrounded by a wall flanked with four small bastions, and was commanded from adjacent heights. For its defence, Shirley had crowned a summit on the opposite bank with Fort Ontario. Against this outpost, Montcalm, on the twelfth of chap. X.} 1756. August, at midnight, opened his trenches. From the following daybreak till evening, the fire of the garrison was well kept up; when, having expended their ammunition, they spiked their cannon, and retreated to Fort Oswego. Immediately Montcalm occupied the height, and turned such of the guns as were serviceable against the remaining fortress. His fire killed Mercer, the commander, and soon made a breach in the wall. On the fourteenth, just as Montcalm was preparing to storm the intrenchments, the garrison, composed of the regiments of Shirley and Pepperell, and about sixteen hundred in number, capitulated. Forty-five perished; twelve of them in action, the rest by the Indians in attempting to escape through the woods.

Loudoun to J. Osborne, 13 Sept., 1756, finds no evidence of a massacre at Oswego; considers the rumor without foundation. De Vandreuil to the minister, 30 August, 1756. N. Y. Paris Doc., XII. 39.

The prisoners of war descended the St. Lawrence; their colors were sent as trophies to decorate the churches of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec; one hundred and twenty cannon, six vessels of war, three hundred boats, stores of ammunition and provisions, and three chests of money fell to the conquerors.

Amidst the delight of the Canadians and the savages, the missionaries planted a cross bearing the words, This is the banner of victory; by its side rose a pillar with the arms of France, and the inscription, Bring lilies with full hands. Expressions of triumphant ecstasy broke from Montcalm; but, to allay all jealousy of the red men, he razed the forts and left Oswego a solitude. Webb, who should have relieved the place, went chap. X.} 1756. tardily to the Oneida portage, and, after felling trees to obstruct the passage to the Onondaga, fled in terror to Albany.

Loudoun approved placing obstacles between his army and the enemy; for he also was extremely anxious about an attack from the French, while flushed with success. If it had been made on the provincials alone, it would, he complacently asserted, have been followed with very fatal consequences. Provincials had, it was true, saved the remnant of Braddock's army; provincials had conquered Acadia; provincials had defeated Dieskau; but Abercrombie and his chief sheltered their own imbecility under complaints of America. After wasting a few more weeks in busy inactivity, Loudoun, whose forces could have penetrated to the heart of Canada, left the French to construct a fort at Ticonderoga, and dismissed the provincials to their homes, the regulars to winter quarters. Of the latter, a thousand were sent to New York, where free quarters for the officers were demanded of the city. The demand was resisted by the mayor, as contrary to the laws of England and the liberties of America. Free quarters are everywhere usual, answered the commanderin-chief; I assert it on my honor, which is the highest evidence you can require; and he resolved to make New York an example for the other colonies and towns. The citizens pleaded in reply their privileges as Englishmen, by the common law, by the petition of right, and by acts of parliament. God damn my blood, was the official answer of the viceroy to the mayor; if you do not billet my officers upon free quarters this day, I'll order here all the troops chap. X.} 1756. in North America under my command, and billet them myself upon the city. So the magistrates got up a subscription for the winter support of officers, who had done nothing for the country but burden its resources. In Philadelphia Loudoun uttered the same menace, and the storm was averted only by an adjustment. The frontier had been left open to the French; this quartering troops in the principal towns at the expense of the inhabitants by the illegal authority of a military chief, was the great result of the campaign.

Yet native courage flashed up in every part of the colonies. The false Delawares, thirsting for victims and secret as the night, from their village at Kittanning, within forty-five miles of Fort Duquesne, stained all the border of Pennsylvania with murder and scalping. To destroy them, three hundred Pennsylvanians crossed the Alleghanies, conducted by John Armstrong, of Cumberland County, famed as inheriting the courage of the Scottish covenanters.

In the night following the seventh of September, the avenging party, having marched on that day thirty miles through the unbroken forests, were guided to the Indian village of Kittanning, by the beating of a drum and the whooping of warriors at their festival; and they lay quiet and hush till the moon was fairly set. They heard a young fellow whistling near them, as a signal to a squaw after his dance was over; and in a field of maize, on the margin of the river, they saw the fires near which the Indians took their rest with no dreams of danger. At daybreak three companies which lagged in the rear were brought over the last precipice; and at the same moment the attack be- chap. X.} 1756. gan on the Delawares who had slept abroad, and on the houses which lay discovered under the light of morning. Jacobs raised the war-whoop, crying, The white men are come; we shall have scalps enough. The squaws and children fled to the woods; the warriors fought with desperate bravery and skill as marksmen. We are men, they shouted; we will not be made prisoners. The town being set on fire, some of them sang their death-song in the flames. Their store of powder, which was enough for a long war, scattered destruction as it exploded. Jacobs and others attempting flight, were shot and scalped; the town was burned to ashes, never to be rebuilt by savages. But the Americans lost sixteen men; and Armstrong himself was among the wounded. Hugh Mercer, captain of the company which suffered most, was hit by a musket-ball in the arm, and with five others separated from the main body; but, guided by the stars and rivulets, they soon found their way back. The conduct of Armstrong in leading his party through the mountainous wilderness, and reaching the town without being discovered, was universally applauded. Philadelphia voted honors to him and his gallant band; Pennsylvania has given his name to the county that includes the battle-field.

At the remotest south, adventurers formed a settlement beyond the Alatamaha, on the banks of the Santilla and the island of Cumberland; established their own rules of government; preserved good order amongst themselves; and held the country as far as the St. Mary's, in defiance of South Carolina and of the Spaniards at St. Augustine.

At the same time men of European origin were chap. X.} 1756. penetrating the interior of Tennessee from Carolina; and near the junction of the Telliquo and the Tennessee, a little band of two hundred men, three-fifths of whom were provincials, under the command of Captain Demere, were engaged in completing the New Fort Loudoun, which was to insure the command of the country. They exulted in possessing a train of artillery, consisting of twelve great guns which had been brought to the English camp,

Gov. Lyttleton of South Carolins to the Lords of Trade, 31 Dec. 1756.

from such a distance as the seaport, and over such prodigious mountains. The Cherokees were much divided in sentiment. Use all means you think proper, wrote Lyttleton, to induce our Indians to take up the hatchet. Promise a reward to every man who shall bring in the scalp of a Frenchman or of one of the French Indians.

Demere to Gov. Lyttleton, Dec. 1756. Lyttleton to Lords of Trade, 25 December, 1756.

In December, the Six Nations sent a hundred and eighty delegates to meet the Nepissings, the Algonquins, the Potawatamies, and the Ottawas, at a congress at Montreal. All promised at least neutrality; the young braves wished even to join the French; and they trod the English medals under foot.

The imbecility which marked the conduct of British affairs in America, showed itself still more decidedly in the cabinet, which, though united and commanding a subservient majority, was crumbling in pieces from the sense of its real weakness, and the chap. X.} 1756. weariness of the people of England at the unmixed government of the aristocracy. If, said William Pitt, the Great Commoner, a poor and now a private man, if I see a child driving a go-cart on a precipice, with that precious freight of the king and his family, I am bound to take the reins out of such hands; and the influence of popular opinion came in aid of his just ambition. A new authority was also growing up; and to win the direction of the cabinet, he connected himself with the family of the successor. In June, 1756, Prince George, being eighteen, became of age, and Newcastle, with the concurrence of the king, would have separated his establishment from that of his mother. They both were opposed to the separation. Pitt exerted his influence against it, with a zeal and activity to which they were most sensible.

Walpole's Memoires of George II., II. 39.

The Earl of Bute had been one of the lords of the bed-chamber to Frederic, the late Prince of Wales, who used to call him a fine, showy man, such as would make an excellent ambassador in a court where there was no business. He was ambitious, yet his personal timidity loved to lean on a nature firmer than his own. Though his learning was small, he was willing to be thought a man of erudition, who could quote Horace, and find pleasure in Virgil and Columella. He had an air of the greatest importance, and in look and manner assumed an extraordinary appearance of wisdom.

Chatham Correspond., i. 157. Waldegrave's Memoirs, 38.

Unacquainted with business and unemployed in public office, yet as a consistent and most obsequious royalist, he retained the confidence of the princess dowager, and was the instructor chap. X.} 1756. of the future sovereign of England in the theory of the British constitution.

Adolphus: Hist. of England, i. 12.

On the organization of his household, Prince George desired to have him about his person.

The request of the prince, which Pitt advocated, was resisted by Newcastle and by Hardwicke. To embroil the royal family, the latter did not hesitate to blast the reputation of the mother of the heir apparent by tales of scandal,

The scandal against the Princess Dowager, the mother of Geo. III., has been often repeated; yet it seems to have sprung from the malicious gossip of a profligate court. Waldegrave, a licentious man, is the chief accuser; Hardwicke, a disappointed politician, in a private letter, points a period with the insinuation. But the princess seems to have been reserved and decorous, as became the aged mother of a large family; and to have had no friendships but with those friends of her husband who were most naturally her counsellors.

which party spirit delighted to perpetuate. But in the first public act of Prince George, he displayed the firmness of his character. Heedless of the prime minister and the chancellor, the young man of eighteen, with many professions of duty to the king, expressed his desires, nay, his fixed resolutions, to have the free choice of his servants.

Chatham Corr. i. 171.

This family, said Granville of the Hanoverian dynasty, always has quarrelled, and will quarrel from generation to generation.

Walpole's Memoires, II. 63, 85, 86.

Having wantoned with the resentment of the successor and his mother, Newcastle became terrified and yielded. The king gave his consent reluctantly. You, said he angrily to Fox, you have made me make that puppy Bute, groom of the stole. While Pitt formed intimate relations with the favorite of Leicester house, Charles Townshend, who had recently married the Countess Dowager of Dalkeith, first chap. X.} 1756. cousin to the Earl of Bute, thought even more meanly of Bute than of Newcastle. Silly fellow for silly fellow, said he, it is as well to be governed by my uncle with a blue riband, as by my cousin with a green one.

Restless at sharing the disgrace of an imbecile administration, which met every where with defeat except in the House of Commons, where corruption could do its work, and ashamed of the small degree of real power conceded to him, Fox was unwilling to encounter a stormy opposition which would have had the country on its side. My situation, said he to Newcastle in October, is impracticable;

Fox to the Duke of Newcastle, 13 Oct. 1756.

and he left the cabinet. At the same time Murray declared that he, too, would serve as Attorney-General no longer; he would be Lord Chief Justice, with a peerage, or retire to private life. Newcastle dared not refuse or make more delay. The place had been vacant a term and a circuit;

Henley's Life of Lord Northington, 22-24.

the influence of Bute and Leicester House prevailed to bring Murray as Lord Mansfield upon the Bench, and into the House of Peers.

Bute in Adolphus's History of George III., i. 117.

There was no one in the House, who, even with a sure majority, dared attempt to cope with Pitt. Newcastle sought to negotiate with him. A plain man, he answered, unpractised in the policy of a court, must never presume to be the associate of so experienced a minister. Write to him yourself, said Newcastle to Hardwicke. Don't boggle at it; you see the king wishes it; Lady Yarmouth advises it;

Newcastle to Hardwicke, 15 Oct. 1756.

and Hardwicke saw him. But Pitt, after a three hours interview, gave chap. X.} 1756. him a totally negative answer. The great obstacles, says Hardwicke, were the Duke of Newcastle and his measures; and without a change of both, 'tis impossible for him to come.

Hardwicke to his Eldest Son, 21 Oct. 1756. The interview with Pitt was on the 19th.

Newcastle next sought comfort from the king; insisting that there was nothing alleged against him but conducting the war according to the king's own desire; so that he himself was about to become a victim to his loyalty.

Newcastle to Hardwicke, 20 Oct. 1756.

But Pitt, who had never before waited upon Lady Yarmouth, now counterworked the duke by making a Long visit to the king's mistress. The duke attempted to enlist Egremont, offered power to Granville, and at last, having still an undoubted majority in the House of Commons, the great leader of the Whig aristocracy was compelled to recognise the power of opinion in England as greater than his own, and most reluctantly resigned. The Whig party, which had ruled since the accession of the House of Hanover, had yet never possessed the affections of the people of England and no longer enjoyed its confidence; and at the very height of its power, sunk down in the midst of its worshippers.

W. C. Bryant's Poems.

In December William Pitt, the man of the people, the sincere lover of liberty, having on his side the English nation, of which he was the noblest representative and type, was commissioned to form a ministry. In this he was aided by the whole influence of Leicester House; he found the Earl of Bute transcendingly obliging; and from the young heir to the throne, expressions were repeated, so decisive of determined purposes of favor, in the present or chap. X.} 1756. any future day, that his own lively imagination could not have suggested a wish beyond them.

Chatham Corr. i. 191, 192.

For the chief of the Treasury Board, he selected the Duke of Devonshire, with Legge as chancellor. Temple presided over the Admiralty. George Grenville was made treasurer of the navy. To Charles Townshend, who could ill brook a superior, and who hated Pitt, was offered a useless place, neither ministerial nor active; and his resentment at the disdainful slight was not suppressed, till his elder brother and Bute interceded, and at last the name of the Prince of Wales was used. Thus began the political connections of Charles Townshend with George the Third, and they were never broken. Restless in his pursuit of early advancement, he relied on the favor of that prince, and on his own eloquence, for the attainment of power. While he identified himself with none of the aristocratic factions, he never hesitated, for his own ends, to act under any of them. Pitt, applauding his genius for debate, despised his versatility.

But the transition in England from the rule of the aristocracy to a greater degree of popular power, was not as yet destined to take place. There was an end of the old aristocratic rule; but it was not clear what should come in its stead. The condition of the new minister was seen to be precarious. On entering office Pitt's health was so infirm, that he took the oath at his own house, though the record bears date at St. James's. The House of Commons, which he was to lead, had been chosen under the direction of Newcastle, whom he superseded. His subordinates even ventured to be refractory; so that when Charles Towns- chap. X.} 1756. hend, on one occasion, showed himself ready to second Fox in opposition, Pitt was obliged to chide him, before the whole House, as deficient in common sense or common integrity; and, as Fox exulted in his ally, exclaimed, loud enough to be heard by half the assembly, I wish you joy of him. The court, too, was his enemy. George the Second, spiritless and undiscerning, and without affection for Leicester House, liked subjection to genius still less than to aristocracy. I do not look upon myself as king, said he, while I am in the hands of these scoundrels, meaning Pitt as well as Temple.

Glover's Memoirs, 55. Waldegrave's Memoirs, 95, 96.

On the other hand, Prince George, in March, sent assurances to Pitt of the firm support and countenance of the heir to the throne. Go on, my dear Pitt, said Bute; make every bad subject your declared enemy, every honest man your real friend. How much we think alike. I, for my part, am unalterably your most affectionate friend.

Chatham Correspondence, i. 224.

But even that influence was unavailing. In the conduct of the war the Duke of Cumberland exercised the chief control; in the House of Commons the friends of Newcastle were powerful; in the council the favor of the king encouraged opposition.

America was become the great object of European attention; Pitt, disregarding the churlish cavils of the Lords of Trade,

Lords of Trade to Sec. W. Pitt, 21 January, 1757.

at once pursued towards the colonies the generous policy, which afterwards called forth all their strength, and ensured their affections. He respected their liberties, and relied on their willing co-operation. Halifax was planning taxation by parliament, in which he was aided, among others, by chap. X.} 1757. Calvert, the Secretary of Maryland, residing in England. In January, 1757, the British press defended the scheme, which had been often mentioned in private, to introduce a stamp-duty on vellum and paper, and to lower the duty upon foreign rum, sugar, and molasses, imported into the colonies.

Proposals for uniting the Colonies, January, 1757.

A revenue of more than sixty thousand pounds sterling annually was confidently promised from this source. The project of an American stamp-act was pressed upon Pitt himself. With the enemy at their backs, with English bayonets at their breast, in the day of their distress, perhaps the Americans, thought he, would submit to the imposition.

Pitt in the House of Commons, 14 January, 1766.

But the heroic statesman scorned to take an unjust and ungenerous advantage of them. He turned his eye to the mountains of Scotland for defenders of America, and two battalions, each of a thousand Highlanders,

Anecdotes of Lord Chatham, i. 298.

were raised for the service, under the command of Lord Eglinton and the Master of Lovat.

Still he possessed no real power, and was thwarted in his policy at every step during the short period of his stay in office. Soon the Duke of Cumberland was appointed to conduct the campaign in Germany, and was unwilling to leave England without a change in the cabinet. Temple was, therefore, dismissed; and as Pitt did not resign, the king, in the first week in April, discarded him, and his chancellor also. England was in a state of anarchy, to which the conduct of affairs in America aptly corresponded.

Chapter 11:

The Whig aristocracy cannot conquer Canada.— anarchy in the administration.

1757.

The rangers at Fort William Henry defy the chap. XI.} 1757. winter. The forests, pathless with snows, the frozen lake, the wilderness, which has no shelter against cold and storms, the perilous ambush, where defeat may be followed by the scalping-knife, or tortures, or captivity among the farthest tribes,—all cannot chill their daring. On skates they glide over the lakes; on snow-shoes they penetrate the woods. In January, 1757, the gallant Stark,

Life of John Stark.

with seventy-four rangers, goes down Lake George, and turns the strong post of Carillon. A French party of ten or eleven sledges is driving merrily from Ticonderoga to Crown Point.

Montcalm's Account

Stark sallies forth to attack them; three are taken, with twice as many horses, and seven prisoners. But before he can reach the water's edge, he is intercepted by a party of two hundred and fifty French and Indians. Sheltered by trees and a rising ground, he renews and sustains the unequal fight till evening. In the night, the survivors retreat; a sleigh, sent over the lake, brings home the wounded. Fourteen rangers had fallen, six chap. XI.} 1757. were missing. Those who remained alive were applauded, and Stark received promotion.

The French are still more adventurous. A detachment of fifteen hundred men, part regulars, and part Canadians, are to follow the younger Vaudreuil in a winter's expedition

Vaudreuil's Account, 22 April, 1757.

against Fort William Henry. They must travel sixty leagues; the snowshoes on their feet, their provisions on sledges, drawn, where the path is smooth, by dogs; for their couch at night, they spread on the snow-bank a bearskin, and break the evening breeze with a simple veil; thus they go over Champlain, over Lake George.

Montcalm to the Minister, 24 April, 1757.

On St. Patrick's night, a man in front tries the strength of the ice with an axe; the ice-spurs ring, as the party advances over the crystal highway, with scaling ladders, to surprise the English fort.

Letter of Ere, dated Fort William Henry, 22 March, 1757.

But the garrison was on the watch, and the enemy could only burn the English batteaux and sloops, the storehouses, and the huts of the rangers within their pickets.

For the campaign of 1757, the northern colonies, still eager to extend the English limits, at a congress of governors in Boston, in January, agreed to raise four thousand men.

Loudoun to the Congress of Governors, at Boston, 29 January, 1757. Hutchinson III. 50, 51.

The Southern governors of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, meeting at Philadelphia, settled the quotas for their governments,

Minutes of a meeting of the Southern Governors with the Earl of Londoun, March, 1759.

but only as the groundwork for complaints to the Board of Trade; they said plainly, that nothing effectual would be done by the colo- chap XI.} 1757. nies

H. Sharpe to his brother, the Secretary to the Privy Council, 24 March, 1757.

Of the central provinces, Pennsylvania approached most nearly towards establishing independent power. Its people had never been numbered, yet, with the counties on Delaware, were believed to be not less than two hundred thousand, of whom thirty thousand were able to bear arms.

Peters on the Constitution of Pennsylvania, drawn up for Lord Loudoun. Hazard, v. 339.

It had no militia established by law; but forts and garrisons protected the frontier, at the annual cost to the province of seventy thousand pounds currency. To the act of the former year, granting sixty thousand pounds, the Assembly had added a supplement, appropriating one hundred thousand more, and taxing the property of the proprietaries. But they would contribute nothing to a general fund, and disposed of all money themselves. The support of the governor was either not paid at all, or not till the close of the year. When any office was created, the names of those who were to execute it were inserted in the bill, with a clause reserving to the Assembly the right of nomination in case of death. The sheriffs and coroners, and all persons connected with the treasury, were thus nominated or were chosen by the people, annually, and were responsible only to their constituents. The Assembly could not be prorogued or dissolved, and adjourned itself at its own pleasure. It assumed almost all executive power, and scarce a bill came up without an attempt to encroach on the little residue. In the Jerseys and in Pennsylvania, wrote Loudoun, thinking to influence the mind of Pitt, the majority of the Assembly is composed of Quakers; whilst chap. XI.} 1757. that is the case, they will always oppose every measure of government, and support that independence which is deep-rooted every where in this country. The taxes which the people pay are really so trifling, that they do not deserve the name; so that if some method is not found out of laying on a tax for the support of a war in America by a British Act of Parliament, it appears to me, that you will continue to have no assistance from them in money, and will have very little in men, if they are wanted.

Earl of Loudoun to Secretary W. Pitt, 25 April, 1757.

While the royal officers, with Loudoun at their head, were soliciting the arbitrary interposition of parliament, it is most worthy of remark, that the deep-seated, reluctantly abandoned confidence in the justice and love of liberty of the parliament of England, still led the people of Pennsylvania to look to that body for protection; and in February, 1757, Benjamin Franklin was chosen agent to represent in England the unhappy situation of the province, that all occasion of dispute hereafter might be removed by an act of the British legislature.

Massachusetts had already given the example of an appeal to the House of Commons in favor of popular power against prerogative; and its complaint had, in 1733, been rebuked as a high insult, tending to shake off the dependency of the colony upon the kingdom. Jamaica had just been renewing the attempt; and, while Franklin was at New York to take passage, and there was no ministry in England to restrain the tendencies of the Lords of Trade, the House of Commons adopted the memorable resolve, chap XI.} 1757 that the claim of right in a colonial assembly to raise and apply public money, by its own act alone, is derogatory to the crown and to the rights of the people of Great Britain; and this resolve, so pregnant with consequences, asserting for the people of Great Britain a control over American legislation, was authoritatively communicated to every American assembly. The people of Pennsylvania, said Thomas Penn, will soon be convinced by the House of Commons, as well as by the ministers, that they have not a right to the powers of government they claim.

T. Penn to Hamilton, 7 July, 1757

The debates between the proprietaries of Pennsylvania and its people involved every question in dispute between the crown and the provinces, making Pennsylvania the central figure in the struggle; and Benjamin Franklin, whom Kant, in 1755, had heralded to the world of science as the Prometheus of modern times,

Kants Werke, VI. 280.

stood forth the foremost champion of the rights and the legislative free will of America. Every day brightened his fame and increased his influence.

The House of Commons, said Penn, will end the business entirely to our satisfaction. Still the exertion of the extreme authority of parliament was postponed. The Privy Council was as yet persuaded, that they, with the king, had of themselves plenary power to govern America. Your American Assemblies, said Granville, its President, to Franklin, slight the king's instructions. They are drawn up by grave men, learned in the laws and constitution of the realm; they are brought into Council, thoroughly weighed, well considered, and amended, if chap. XI.} 1757. necessary, by the wisdom of that body; and when received by the Governors, they are the laws of the land; for the king is the legislator of the colonies. This doctrine which Franklin received soon after his arrival in London, fell on him as new;

Franklin to Bowdoin, 13 Jan., 1772. Writings, VII. 549.

and was never effaced from his memory. In its preceding session parliament had done little, except in the hope of distressing Canada and the French islands by famine, to lay grievous restrictions on the export of provisions from the British colonies.

30 Geo. II., c. IX.

The act produced a remonstrance. America, said Granville, the Lord President, to the complaint of its agents, America must not do any thing to interfere with Great Britain in the European markets. If we plant and reap, and must not ship, retorted Franklin, your Lordship should apply to parliament for transports to bring us all back again.

But in America the summer passed as might have been expected from detachments under commanders whom a child might outwit or terrify with a popgun.

To Bouquet was assigned the watch on the frontiers of Carolina. Stanwix, with about two thousand men, had charge of the West, while Webb was left highest in command, with nearly six thousand men, to defend the avenue of Lake George; and on the twentieth day of June, the Earl of Loudoun, having first incensed all America by a useless embargo, and having, at New York, at one sweep, impressed four hundred men, weighed anchor for Halifax. Four British regiments, two battalions of royal Ameri- chap XI.} 1757. cans, and five companies of rangers, accompanied him. His sailing, said the Canadians, is a hint for us to project something on this frontier.

Malartie to the Minister, 16 June, 1757. N. Y. Paris Doc., XIII. 21.

Loudoun reached Halifax on the last day of June, and found detachments from England already there; and on the ninth of July the entire armament was assembled.

At that time, Newcastle was reading Loudoun's letters with great attention and satisfaction, and praising his great diligence and ability. My Lord, said he, mentions an act of parliament to be passed here; I don't well understand what he means by it. Prince George, not surmising defeat, was thoughtful for the orthodoxy of America. A class of bold inquirers, Shaftesbury, Collins, Toland,

Bolingbroke

, Hume, had attacked the scholastic philosophy and the dogmas of the Middle Ages, had insinuated a denial of the plenary inspiration of the Bible and of the credibility of miracles, and had applied the principle of skeptical analysis to supernatural religion, and the institutions and interests connected with the, Established Church. They were freethinkers, daring to question any thing; they were deists, accepting only the religion of nature and reason. In Europe, where radical abuses in canon law introduced anarchy and skepticism into the heart of faith, these writers assisted to hasten a revolution in the public mind; they pointed the epigrams of Voltaire, and founded a school of theology in Germany, while in England one half the cultivated class received their opinions. Fearing their influence in the New World, the amiable young heir to the chap. XI.} 1757. throne sent over a hundred pounds' worth of answers to deistical writers. But in America, free inquiry, which dwelt with the people, far from being of a destructive tendency, was conducting them towards firm institutions, and religious faith was not a historical tradition, encumbered with the abuses of centuries, but a living principle.

Loudoun found himself in Halifax at the head of an admirable army of ten thousand men, with a fleet of sixteen ships of the line, besides frigates. There he landed, levelled the uneven ground for a parade, planted a vegetable garden as a precaution against the scurvy, exercised the men in mock battles, and sieges, and stormings of fortresses, and, when August came, and the spirit of the army was broken, and Hay, a major-general, expressed contempt so loudly as to be arrested, the troops were embarked, as if for Louisburg. But ere the ships sailed, the reconnoitring vessels came with news that the French at Cape Breton had one ship more than the English, and the plan of the campaign was changed. Part of the soldiers landed again at Halifax, and the Earl of Loudoun, leaving his garden to weeds, and his place of arms to briers, sailed for New York. He had been but two days out, when he was met by an express, with such tidings as were to have been expected.

How peacefully rest the waters of Lake George between their ramparts of highlands! In their pellucid depths, the cliffs, and the hills, and the trees trace their image, and the beautiful region speaks to the heart, teaching affection for nature. As yet, not chap. XI.} 1757. a hamlet rose on its margin; not a straggler had thatched a log-hut in its neighborhood; only at its head, near the centre of a wider opening between its mountains, Fort William Henry stood on its bank, almost on a level with the lake. Lofty hills overhung and commanded the wild scene, but heavy artillery had not as yet accompanied war-parties into the wilderness.

Some of the Six Nations preserved their neutrality, but the Oneidas danced the war-dance with Vaudreuil. We will try the hatchet of our father on the English, to see if it cuts well, said the Senecas of Niagara; and when Johnson complained of depredations on his cattle, You begin crying quite early, they answered; you will soon see other things.

Vaudreuil to the Minister, 13 July, 1757.

The English have built a fort on the lands of Onontio, spoke Vaudreuil, governor of New France, to a congress at Montreal of the warriors of three and-thirty nations, who had come together, some from the rivers of Maine and Acadia, some from the wilderness of Lake Huron and Lake Superior. I am ordered, he continued, to destroy it. Go, witness what I shall do, that, when you return to your mats, you may recount what you have seen. They took his belt of wampum, and answered,—Father, we are come to do your will. Day after day, at Montreal, Montcalm nursed their enthusiasm by singing the war-song with the several tribes. They clung to him with affection, and would march to battle only with him. They rallied at Fort St. John, on the Sorel, their missionaries with them, and hymns were chap XI.} 1757. sung in almost as many dialects as there were nations. On the sixth day, as they discerned the battlements of Ticonderoga, the fleet arranged itself in order, and two hundred canoes, filled with braves, each nation with its own pennons, in imposing regularity, swept over the smooth waters of Champlain, to the landingplace of the fortress. Ticonderoga rung with the voices of thousands; and the martial airs of France, and shouts in the many tongues of the red men, resounded among the rocks and forests and mountains. The Christian mass, too, was chanted solemnly; and to the Abenaki converts, seated reverently, in decorous silence, on the ground, the priest urged the duty of honoring Christianity by their example, in the presence of so many infidel braves.

It was a season of scarcity in Canada. None had been left unmolested to plough and plant; the miserable inhabitants had no bread. But small stores were collected for the army. They must conquer speedily or disband. On such an expedition, said Montcalm to his officers, a blanket and a bearskin are the warrior's couch. Do like me, with cheerful goodwill. The soldier's allowance is enough for us.

Montealm's Circular to his Officers, 25 July, 1757.

During the short period of preparation, the partisans were active. Marin brought back his two hundred men from the skirts of Fort Edward, with the pomp of a triumphant warrior. He did not amuse himself with making prisoners, said Montcalm, on seeing but one captive;

Montcalm to Vaudreuil, 27 July, 1757.

and the red men yelled for joy as they counted in the canoes two-and-forty scalps of Englishmen.

The Ottawas resolved to humble the arrogance of chap XI.} 1757. the American boatmen; and they lay hid in ambuscades all the twenty-third of July, and all the following night. At daybreak of the twenty-fourth, Palmer was seen on the lake in command of two-and-twenty barges. The Indians rushed on his party suddenly, terrified them by their yells, and, after killing many, took one hundred and sixty prisoners. To-morrow or next day, said the captives, General Webb will be at the fort with fresh troops. No matter, said Montcalm; in less than twelve days I will have a good story to tell about them. From the timid Webb there was nothing to fear. He went, it is true, to Fort William Henry, but took care to leave again with a large escort, just in season to avoid its siege.

It is the custom of the Red Man, after success, to avoid the further chances of war and hurry home. To remain now, said the Ottawas, would be to tempt the Master of life.

Bougainville to the minister, 19 August, 1757.

But Montcalm, after the boats and canoes had, without oxen or horses, by main strength, been borne up to Lake George, held on the plain above the portage one general council of union. All the tribes from the banks of Michigan and Superior to the borders of Acadia, were present, seated on the ground according to their rank, and, in the name of Louis the Fifteenth, Montcalm produced the mighty belt of six thousand shells, which, being solemnly accepted, bound all by the holiest ties to remain together till the end of the expedition. The belt was given to the Iroquois, as the most numerous; but they courteously transferred it to the upper nations, who came, though strangers, to their aid. In the scarcity of boats, the Iroquois chap. XI.} 1757. agreed to guide De Levi, with twenty-five hundred men, by land, through the rugged country which they called their own.

The Christian savages employed their short leisure at the confessional; the tribes from above, restlessly weary, dreamed dreams, consulted the great medicinemen, and, hanging up the complete equipment of a war-chief as an offering to their Manitou, embarked on the last day of July.

The next day, two hours after noon, Montcalm followed with the main body of the army, in two hundred and fifty boats. The Indians, whom he overtook, preceded him in their decorated canoes. Rain fell in torrents; yet they rowed nearly all the night, till they came in sight of the three triangular fires, that, from a mountain ridge, pointed to the encampment of De Levi. There, in Ganousky, or, as some call it, Northwest Bay, they held a council of war, and then, with the artillery, they moved slowly to a bay, of which the point could not be turned without exposure to the enemy. An hour before midnight, two English boats were descried on the lake, when some of the upper Indians paddled two canoes to attack them, and with such celerity, that one of the boats was seized and overpowered. Two prisoners being reserved, the rest were massacred. The Indians lost but one warrior, a great chieftain of the nation of the Nepisings.

On the morning of the second day of August, the savages dashed openly upon the water, and, forming across the lake a chain of their bark canoes, they made the bay resound with their war-cry. The English were taken almost by surprise. Their tents still covered the plains. Montcalm disembarked without chap. XI.} 1757. interruption, about a mile and a half below the fort, and advanced in three columns. The Indians hurried to burn the barracks of the English, to chase their cattle and horses, to scalp their stragglers. During the day they occupied, with Canadians under La Corne, the road leading to the Hudson, and cut off the communication. At the north was the encampment of De Levi, with regulars and Canadians; while Montcalm, with the main body of the army, occupied the skirt of the wood, on the west side of the lake. His whole force consisted of six thousand French and Canadians, and about seventeen hundred Indians. Fort William Henry was defended by Lieutenant-Colonel Monro,

Captain Christie to Governor Pownall, 10 August, 1757.

of the thirty-fifth regiment, a brave officer and a man of strict honor, with less than five hundred men, while seventeen hundred men lay intrenched near his side, on the eminence to the southeast, now marked by the ruins of Fort George.

Meantime, the braves of the Nepisings, faithful to the rites of their fathers, celebrated the funereal honors of their departed brother. The lifeless frame, dressed as became a war-chief, glittered with belts, and ear-rings, and the brilliant vermilion; a riband, fiery red, supported a gorget on his breast; the tomahawk was in his girdle, the pipe at his lips, the lance in his hand, at his side the well-filled bowl; and thus the departed warrior sat upright on the green turf, which was his death-couch. The speech for the dead was pronounced; the death-dances and chants began; the murmurs of human voices mingled with the sound of drums and the tinkling of little bells. And thus arrayed, in a sitting posture, he was consigned to the chap. XI.} 1757. earth, well provided with food, and surrounded by the splendors which delighted him when alive.

Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses.

On the fourth of August, the French summoned Monro to surrender; but the gallant old soldier sent an answer of defiance. Montcalm hastened his works; the troops dragged the artillery over rocks and through the forests, and with alacrity brought fascines and gabions. The red men, unused to a siege, were eager to hear the big guns. Soon, the first battery, of nine cannon and two mortars, was finished; and, amidst the loud screams of the savages, it began to play, while a thousand echoes were returned by the mountains. In two always more, a second was established, and, by means of the zigzags, the Indians could stand within gun-shot of the fortress. Just then arrived letters from France conferring on Montcalm the red riband, with rank as knight commander of the order of St. Louis. We are glad, said the red men, of the favor done you by the great Onontio; but we neither love you nor esteem you the more for it; we love the man, and not what hangs on his outside. Webb, at Fort Edward, had an army of four thousand, and might have summoned the militia from all the near villages to the rescue. He sent nothing but a letter, with an exaggerated account of the French force, and his advice to capitulate. Montcalm intercepted the letter, which he immediately forwarded to Monro. Yet, not till the eve of the festival of St. Lawrence, when half his guns were burst, and his ammunition was almost exhausted, did the dauntless veteran hang out a flag of truce.

With a view to make the capitulation inviolably chap. XI.} 1757. binding on the Indians, Montcalm summoned their warchiefs to council. The English were to depart with the honors of war, on a pledge not to serve against the French for eighteen months; they were to abandon all but their private effects; an escort was to attend them on their departure; every Canadian or French Indian made captive during the war was to be liberated. The Indians applauded; the capitulation was signed. Late on the ninth of August, the French entered the fort, and the English retired to their intrenched camp.

Montcalm had kept from the savages all intoxicating drinks, but they solicited and obtained them of the English, and all night long they were wild with dances and songs and revelry. The Abenakis of Acadia excited the angry passions of other tribes, by recalling the sorrows they had suffered from English perfidy and English power. At daybreak, they gathered round the intrenchments, and, as the terrified English soldiers filed off, began to plunder them, and incited one another to swing the tomahawk recklessly. Twenty, perhaps even thirty, persons were massacred, while very many were made prisoners. Officers and soldiers, stripped of every thing, fled to the woods, to the fort, to the tents of the French. To arrest the disorder, De Levi plunged into the tumult, daring death a thousand times. French officers received wounds in rescuing the captives, and stood at their tents as sentries over those they had recovered. Kill me, cried Montcalm, using prayers, and menaces, and promises; but spare the English, who are under my protection;

Montcalm to the Minister, 8 Sept., 1757.

and he urged the troops to defend themselves. The march to Fort Edward was a fight; chap. XI.} 1757. not more than six hundred reached there in a body. From the French camp Montcalm collected together more than four hundred, who were dismissed with a great escort, and he sent De Vaudreuil to ransom those whom the Indians had carried away.

Montcalm to Loudoun, 14 August, 1757. Journal de l'expedition, &c., &c.

After the surrender of Fort William Henry, the savages retired. Twelve hundred men were employed to demolish the fort, and nearly a thousand to lade the vast stores that had been given up. As Montcalm withdrew, he praised his happy fortune, that his victory was, on his own side, almost bloodless, his loss in killed and wounded being but fifty-three. The Canadian peasants returned to gather their harvests, and the Lake resumed its solitude. Nothing told that civilized man had reposed upon its margin, but the charred rafters of ruins, and here and there, on the side hill, a crucifix among the pines to mark a grave.

Memoires sur Canada.—Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses.—Correspondence of A. Golden. I. Sharpe and others.—Knox's Journal.—Rogers's Journal. Mante's History of the War, 83-85.—French Accounts in New York Paris Documents, XIII.—Compare Smith's New York.—Hoyt's Antiquarian Researches.—Dwight's Travels.

Pusillanimity pervaded the English camp. Webb at Fort Edward, with six thousand men, was expecting to be attacked every minute. He sent his own baggage to a place which he deemed secure; and wished to retreat to the highlands on the Hudson. For God's sake, wrote the officer in command at Albany, to the governor of Massachusetts, exert yourselves to save a province; New York itself may fall;

Montcalm to Loudoun, 14 August, 1757. Journal de l'expedition, &c., &c.

save a country; prevent the downfall of the

Capt. Christie to Gov. Pownall, 10 August, 1757.

British government upon this continent.

Capt. Christie to Gov. Pownall, 11 August, 1757.

Pownall chap. XI.} 1757. ordered the inhabitants west of Connecticut River to destroy their wheel-carriages and drive in their cattle. Loudoun proposed to encamp on Long Island, for the defence of the continent. Every day it was said, My Lord Loudoun goes soon to Albany, and still each day found him at New York. We have a great number of troops, said even royalists, but the inhabitants on the frontier will not be one jot the safer for them.

The English had been driven from every cabin in the basin of the Ohio; Montcalm had destroyed every vestige of their power within that of the St. Lawrence. France had her posts on each side of the Lakes, and at Detroit, at Mackinaw, at Kaskaskia, and at New Orleans. The two great valleys of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence were connected chiefly by three well known routes,—by way of Waterford to Fort Duquesne, by way of the Maumee to the Wabash, and by way of Chicago to the Illinois. Of the North American continent, the French claimed, and seemed to possess, twenty parts in twenty-five, leaving four only to Spain, and but one to Britain. Their territory exceeded that of the English twenty-fold. As the men composing the garrison at Fort Loudoun, in Tennessee, were but so many hostages in the hands of the Cherokees, the claim of France to the valleys of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence seemed established by possession.

America and England were humiliated. They longed to avenge themselves; yet, Sharpe, of Maryland, made the apology of the viceroy, approved his system, and again and again urged taxation by chap. XI.} 1757. parliament. From every royal province complaints having the same tendency were renewed. From New Hampshire, Wentworth wrote that the prerogative of the crown was treated with contempt; the royal commission and instructions were rendered useless; the members of both houses were all become Commonwealth's men.

Wentworth to Lords of Trade, Oct., 1757.

There were not royalists enough in New Hampshire to form a council. I cannot prevail with this republican assembly, said Dobbs, of North Carolina, to submit to instructions. If they raise the money, they name the persons for public service.

Dobbs to Lords of Trade, 26 Dec., 1757.

William Smith, the semi-republican historian of New York, insisted that the Board of Trade did not know the state of America, and he urged a law for an American union with an American parliament. The defects of the first plan, said he, will be supplied by experience. The British constitution ought to be the model; and, from our knowledge of its faults, the American one may rise with more health and soundness in its first contexture than Great Britain will ever enjoy.

But Loudoun still adhered to the plan of overawing colonial assemblies by a concentrated military power. Recruiting officers from Nova Scotia, asking the justices of peace at Boston to quarter and billet them, as provided by the British mutiny act, were refused; for the act, it was held, did not extend to America; and the general, in November, demanded immediate submission. He would prevent the whole continent from being thrown into confusion. I have ordered, these were the words of his message, I have ordered the messenger to wait but forty-eight chap. XI.} 1757. hours in Boston; and if, on his return, I find things not settled, I will instantly order into Boston the three regiments from New York, Long Island, and Connecticut; and if more are wanted, I have two in the Jerseys at hand, besides three in Pennsylvania.

Yet Loudoun yielded to the view of Massachusetts; and the Assembly and Council, won by the condescension, allowed Thomas Hutchinson, then of the Council, to draft for them a memorable message, in which he recommended himself by introducing the doctrines of the Board of Trade. Our dependence on the parliament of Great Britain, thus ran the state paper, we never had a desire or thought of lessening. The authority of all acts of parliament, which extend to the colonies, is ever acknowledged in all the courts of law, and made the rule of all judicial proceedings in the province. There is not a member of the General Court, and we know no inhabitant within the bounds of the government, that ever questioned this authority. And the principles of independence imputed to them by Loudoun they utterly disavowed. Yet the opinion in the provinces was very general, that the war was conducted by a mixture of ignorance and cowardice. They believed that they were able to defend themselves against the French and Indians without any assistance or embarrassments from England. Oh that we had nothing to do with Great Britain forever, was then the wish of John Adams in his heart.

John Adams to George Alex. Otis, 19 Feb., 1822. Jay's Jay, II. 416.

Everywhere the royal officers actively asserted the authority of the king and the British nation over America. Did the increase of population lead the chap. XI.} 1757. legislatures to enlarge the representative body? The right to do so was denied, and representation was held to be a privilege conceded by the king as a boon, and limited by his will. Did the British commander believe that the French colonies through the neutral islands derived provisions from the continent? By his own authority he proclaimed an embargo in every American port. Did South Carolina, by its Assembly, institute an artillery company? Lyttleton interposed his veto, for there should be no company formed but by the regal commission. By another act, the same Assembly made provision for quartering soldiers, introducing into the law the declaratory clause, that no soldier should ever be billeted among them. This, also, Lyttleton negatived; and but for the conciliatory good temper of Bouquet, who commanded at Charleston, the province would have been inflamed by the peremptory order which came from Loudoun to grant billets under the act of parliament.

Thus did the government of the English aristocracy paralyze the immense energies of the British empire. In the North, Russia had been evoked from the steppes of Asia to be the arbiter of Germany. In the Mediterranean Sea, Minorca was lost; for Hanover, Cumberland had acceded to a shameful treaty of neutrality; in America, England had been driven from the valley of the Mississippi and the whole basin of the St. Lawrence with its tributary lakes and rivers.

And yet sentence had been passed upon the monarchy of feudalism. The enthusiast Swedenborg had announced that its day of judgment was come. The English aristocracy, being defeated, summoned to their aid, not, indeed, the power of the people, but, at chap. XI.} 1757. least, influence with the people, in the person of William Pitt. A private man in England, in middle life, with no fortune, with no party, with no strong family connections, having few votes under his sway in the House of Commons, and perhaps not one in the House of Lords,—a feeble valetudinarian, shunning pleasure and society, haughty and retired, and half his time disabled by the agonies of hereditary gout, was now the hope of the English world. Assuming power, as with the voice of an archangel, he roused the states of Protestantism to wage a war for mastery against the despotic monarchy and the institutions of the Middle Ages, and to secure to humanity its futurity of freedom. Protestantism is not humanity; its name implies a party struggling to throw off some burdens of the past, and ceasing to be a renovating principle when its protest shall have succeeded. It was now for the last time, as a political element, summoned to appear upon the theatre of the nations, to control their alliances, and to perfect its triumph by leaving no occasion for its reappearance in arms. Its final victorious struggle preceded the reddening in the sky of the morning of a new civilization. Its last war was first in the series of the great wars of revolution that founded for the world of mankind the power of the people.

Chapter 12:

The New Protestant powers against the Catholic powers of the Middle Age.—William Pitt's ministry.

1757.

the orator is vastly well provided for, thought chap. XII.} 1757 Bedford, in 1746, on the appointment of William Pitt to a subordinate office of no political influence. I assure your grace of my warmest gratitude, wrote Pitt himself, in 1750, to Newcastle, who falsely pretended to have spoken favorably of him to the king; and now, in defiance of Bedford and Newcastle, and the antipathy of the king, he is become the foremost man in England, received into the ministry as its guide, because he alone was the choice of the people, and, by his greatness of soul and commanding eloquence, can restore the state.

On his dismissal in April, no man had the hardihood to accept his place. A storm of indignation burst from the nation. To Pitt and to Legge, who had also opposed the Russian treaty, London, with many other cities, voted its freedom; unexampled discontent pervaded the country. Newcastle, whose pusillanimity exceeded his vanity, dared not attempt forming a ministry; and by declining to do so, renewed his confession that the government of Great Britain chap. XII.} 1757. could no longer be administered by a party, which had for its principle to fight up alike against the king and against the people. The inebriate Granville, the President of the Council, would have infused his jovial intrepidity into the junto of Fox; but Fox himself was desponding.

Walpole's Memoires.

Bedford had his scheme, which he employed Rigby to establish; and when it proved impracticable, indulged himself in reproaches, and the display of

Bedford Corr. II. 245.

anger, and withdrew to Woburn Abbey. In the midst of war, the country was left to anarchy. We are undone, said Chesterfield; at home, by our increasing expenses; abroad, by ill-luck and incapacity; the Elector of Hesse, the Grand Duke of Brunswick, destitute of the common honesty of hirelings, were in the market to be bid for by the enemies of their lavish employer; the King of Prussia, Britain's only ally, seemed overwhelmed, Hanover reduced, and the French were masters in America. So dark an hour, so gloomy a prospect, England had not known during the century.

But the mind of Pitt always inclined to hope. I am sure, said he to the Duke of Devonshire, I can save this country, and nobody else can. For eleven weeks England was without a ministry; so long was the agony; so desperate the resistance; so reluctant the surrender. At last the king and the aristocracy were alike compelled to recognise the ascendency and yield to the guidance of the man whom the nation trusted and loved. Made wise by experience, and relying on his own vigor of will for a controlling influence, he formed a ministry from many chap. XII.} 1757 factions. Lord Anson, Hardwicke's son-in-law, took again the highest seat at the Board of the Admiralty. Fox, who had children, and had wasted his fortune, accepted the place of paymaster, which the war made enormously lucrative. Newcastle had promised Halifax a new office as third secretary of state for the colonies. I did not speak about it, was the duke's apology to him; Pitt looked so much out of humor, I dared not.

Dodington's Diary, 208.

And the disappointed man railed without measure at the knavery and cowardice of Newcastle.

Rigby to Bedford, 18 June, 1757, in Bedford's Corr. II. 249.

But Pitt reconciled him by leaving him his old post in the Board of Trade, with all its patronage, adding the dignity of a cabinet councillor. Henley, afterwards Lord Northington, became Lord Chancellor, opening the way for Sir Charles Pratt to be made Attorney-General, and George Grenville was Treasurer of the Navy. The illustrious statesman himself, the ablest his country had seen since Cromwell, whom he surpassed in the grandeur and in the integrity of his ambition, being resolved on making England the greatest nation in the world, and himself its greatest minister, took the seals of the Southern Department, with the conduct of the war in all parts of the globe. With few personal friends, with no considerable party, and an aversion to. the exercise of patronage, he left to Newcastle the first seat at the Treasury Board, with the disposition of bishoprics, petty offices, and contracts, and the management of all the classes of venality.

Almon's Biographical Aneodotes, III. 362

At that day, the good will of the people was, in England, the most uncertain tenure of office; for they had no chap. XII.} 1757. strength in parliament; their favorite held his high position at the sufferance of the aristocracy. I borrow, said Pitt, the Duke of Newcastle's majority to carry on the public business.

Harris's Life of Hardwicke, III. 450.

The new ministry kissed hands early in July, 1757. Sire, said the Secretary, give me your confidence, and I will deserve it. Deserve my confidence, replied the king, and you shall have it;

Almon's Anecdotes, i. 229.

and kept his word. All England applauded the Great Commoner's elevation. John Wilkes,

Chatham Correspondence, i. 240.

then just elected member of parliament, promised steady support to the measures of the ablest minister, as well as the first character, of the age. Bearing a message from Leicester House, Thank God, wrote Bute, I see you in office. If even the wreck of this crown can be preserved to our amiable young prince, it is to your abilities he must owe it. You have a soul, that, instead of sinking under adversity, will rise and grow stronger against it.

But Pitt knew himself called to the ministry neither by the king, nor by the parliament of the aristocracy, nor by Leicester House, but by the voice of the people; and the affairs of the empire were now directed by a man who had demanded for his countrymen an uncorrupted representation, a prevailing influence in designating ministers, and a supreme service from the king. Assuming power, he bent all factions to his authoritative will, and made a venal age unanimous. The energy of his mind was the spring of his eloquence. His presence was inspiration; he himself chap. XII.} 1757. was greater than his speeches. Others have uttered thoughts of beauty and passion, of patriotism and courage; none by words accomplished deeds like him. His voice resounded throughout the world, impelling the servants of the British state to achievements of glory oil the St. Lawrence and along the Ganges. Animated by his genius, a corporation for trade did what Rome had not dreamed of, and a British merchant's clerk made conquests as rapidly as other men make journeys, resting his foot in permanent triumph where Alexander of Macedon had faltered. Ruling with unbounded authority the millions of free minds whose native tongue was his own, with but one considerable ally on the European continent, with no resources in America but from the good — will of the colonies, he led forth the England which had planted popular freedom along the western shore of the Atlantic, the England which was still the model of liberty, to encounter the whole force of the despotisms of Catholic Europe, and defend the common cause against what he called the most powerful and malignant confederacy that ever threatened the independence of mankind.

Chatham Corr., i. 226.

The contest, which had now spread into both hemispheres, began in America. The English colonies, dragging England into their strife, claimed to advance their frontiers, and to include the great central valley of the continent in their system. The American question, therefore, was, Shall the continued colonization of North America be made under the auspices of chap. XII.} 1757. English Protestantism and popular liberty, or shall the tottering legitimacy of France, in its connection with Roman Catholic Christianity, win for itself new empire in that hemisphere? The question of the European continent was, Shall a Protestant revolutionary kingdom, like Prussia, be permitted to rise up and grow strong within its heart? Considered in its unity, as interesting mankind, the question was, Shall the Reformation, developed to the fulness of Free Inquiry, succeed in its protest against the Middle Age?

The war that closed in 1748 had been a mere scramble for advantages, and was sterile of results; the present conflict, which was to prove a Seven Years War, was an encounter of parties, of reform against the unreformed; and this was so profoundly true, that all the predilections or personal antipathies of sovereigns and ministers could not prevent the alliances, collisions, and results necessary to make it so. George the Second, who was also sovereign of Hanover, in September, 1755, contracted with Russia for the defence of that electorate; but Russia, which was neither Catholic nor Protestant, tolerant in religion, though favoring absolutism in government, could not be relied upon by either party, and passed alternately from one camp to the other. England, the most liberal Protestant kingdom, had cherished intimate relations with Austria, the most legitimate Catholic power, and, to strengthen the connection, had scattered bribes, with open hands, to Mayence, Cologne, Bavaria, the Count Palatine, to elect Joseph the Second King of the Romans. And all the while, Austria was separating itself from its old ally, and forming a confederacy of the Catholic powers; while chap. XII.} 1757. George the Second, though he personally disliked his nephew, Frederic, was driven irresistibly to lean on his friendship.

A deep, but perhaps unconscious, conviction of approaching decrepitude bound together the legitimate Catholic sovereigns. In all Europe, there was a striving after reform. Men were grown weary of the superstitions of the Middle Age; of idlers and beggars, sheltering themselves in sanctuaries; of hopes of present improvement suppressed by the anxious terrors of hell and purgatory; the countless monks and priests, whose vows of celibacy tempted to licentiousness. The lovers and upholders of the past desired a union among the governments that rested upon mediaeval traditions. For years had it been whispered that the House of Austria should unite itself firmly with the House of Bourbon;

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams to a private friend. Dresden, 27 August, 1747, in Appendix to Walpole's Memoires, II. 474.

and now the Empress Maria Theresa, herself a hereditary queen, a wife and a mother, religious even to bigotry, by an autograph letter caressed endearingly the Marchioness de Pompadour, once the French king's mistress, now the procuress of his pleasures, to win her influence for the alliance. Kaunitz, the minister who alone had her confidence, a man who concealed political sagacity and an inflexible will under the semblance of luxurious ease, won favor as ambassador at the court of Versailles by his affectations and his prodigal expense. And in May, 1756, that is, in the two hundred and eightieth year of the jealous strife between the Houses of Hapsburg and of Capet, France and Austria put aside their ancient rivalry, and joined to de- chap. XII.} 1757. fend the Europe of the Middle Age, with its legitimate despotisms, its aristocracies, and its ecclesiastical powers, against Protestantism and the encroachments of free inquiry.

Among the rulers of the European continent, Frederic, with but four millions of subjects, stood forth alone, the unshaken bulwark of Protestantism and freedom of thought.

Daum's Denkwurdigkeiten, IV. 387. Politz: Umriss des Preussischen Staates, 195, 210, 237, 242. Schlosser's Geschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, II. 276.

His kingdom itself was the offspring of the Reformation, in its origin revolutionary and Protestant. His father—whose palace life was conducted with the economy and simplicity of the German middle class,—at whose evening entertainments a wooden chair, a pipe, and a mug of beer were placed for each of the guests that assembled to discuss politics with their prince,

Schlosser, i. 249, 252.

—harsh as a parent, severe as a master, despotic as a sovereign—received with painfully scrupulous piety every article of the Lutheran creed and every form of its worship. His son, who inherited an accumulated treasure and the best army in Europe, publicly declared his opinion, that, politically considered, Protestantism was the most desirable religion;

Preuss: Leben Friedric II., i. 105, 106.

that his royal electoral house, without one example of apostasy, had professed it for centuries; and Protestantism saw in him its champion. As the contest advanced, the fervent Clement the Thirteenth commemorated an Austrian victory over Prussia by the present of a consecrated cap and sword;

Oeuvres Posthumes de Fred. II., III. 343, 344. Ranke: Geschichte der Pabste, IV. 192, 193.

while, in the weekly concerts for prayer

Boston Evening Post, 27 June, 1757.

in chap. XII.} 1757. New England, petitions went up for the Prussian hero, who had drawn his sword in the cause of religious liberty, of the Protestant interest, and the liberties of Europe. His victories, said Mayhew, of Boston, are our own.

Sermon of Cooper, of Boston, 24. Two Discourses by Jonathan Mayhew, 20, 22, 23. Too much attention has been given to the posthumous calumnies in which Voltaire exhaled his suppressed malice and spleen. In point of character Voltaire was vastly inferior to Frederic.

The Reformation was an expression of the right of the human intellect to freedom. The same principle was active in France, where philosophy panted for liberty; where Massillon had hinted that kings are chosen for the welfare of the people; and Voltaire, in the empire of letters, marshalled hosts against priestcraft. Monarchy, itself, was losing its sanctity. The Bourbons had risen to the throne through the frank and generous Henry the Fourth, who, in the sports of childhood, played barefoot and bareheaded with the peasant boys on the mountains of Bearn. The cradle of Louis the Fifteenth was rocked in the pestilent atmosphere of the Regency; his tutor, when from the palace-windows he pointed out the multitudes, had said to the royal child, Sire, this people is yours; and as he grew old in profligate sensuality, he joined the mechanism of superstition with the maxims of absolutism, mitigating his dread of hell by the belief, that Heaven is indulgent to the licentiousness of kings. In France, therefore, there was no alliance between the government and liberal opinion, and that opinion migrated from Versailles to the court of Prussia. The renovating intelligence of France declared against Louis the Fifteenth and his system; and, awaiting a chap. XII.} 1757. better summons for its perfect sympathy, saw in Frederic the present hero of light and reason. Thus the subtle and pervading influence of the inquisitive mind of France was arrayed with England, Prussia, and America, that is, with Protestantism, philosophic freedom, and the nascent democracy, in their struggle with the conspiracy of European prejudice and legitimacy, of priestcraft and despotism.

The centre of that conspiracy was the empress of Austria with the apostate Elector of Saxony, who was king of Poland. Aware of the forming combination, Frederic resolved to attack his enemies before they were prepared; and in August, 1756, he invaded Saxony, took Dresden, blockaded the Elector's army at Pirna, gained a victory over the imperial forces that were advancing for its relief, and closed the campaign in the middle of October, by compelling it to capitulate. In the following winter, the alliances against him were completed; and not Saxony only, and Austria, with Hungary, but the German empire, half the German States,—Russia, not from motives of public policy, but from a woman's caprice,—Sweden, subservient to the Catholic powers through the degrading ascendency of its nobility,—France, as the ally of Austria,—more than half the continent, took up arms against Frederic, who had no allies in the South, or East, or North, and in the West none but Hanover, with Hesse and Brunswick. And as for Spain, not even the offer from Pitt of the conditional restitution of Gibraltar,

Pitt to Keene, 23 Aug., 1757. Chat. Corr., i. 249.

and the evacuation of all English establishments on the Mosquito Shore and in the Bay of Honduras, nor any consideration what- chap. XII.} 1757. ever, could move the Catholic monarch to draw the sword in favor of heretics.

Keene to Pitt, 26 Sept., 1757. Chat. Corr., i. 271.

As spring opened, Frederic hastened to meet the May. Austrian army in Bohemia. They retired, under the command of Charles of Lorraine, abandoning well stored magazines, and, in May, 1757, for the preservation of Prague, risked a battle under its walls. After terrible carnage, the victory remained with Frederic, who at once framed the most colossal design that ever entered the mind of a soldier,—to execute against Austria a series of measures like those against Saxony at Pirna, to besiege Prague and compel the army of Charles of Lorraine to surrender. But the cautious Daun, a man of high birth, esteemed by the empress June. queen and beloved by the Catholic Church, pressed slowly forward to raise the siege. Dazzled by hope, Frederic, leaving a part of his army before Prague, went forth with the rest to attack the Austrian commander, and, on the eighteenth of June, attempted to storm his intrenchments on the heights of Colin. His brave battalions were repelled with disastrous loss. Left almost unattended, as he gazed at the spectacle, Will you carry the battery alone demanded one of his lieutenants; on which, the hero rode calmly towards the left wing and ordered a retreat.

The refined, but feeble, August William, Prince of Prussia, had remained at Prague. All men are children of one father; thus Frederic had once reproved his pride of birth; all are members of one family, and, for all your pride, are of equal birth, and chap. XII.} 1757 of the same blood. Would you stand above them? Then excel them in humanity, gentleness, and virtue. At heart opposed to the cause of mankind, the Prince had, from the first, urged his brother to avoid the war; and at this time, when drops of bitterness were falling thickly into the hero's cup, he broke out into pusillanimous complaints, advising a shameful peace, by concession to Austria. But Frederic's power was now first to appear; as victory fell away from him, he stood alone before his fellow-men, in unconquerable greatness.

Raising the siege of Prague, he conducted the retreat of one division of his army into Saxony without loss; the other the Prince of Prussia led in a manner contrary to the rules of war and to common sense, and more disastrous than the loss of a pitched battle. Frederic censured the dereliction harshly; in that day of disaster, he would not tolerate a failure of duty, even in the heir to the throne.

The royalist writers make an outcry against Frederic for his justice on this occasion; and award to the vain and mean-spirited Prino of Prussia the honors of martyrdom.

The increasing dangers became terrible. I am July. resolved, wrote Frederic, in July, to save my country or perish. Colin became the war-cry of French and Russians, of Swedes and Imperialists; a Russian army invaded his dominions on the east; the Swedes from the north threatened Pomerania and Berlin; a vast army of the French was concentrating itself at Erfurt for the recovery of Saxony; while Austria, recruited by Bavaria and Wurtemberg, was conquering Silesia. The Prussians will win no more victories, wrote the queen of Poland. Death at this moment took from Frederic his mother, whom he chap. XII.} 1757. loved most tenderly. A few friends remained faithful to him, cheering him by their correspondence. O, that Heaven had heaped all ills on me alone! said his affectionate sister; I would have borne them with firmness.

Having vainly attempted to engage the enemy in Aug. Silesia in a pitched battle, Frederic repaired to the West, to encounter the united army of the Imperialists and French. I can leave you no large garrison, was his message to Fink at Dresden; but be of good cheer; to keep the city will do you vast honor. On his way, he learns that the Austrians have won a victory over Winterfeld and Bevern, his generals in Sept. Silesia, that Winterfeld had fallen, that Bevern had retreated to the lake near Breslau, and was opposed by the Austrians at Lissa. On the eighth of September, the day after the great disaster in Silesia, the Duke of Cumberland, having been defeated and compelled to retire, signed for his army and for Hanover a convention of neutrality.

Oeuvres de Fred. II., III. 132, 133.

Here, said George the Second, on meeting the Duke, is my son, who has ruined me and disgraced himself. Voltaire advised Frederic to imitate Cumberland. If every string breaks, wrote Frederic to the Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, throw yourself into Magdeburg. Situated as we are, we must persuade ourselves that one of us is worth four others. Morning dawned on new miseries;

Épitre au Marquis d'argens, Oeuvres VII. 176, 178, 180.

night came without a respite to his cares. He spoke serenely of the path to eternal rest, and his own resolve to live and die free. O my beloved people, he exclaimed, my wishes live but chap. XII.} 1757. for you; to you belongs every drop of my blood, and from my heart I would gladly give my life for my country. And, reproving the meanness of spirit of Voltaire, I am a man, he wrote, in October, in the Oct. moment of intensest danger; born, therefore, to suffer; to the rigor of destiny I oppose my own constancy; menaced with shipwreck, I will breast the tempest, and think, and live, and die, as a sovereign. In a week, Berlin itself was in the hands of his enemies.

When, on the fourth of November, after various Nov. changes of position, the king of Prussia, with but twenty-one thousand six hundred men, resumed his encampment on the heights of Rossbach, the Prince de Rohan Soubise, who commanded the French and Imperial army of more than sixty-four thousand, was sure of compelling him to surrender. On the morning of the fifth, the combined forces marched in flank to cut off his retreat. From the battlements of the old castle of Rossbach, Frederic gazed on their movement; his sagacity, at a glance, penetrated their design; and, obeying the flush of his exulting mind, he on the instant made his dispositions for an attack. Forward! he cried, at half-past 2; at three, not a Prussian remained in the village. He seemed to retreat towards Merseburg; but, concealed by the high land of Reichertswerben, the chivalrous Seidlitz, with the Prussian cavalry, having turned the right of the enemy, planted his cannon on an eminence. Through the low ground beneath him, they were marching in columns, in eager haste, their cavalry in front and at a distance from their infantry. A moment's delay, an inch of ground gained, and they would have come into line. But Seidlitz and his cavalry on their right, eight battalions of infantry on chap. XII.} 1757. Nov. their left, with orders precise and exactly executed, bore down impetuously on the cumbrous columns, and routed them before they could form, and even before the larger part of the Prussian infantry could fire a shot. That victory at Rossbach gave to Prussia the consciousness of its existence as a nation.

To his minister Frederic sent word of this beginning of success; but far more was necessary. He had but obtained freedom to seek new dangers; and, hastening to relieve Schweidnitz, he wrote to a friend, This, for me, has been a year of horror; to save the state, I dare the impossible. But already Schweidnitz had surrendered. On the twenty-second of November, Prince Bevern was surprised and taken prisoner, with a loss of eight thousand men. His successor in the command retreated to Glogau. On the twenty-fourth, Breslau was basely given up, and nearly all its garrison entered the Austrian service. Silesia seemed restored to Maria Theresa. Does hope expire, said Frederic, the strong man must stand distinguished. Treachery, the despair of his army, midwinter in a severe clime, the repeated disasters of his generals, could not move him.

Not till the second day of December did the drooping army from Glogau join the king. Every Dec. power was exerted to revive their confidence. By degrees, they catch something of his cheerful resoluteness; they share the spirit and the daring of the victors of Rossbach; they burn to efface their own ignominy. Yet the Austrian army of sixty thousand men, under Charles of Lorraine and Marshal Daun veteran troops and double in number to the Prus sians, were advancing, as if to crush them and end chap. XII.} 1757. Dec. the war. The Marquis of Brandenburg, said Voltaire, will lose his hereditary states, as well as those which he has won by conquest.

Assembling his principal officers beneath a beechtree, which is still to be seen between Neumarkt and Leuthen, Frederic addressed them with a gush of eloquence. While I was restraining the French and Imperialists, Charles of Lorraine has succeeded in conquering Schweidnitz, repulsing Prince Bevern, mastering Breslau. A part of Silesia, my capital, my stores of war, are lost; my disasters would be extreme, had I not a boundless trust in your courage, firmness, and love of country. There is not one of you, but has distinguished himself by some great and honorable deed. The moment for courage has come. Listen, then; I am resolved, against all rules of the art of war, to attack the nearly threefold stronger army of Charles of Lorraine, wherever I may find it. There is no question of the number of the enemy, nor of the strength of their position. We must beat them, or all of us find our graves before their batteries. Thus I think, thus I mean to act; announce my decision to all the officers of my army; prepare the privates for the scenes which are at hand; let them know I demand unqualified obedience. They are Prussians; they will not show themselves unworthy of the name. Does any one of you fear to share all dangers with me, he can this day retire; I never will reproach him. Then, as the enthusiasm kindled around him, he added, with a serene smile, I know that not one of you will leave me. I rely on your true aid, and am assured of victory. If I fall, the country must reward you. Go, tell your regiments what you have heard from me. And he chap. XII.} 1757. Dec. added, The regiment of cavalry which shall not instantly, at the order, charge, shall be dismounted and sent into garrisons; the battalion of infantry that shall but falter shall lose its colors and its swords. Now farewell, friends; soon we shall have vanquished, or we shall see each other no more.

On the morning of December fifth, at half past 4, the army was in motion, the king in front, the troops to warlike strains singing,

Grant, Lord, that we may do with might That which our hands shall find to do! With men like these, said Frederic, God will give me the victory.

The Austrians were animated by no common kindling impulse. The Prussians, on that day, moved as one being, endowed with intelligence, and swayed by one will. Never did the utmost daring so combine with severe prudence, as in the arrangements of Frederic. His eye seized every advantage of place, and his manoeuvres were inspired by the state of his force and the character of the ground. The hills and the valleys, the copses and the fallow land, the mists of morning and the clear light of noon, came to meet his dispositions, so that nature seemed instinct with the resolve to conspire with his genius. Never had orders been so executed as his on that day; and never did military genius, in its necessity, so summon invention to its rescue from despair. His line was formed to make an acute angle with that of the Austrians; as he moved forwards, his left wing was kept disengaged; his right came in contact with the enemy's left, outwinged it, and attacked it in front and flank; the bodies which Lorraine sent to its support chap. XII.} 1757. Dec. were defeated successively, before they could form, and were rolled back in confused masses. Lorraine was compelled to change his front for the defence of Leuthen; the victorious Prussian army advanced to continue the attack, now employing its left wing also. Leuthen was carried by storm, and the Austrians were driven to retreat, losing more than six thousand in killed and wounded, more than twenty-one thousand in prisoners. The battle, which began at half past 1, was finished at five. It was the masterpiece of motion and decision, of moral firmness and warlike genius; the greatest military deed, thus far, of the century. That victory confirmed existence to the country where Kant and Lessing were carrying free inquiry to the sources of human knowledge. The soldiers knew how the rescue of their nation hung on that battle; and, as a grenadier on the field of carnage began to sing, Thanks be to God, the whole army, in the darkness of evening, standing amidst thousands of the dead, uplifted the hymn of praise.

Daun fled into Bohemia, leaving in Breslau a garrison of twenty thousand men. Frederic pressed forward, and astonished Europe by gaining possession of that city, reducing Schweidnitz, and recovering all Silesia. The Russian army, which, under Apraxin, had won a victory on the northeast, was arrested in its movements by intrigues at home. Prussia was saved. In this terrible campaign, two hundred and sixty thousand men had stood against seven hundred thousand, and had not been conquered.

Chapter 13:

Conquest of the valley of the West.—William Pitt's ministry continued.

1757-1758.

the Protestant nations compared Frederic to chap. XIII.} 1757. Gustavus Adolphus, as the defender of the Reformation and of freedom. With a vigor of hope like his own, Pitt, who, eight days before the battle of Rossbach, had authorized Frederic to place Ferdinand of Brunswick at the head of the English army on the continent, planned the conquest of the colonies of France. Consulted through the under secretaries, Franklin gave full advice on the conduct of the American war, criticised the measures proposed by others, and recommended and enforced the conquest of Canada.

In the House of Commons, Lord George Sackville, a man perplexed in action and without sagacity in council, of unsound judgment yet questioning every judgment but his own, restless and opinionated, made the apology of Loudoun. Nothing is done, nothing attempted, said Pitt with vehement asperity. We have lost all the waters; we have not a boat on the lakes. Every door is open to France. Loudoun was recalled, and added one more to the military of- chap. XIII.} 1757. ficers, who advised the magisterial exercise of British authority, and voted in parliament to sustain it by fire and sword.

In 1746 the Duke of Bedford, then at the head of the admiralty, after considering the conduct and principles of the Northern colonies, had declared officially that it would be imprudent to send twenty thousand colonists to plunder the Canadians and conquer their country, on account of the independence it might create in those provinces, when they should see within themselves so great an army possessed of so great a country by right of conquest. He had, therefore, advised to place the chief dependence on the fleet from England, and to look on the Americans as useful only when joined with others. But Pitt, rejecting the coercive policy of his predecessors, their instructions for a common fund, and their menaces of taxation .by parliament, invited the New England colonies, and New York, and New Jersey, each without limit, to raise as many men as possible, believing them well able to furnish at least twenty thousand, for the expedition against Montreal and Quebec, while Pennsylvania and the southern colonies were to aid in conquering the West. He assumed that England should provide arms, ammunition and tents; he expected and required nothing of the colonists, but the levying, clothing, and pay of the men; and for these expenses he promised that the king should strongly recommend to parliament to grant a proper compensation. Moreover, in December, 1757, he obtained the king's order that every provincial officer of no higher rank than colonel should have equal command with the British, chap. XIII.} 1758. according to the date of their respective commissions.

Pitt was a friend to liberty everywhere, and sought new guarantees for freedom in England. It was during the height of his power, that a bill was carried through the House of Commons, extending the provisions for awarding the writ of habeas corpus to all cases of commitment; and when the law lords obtained its rejection by the peers, he was but the more confirmed in his maxim, that the lawyers are not to be regarded in questions of liberty. In a like spirit, Pitt now frowned upon every attempt against the rights of America. Charles Townshend and others, ever disposed to cavil at the promise of recompense, as contrary to their plan of taxation by parliament and a surrender of authority, were compelled to postpone their complaint, that the Americans, in peace the rivals of England, assumed in war to be allies, rather than subjects.

Of the designs, secretly maturing at the Board of Trade by Halifax and Rigby, the colonies were unsuspicious. The genius of Pitt and his respect for their rights, the prospect of conquering Canada and the West, and unbounded anticipations of future greatness, roused their most active zeal. In some of them, especially in New England, their contributions exceeded a just estimate of their ability. The thrifty people of Massachusetts disliked a funded debt, and avoided it by taxation. In addition to the sums expected from England, their tax, in one year of the war was, on personal estate, thirteen shillings and fourpence on the pound of income, and on two hundred pounds income from real estate was seventy-two pounds, besides various excises and a poll tax of nineteen shillings on every male over sixteen. Once, in chap. XIII.} 1758. 1759, a colonial stamp-tax was imposed by their legislature. The burden cheerfully borne by Connecticut was similarly heavy.

The Americans, powerful in themselves, were further strengthened by an unbroken communication with England. The unhappy Canadians, who had not enjoyed repose enough to fill their garners by cultivating their lands, were cut off from regular intercourse with France. I shudder, said Montcalm, in February, 1758, when I think of provisions. The famine is very great. For all our success, thus he appealed to the minister, New France needs peace, or sooner or later it must fall; such are the numbers of the English, such the difficulty of our receiving supplies. The Canadian war-parties were on the alert; in March a body of Iroquois and other Indians waylaid a detachment of about two hundred rangers in the forests near Fort Carillon, as the French called Ticonderoga, and brought back one hundred and forty-six scalps, with three prisoners, as living messages. But what availed such small successes? In the general dearth, the soldiers could receive but a half-pound of bread daily; the inhabitants of Quebec but two ounces daily. Words could not describe the misery of the people. The whole country was almost bare of vegetables, poultry, sheep, and cattle. In the want of bread and beef and other necessaries, twelve or fifteen hundred horses were distributed for food. Artisans and daylaborers became too weak for toil.

On the recall of Loudoun, Henry Seymour Conway desired to be employed in America, but was refused by the king. Lord George Sackville was invited to take the command, but declined. Three chap XIII.} 1758. several expeditions were set in motion. The circumspect, impenetrable Jeffrey Amherst, a man of solid judgment and respectable ability in action, with James Wolfe, was to join the fleet under Boscawen, for the siege of Louisburg; the conquest of the Ohio valley was intrusted to Forbes; and against Ticonderoga and Crown Point, Abercrombie, a friend of Bute, was commander-in-chief, though Pitt selected the young Lord Howe to be the soul of the enterprise.

None of the officers won favor like Howe and Wolfe. To high rank and great connections Howe added manliness, humanity, a capacity to discern merit, and judgment to employ it. As he reached America, he adopted the austere simplicity befitting forest warfare. Wolfe, then thirty-one years old, had been eighteen years in the army; was at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and won laurels at Laffeldt. Merit made him at two-and-twenty a lieutenant-colonel, and his active genius improved the discipline of his battalion. He was at once authoritative and humane, severe yet indefatigably kind; modest, but aspiring and conscious of ability. The brave soldier dutifully loved and obeyed his widowed mother, and his gentle nature saw visions of happiness in scenes of domestic love, even while he kindled at the prospect of glory, as gunpowder at fire.

On the twenty-eighth day of May, Amherst, after a most unusually long passage, reached Halifax. The fleet had twenty-two ships of the line and fifteen frigates; the army at least ten thousand effective men. Isaac Barre, who had lingered a subaltern eleven years till Wolfe rescued him from hopeless obscurity, was in the expedition as a major of chap XIII.} 1758. brigade.

For six days after the British forces, on their way from Halifax to Louisburg, had entered Chapeau Rouge Bay, the surf, under a high wind, made the rugged shore inaccessible, and gave the French time to strengthen and extend their lines. The sea still dashed heavily, when, before daybreak, on the eighth of June, the troops, under cover of a random fire from the frigates, attempted disembarking. Wolfe, the third brigadier, who led the first division, would not allow a gun to be fired, cheered the rowers, and, on coming to shoal water, jumped into the sea; and, in spite of the surf which broke several boats and upset more, in spite of the well-directed fire of the French, in spite of their breast-work and rampart of felled trees whose interwoven branches made one continued wall of green, the English reached the land, took the batteries, drove in the French, and on the same day invested Louisburg. At that landing, none was more gallant than Richard Montgomery; just oneandtwenty; Irish by birth; an humble officer in Wolfe's brigade; but also a servant of humanity, enlisted in its corps of immortals. The sagacity of his commander honored him with well deserved praise and promotion to a lieutenancy.

On the morning of the twelfth, an hour before dawn, Wolfe, with light infantry and Highlanders, took by surprise the lighthouse battery on the northeast side of the entrance to the harbor; the smaller works were successively carried. On the twenty-third, the English battery began to play on that of the French on the island near the centre of the mouth of the harbor. Science, sufficient force, union among the officers, heroism pervading mariners and chap. XIII.} 1758. soldiers, carried forward the siege, during which Barre by his conduct secured the approbation of Amherst and the friendship of Wolfe. Of the French ships in the port, three were burned on the twenty-first of July; in the night following the twenty-fifth, the boats of the squadron, with small loss, set fire to the Prudent, a seventy-four, and carried off the Bienfaisant. Boscawen was prepared to send six English ships into the harbor. But the town of Louisburg was already a heap of ruins; for eight days, the French officers and men had had no safe place for rest; of their fifty-two cannon, forty were disabled. They had now but five ships of the line and four frigates. It was time for the Chevalier de Drucour to capitulate. The garrison became prisoners of war, and, with the sailors and marines, in all five thousand six hundred and thirty-seven, were sent to England. On the twenty-seventh of July, the English took possession of Louisburg, and, as a consequence, of Cape Breton and Prince Edward's Island. Thus fell the power of France on our eastern coast. Halifax being the English naval station, Louisburg was deserted. The harbor still offers shelter from storms; the coast repels the surge; but only a few hovels mark the spot which so much treasure was lavished to fortify, so much heroism to conquer. Wolfe, whose heart was in England, bore home the love and esteem of the army. The trophies were deposited with pomp in the cathedral of St. Paul's; the churches gave thanks; Boscawen, himself a member of parliament, was honored by a unanimous tribute from the House of Commons. New England, too, triumphed; for the praises chap. XIII.} 1758. awarded to Amherst and Wolfe recalled the deeds of her own sons.

On the surrender of Louisburg, the season was too far advanced to attempt Quebec. Besides, a sudden message drew Amherst to Lake George.

The summons of Pitt had called into being a numerous and well equipped provincial army. Massachusetts, which had entered upon its alarm list more than forty-five thousand men, of whom more than thirty-seven thousand were by law obliged to train and in case of an invasion to take the field, had ten thousand of its citizens employed in the public service; but it kept its disbursements for the war under the control of its own commissioners. Pownall, its governor, complained of the reservation, as an infringement of the prerogative, predicted confidently the nearness of American independence; and after vain appeals to the local legislature, repeated his griefs to the Lords of Trade. The Board, in reply, advised dissimulation. The dependence which the colony of Massachusetts Bay ought to have upon the sovereignty of the crown, thus they wrote Pownall, stands on a very precarious foot; and unless some effectual remedy be applied at a proper time, it will be in great danger of being totally lost. The letter was sent without the knowledge of Pitt, who never invited a province to the utmost employment of its resources with the secret purpose of subverting its liberties, as soon as victory over a foreign foe should have been achieved with its concurrence. Such a policy belonged only to the Board of Trade, where Halifax still presided, and Oswald, Soame Jenyns, Rigby, and William Gerard Hamilton sat as members. But the proposal of a change in the colonial chap. XIII.} 1758. administration, cherished by Halifax from his first entrance into office and never abandoned, was reserved till the peace should offer the seemingly safe occasion for interposition.

Meantime nine thousand and twenty-four provincials, from New England, New York, and New Jersey, assembled on the shore of Lake George. There were the six hundred New England rangers, dressed like woodmen; armed with a firelock and a hatchet; under their right arm a powder-horn; a leather bag for bullets at their waist; and to each officer a pocket compass as a guide in the forests. There was Stark, of New Hampshire, now promoted to be a captain. There was the generous, openhearted Israel Putnam, a Connecticut major, leaving his good farm round which his own hands had helped to build the walls; of a gentle disposition, brave, and artless. There were the chaplains, who preached to the regiments of citizen soldiers a renewal of the days when Moses with the rod of God in his hand sent Joshua against Amalek. By the side of the provincials rose the tents of the regular army, six thousand three hundred and sixty-seven in number; of the whole force Abercrombie was commander-in-chief; but the general confidence rested solely on Howe.

Early in the spring, Bradstreet, of New York, had proposed an attempt upon Fort Frontenac; Lord Howe overruled objections; and the gallant provincial was to undertake it, as soon as the army should have established itself on the north side of the lake.

On the fifth day of July, the armament of more than fifteen thousand men, the largest body, of European origin, that had ever been assembled in Amer- chap. XIII.} 1758 ica, struck their tents at daybreak, and in nine hundred small boats and one hundred and thirty-five whale-boats, with artillery mounted on rafts, embarked on Lake George; the fleet, bright with banners, and cheered by martial music, moved in procession down the beautiful lake, beaming with hope and pride, though with no witness but the wilderness. They passed over the broader expanse of waters to the first narrows; they came where the mountains, then mantled with forests, step down to the water's edge; and in the richest hues of evening light, they halted at Sabbath-day Point. Long afterwards, Stark remembered, that on that night Howe, reclining in his tent on a bear-skin, and bent on winning a hero's name, questioned him closely as to the position of Ticonderoga and the fittest mode of conducting the attack.

On the promontory, where the lake, through an outlet or river less than four miles long, falling in that distance about one hundred and fifty-seven feet, enters Champlain, the French had placed Fort Carillon, having that lake on its east, and on the south and southwest the bay formed by the junction. On the north, wet meadows obstructed access; so that the only approach by land was from the northwest. On that side, about a half-mile in front of the fort, Montcalm marked out his lines, which began near the meadows and followed the sinuosities of the ground till they approached the outlet. This the road from Lake George to Ticonderoga crossed twice by bridges, between which the path was as a cord to the large arc made by the course of the water. Near the bridge at the lower falls, less than two miles from the fort, the French had built saw-mills, on ground which offered a strong military position. On the first of July, chap. XIII.} 1758. Montcalm sent three regiments to occupy the head of the portage; but they had been recalled. On the morning of the fifth, when a white flag on the mountains gave warning that the English were embarked, a guard of three pickets was stationed at the landingplace, and De Trepezee, with three hundred men, was sent still further forward, to watch the movements of the enemy.

After a repose of five hours, the English army, an hour before midnight, was again in motion, and by nine the next morning disembarked on the west side of the lake, about a mile above the rapids, in a cove sheltered by a point which still keeps the name of Lord Howe. The three French pickets precipitately retired.

Immediately on landing, as the enemy had burnt the bridges, the army, leaving behind its provisions, artillery and all heavy baggage, formed in four columns, the regulars in the centre and provincials on the flanks, and began its march round the bend along the west side of the outlet, over ground uneven and densely wooded. If these people, said Montcalm, do but give me time to gain the position I have chosen on the heights of Carillon, I shall beat them. The columns, led by bewildered guides, broke and jostled each other; they had proceeded about two miles, and an advanced party was near Trout Brook, when the right centre, where Lord Howe had command, suddenly came upon the party of De Trepezee, who had lost his way and for twelve hours had been wandering in the forest. The worn-out stragglers, less than three hundred in number, fought bravely, but were soon overwhelmed; some were killed; some drowned in the stream; one hundred and fifty-nine surrendered. But Lord Howe, foremost in the skir- chap. XIII.} 1758. mish, was the first to fall, expiring immediately. The grief of his fellow-soldiers and the confusion that followed his death, spoke his eulogy; Massachusetts soon after raised his monument in Westminster Abbey; America long cherished his memory.

The English passed the following night under arms in the forest. On the morning of the seventh, Abercrombie had no better plan than to draw back to the landing-place. An hour before noon, Bradstreet, with a strong detachment, rebuilt the bridges, and took possession of the ground near the saw-mills; on which the general joined him with the whole army, and encamped that night not more than a mile and a half from the enemy.

Early the next day, Abercrombie sent Clerk, the chief engineer, across the outlet to reconnoitre the French lines, which he reported to be of flimsy construction, strong in appearance only. Stark, of New Hampshire, as well as some English officers, with a keener eye and sounder judgment, saw well finished preparations of defence. But the general, apprehending that Montcalm already commanded six thousand men, and that De Levi was hastening to join him with three thousand more, gave orders, without waiting for cannon to be brought up, to storm the breastworks that very day. For that end, a triple line was formed out of reach of cannon-shot; the first consisted, on the left, of the rangers; in the centre, of the boatmen; on the right, of the light infantry; the second, of provincials, with wide openings between their regiments; the third, of the regulars. Troops of Connecticut and New Jersey formed a rear guard. During these arrangements, Sir William Johnson arrived with foul hundred and forty warriors of the Six Nations, who chap. XIII.} 1758. gazed with inactive apathy on the white men that had come so far to shed each other's blood.

On the sixth of July, Montcalm called in all his parties, which amounted to no more than two thousand eight hundred French and four hundred and fifty Canadians. That day he employed the second battalion of Berry in strengthening his post. The next day, his whole army toiled incredibly; the officers giving the example, and planting the flags on the breastwork. In the evening, De Levi returned from an intended expedition against the Mohawks, bringing with him four hundred chosen men; and at night, all bivouacked along the intrenchment. On the morning of the eighth, the drums of the French beat to arms, that the troops, now thirty-six hundred and fifty in number, might know their stations, and then, without pausing to return the fire of musketry from English light troops on the declivities of the mountain, they resumed their work. The right of their defences rested on a hillock, from which the plain between the lines and the lake was to have been flanked by four pieces of cannon; but the battery could not be finished; the left extended to a scarp surmounted by an abattis. For a hundred yards in front of the intermediate breastwork, which consisted of piles of logs, the approach was obstructed by felled trees with their branches pointing outwards, stumps, and rubbish of all sorts.

The English army, obeying the orders of a commander who remained out of sight and far behind during the action, rushed forward with fixed bayonets to carry the lines, the regulars advancing through the openings between the provincial regiments, and taking the lead. Montcalm, who stood just within the trenches, threw off his coat for the sunny work of the chap. XIII.} 1758. July afternoon, and forbade a musket to be fired till he commanded; then, as the English drew very near in three principal columns to attack simultaneously the left, the centre and the right, and became entangled among the rubbish and broken into disorder by clambering over logs and projecting limbs, at his word a sudden and incessant fire from swivels and small arms mowed down brave officers and men by hundreds. Their intrepidity made the carnage terrible. The attacks were continued all the afternoon, generally with the greatest vivacity. When the English endeavored to turn the left, Bourlamarque opposed them till he was dangerously wounded; and Montcalm, whose rapid eye watched every movement, sent reinforcements at the moment of crisis. On the right, the grenadiers and Scottish Highlanders charged for three hours without faltering and without confusion; many fell within fifteen steps of the trench; some, it was said, upon it. About five o'clock, the columns which had attacked the French centre and right, concentrated themselves on a salient point between the two; but De Levi flew from the right, and Montcalm himself brought up a reserve. At six, the two parties nearest the water turned desperately against the centre, and, being repulsed, made a last effort on the left. Thus were life and courage prodigally wasted, till the bewildered English fired on an advanced party of their own, producing hopeless dejection; and after losing, in killed and wounded, nineteen hundred and sixty-seven, chiefly regulars, they fled promiscuously.

The British general, during the confusion of the battle, cowered safely at the saw-mills, and when his presence was needed to rally the fugitives, was no- chap. XIII.} 1758. where to be found. The second in command gave no orders; while Montcalm, careful of every duty, distributed refreshments among his exhausted soldiers, cheered them by thanks to each regiment for their incredible valor, and employed the coming night in strengthening his lines.

The English still exceeded the French fourfold. Their artillery was near and could easily force a passage. The mountain over against Ticonderoga was in their possession. Had I to besiege Fort Carillon, said Montcalm, I would ask no more than six mortars and two pieces of artillery. But Abercrombie, a victim to the extremest fright and consternation, hurried the army that same evening to the landingplace with such precipitancy, that but for Bradstreet's alertness, it would have rushed into the boats in a confused mass. On the morning of the ninth the British general embarked, and did not rest till he had placed the lake between himself and Montcalm. Even then he sent artillery and ammunition to Albany for safety.

The news overwhelmed Pitt with melancholy; but Bute, who insisted that Abercrombie and the troops had done their duty, comforted himself in the numbers lost as proof of the greatest intrepidity, thinking it better to have cause for tears than blushes; and reserved all his sympathy for the broken-hearted commander. Prince George expressed his hope one day by superior help to restore the love of virtue and religion.

While Abercrombie wearied his army with lining out a useless fort, the partisans of Montcalm were present everywhere. Just after the retreat of the English, they fell upon a regiment at the Half-way chap XIII.} 1758. Brook between Fort Edward and Lake George. A fortnight later, they seized a convoy of wagoners at the same place. To intercept the French on their return, some hundred rangers scoured the forests near Woodcreek, marching in Indian file, Putnam in the rear, in front the commander Rogers, who, with a British officer, beguiled the way by firing at marks. The noise attracted hostile Indians to an ambuscade. A skirmish ensued, and Putnam, with twelve or fourteen more, was separated from the party. His comrades were scalped; in after-life he used to relate how one of the savages gashed his cheek with a tomahawk, bound him to a forest-tree, and kindled about him a crackling fire; how his thoughts glanced aside to the wife of his youth and the group of children that gambolled in his fields; when the brave French officer, Marin, happening to descry his danger, rescued him from death, to be exchanged in the autumn.

Better success awaited Bradstreet. From the majority in a council of war, he extorted a reluctant leave to proceed against Fort Frontenac. At the Oneida carrying-place, Brigadier Stanwix placed under his command twenty-seven hundred men, all Americans, more than eleven hundred of them New Yorkers, nearly seven hundred from Massachusetts. There, too, were assembled one hundred and fifty warriors of the Six Nations; among them Red Head, the renowned war-chief of Onondaga. Inspired by his eloquence in council, two-and-forty of them took Bradstreet for their friend and grasped the hatchet as his companions. At Oswego, towards which they moved with celerity, there remained scarce a vestige of the English fort; of the French there was no memorial but a large wooden cross. As the Ameri- chap. XIII.} 1758. cans gazed with extreme pleasure on the scene around them, they were told that farther west, in Genesee and Canasadaga, there were lands as fertile, rich and luxuriant as any in the universe. Crossing Lake Ontario in open boats, they landed, on the twentyfifth of August, within a mile of Fort Frontenac. It was a quadrangle, mounted with thirty pieces of cannon and sixteen small mortars. On the second day, such of the garrison as had not fled surrendered. Here, also, were military stores for Fort Duquesne and the interior dependencies, with nine armed vessels, each carrying from eight to eighteen guns. Of these, two were sent to Oswego. After razing the fortress, and destroying such vessels and stores as could not be brought off, the Americans returned to Lake George.

There the main army was wasting the season in supine inactivity. The news of the disastrous day at Ticonderoga induced Amherst, without orders, to conduct four regiments and a battalion from Louisburg. They landed in September at Boston, and at once entered on the march through the greenwood. In one of the regiments was Lieutenant Richard Montgomery, who remained near the northern lakes till 1760. When near Albany, Amherst hastened in advance, and on the fifth of October came upon the English camp. Early in November, dispatches arrived, appointing him commander-in-chief. Returning to England, Abercrombie was screened from censure, maligned the Americans, and afterwards assisted in parliament to tax the witnesses of his pusillanimity.

Canada was exhausted. Peace, peace, was the cry; no matter with what boundaries. I have not chap XIII.} 1758. lost courage, wrote Montcalm, nor have my troops; we are resolved to find our graves under the ruins of the colony.

Pitt, who had carefully studied the geography of North America, knew that the success of Bradstreet had gained the dominion of Lake Ontario and opened the avenue to Niagara; and he turned his mind from the defeat at Ticonderoga, to see if the banner of England was already waving over Fort Duquesne. For the conquest of the Ohio valley he relied mainly on the central provinces. Loudoun had reported the contumacy of Maryland, where the Assembly had insisted on an equitable assessment, as a most violent attack on his Majesty's prerogative. I am persuaded, urged Sharpe on his official correspondent in England, if the parliament of Great Britain was to compel us by an act to raise thirty thousand pounds a year, the upper class of people among us, and, indeed, all but a very few, would be well satisfied. And he sent a sketch of an act for a poll-tax on the taxable inhabitants. But that form of raising a revenue throughout America, being specially unpalatable to English owners of slaves in the West Indies, was disapproved by all in England. While the officers of Lord Baltimore were thus concerting with the Board of Trade a tax by Parliament, William Pitt, though entreated to interpose, regarded the bickerings between the proprietary and the people with calm impartiality, blaming both parties for the disputes which withheld Maryland from contributing her full share to the conquest of Fort Duquesne.

After long delays, Joseph Forbes, who had the chap. XIII.} 1758. command as brigadier saw twelve hundred and fifty Highlanders arrive from South Carolina. They were joined by three hundred and fifty Royal Americans. Pennsylvania, animated by an unusual military spirit which seized even Benjamin West, known afterwards as a painter, and Anthony Wayne then a boy of thirteen, raised for the expedition twenty-seven hundred men. Their senior officer was John Armstrong, already famed for his display of courage and skill at Kittanning. With Washington as their leader, Virginia sent two regiments of about nineteen hundred, whom their beloved commander praised as really fine corps. Yet, vast as were the preparations, Forbes would never, but for Washington, have seen the Ohio.

The Virginia chief who at first was stationed at Fort Cumberland, clothed a part of his force in the hunting shirt and Indian blanket, which least impeded the progress of the soldier through the forest; and he entreated that the army might advance promptly along Braddock's road. But the expedition was not merely a military enterprise; it was also the march of civilization towards the West, and was made memorable by the construction of a better avenue to the Ohio. This required long continued labor. September had come, before Forbes, whose life was slowly ebbing, was borne in a litter as far as Raystown. See how our time has been misspent, cried Washington, angry at delay, and obstinately opposed to the opening the new route which Armstrong, of Pennsylvania, as obstinately advocated. But Forbes preserved a clear head and a firm will, or as he himself expressed it, was actuated by the spirits of William Pitt; and he decided to keep up the direct connection with Phila- chap XIII.} 1758. delphia as essential to present success and future security.

While Washington, with most of the Virginians, joined the main army, Bouquet was sent forward with two thousand men to Loyal Hanna. There he received intelligence that the French post was defended by but eight hundred men, of whom three hundred were Indians. Dazzled by vague hopes of glory, Bouquet, without the knowledge of his superior officer, entrusted to Major Grant, of Montgomery's battalion, a party of eight hundred, chiefly Highlanders and Virginians, of Washington's command, with orders to reconnoitre the enemy's position. The men, who were all accustomed to the mountains, and of whom the Virginians were clad in the light Indian garb, easily scaled the successive ridges, and took post on a hill near Fort Duquesne. Not knowing that Aubry had arrived with a reinforcement of four hundred men from Illinois, Grant divided his troops in order to tempt the enemy into an ambuscade, and at daybreak of the fourteenth of September, discovered himself by beating his drums. A large body of French and Indians, commanded by the gallant Aubry, immediately poured out of the fort, and with surprising celerity attacked his troops in detail, never allowing him time to get them together. They gave way and ran, leaving two hundred and ninety-five killed or prisoners. Even Grant, who in the folly of his vanity had but a few moments before been confident of an easy victory, gave himself up as a captive; but a small party of Virginians, under the command of Thomas Bullitt, arrested the precipitate flight, and saved the detachment from utter ruin. Of these, on their return to chap. XIII.} 1758. the camp, the coolness and courage were publicly extolled by Forbes; and in the opinion of the whole army, regulars as well as provincials, their superiority of discipline reflected honor on Washington.

Not till the fifth of November did Forbes himself reach Loyal Hanna; and there a council of war determined for that season to advance no further But on the twelfth, Washington gained from three prisoners exact information of the weakness of the French garrison on the Ohio, and it was resolved to proceed. Two thousand five hundred men were picked for the service. For the sake of speed, they left behind every convenience except a blanket and a knapsack, and of the artillery took only a light train.

Washington, who, pleading a long intimacy with these woods and familiarity with all the passes and difficulties, had solicited the responsibility of leading the party, was appointed to command the advance. brigade, the pioneers of America in its course to the West. His party was of provincials, and they toiled cheerfully at his side. Forbes, now sinking into the grave, had consumed fifty days in marching as many miles from Bedford to Loyal Hanna. Fifty miles of the wilderness still remained to be opened in the late season, through a soil of deep clay, or over rocky hills white with snow, by troops poorly fed and poorly clad. But Washington infused his own spirit into the men whom he commanded, and who thought light of hardships and dangers while under the particular directions of the man they knew and loved. Every encampment was so planned as to hasten the issue. On the thirteenth the veteran Armstrong, who had proved his superior skill in leading troops rapidly and secretly through the wilderness, pushed forward with one chap. XIII.} 1758. thousand men, and in five days threw up defences within seventeen miles of Fort Duquesne. On the fifteenth, Washington, who followed, was on Chestnut Ridge; on the seventeenth, at Bushy Run. All, he reported, are in fine spirits and anxious to go on. On the nineteenth, Washington left Armstrong to wait for the Highlanders, and, taking the lead, dispelled by his vigilance every apprehension of the enemy's approach. When on the twenty-fourth, the general encamped his whole party among the hills of Turkey Creek within ten miles of Fort Duquesne, the disheartened garrison, then about five hundred in number, set fire to the fort in the night time, and by the light of its flames went down the Ohio. On Saturday, the twenty-fifth of November, the little army moved on in one body, and at evening the youthful hero could point out to Armstrong and the hardy provincials, who marched in front, to the Highlanders and Royal Americans, to Forbes himself, the meeting of the rivers; and the British flag was planted in triumph over the ruined bastions of the fortress. As the banners of England floated over the waters, the place, at the suggestion of Forbes, was with one voice called Pittsburg. It is the most enduring monument to William Pitt. America raised to his name statues that have been wrongfully broken, and granite piles, of which not one stone remains upon another; but, long as the Monongahela and the Alleghany shall flow to form the Ohio, long as the English tongue shall be the language of freedom in the boundless valley which their waters traverse, his name shall stand inscribed on the gateway of the West.

The twenty-sixth was observed as a day of public thanksgiving for success, and when was success of chap. XIII.} 1758. greater importance? The connection between the sea side and the world beyond the mountains was established for ever; a vast territory was secured; the civilization of liberty and commerce and religion was henceforth to maintain the undisputed possession of the Ohio. These dreary deserts, wrote Forbes, will soon be the richest and most fertile of any possessed by the British in North America.

On the twenty-eighth, a numerous detachment went to Braddock's field, where their slaughtered comrades, after more than three years, lay yet unburied in the forest. Here and there a skeleton was found resting on the trunk of a fallen tree, as if a wounded man had sunk down in the attempt to fly In some places, wolves and crows had left signs of their ravages; in others, the blackness of ashes marked the scene of the revelry of cannibals. The trees still showed branches rent by cannon; trunks dotted with musket balls. Where the havoc had been the fiercest, bones lay whitening in confusion. None could be recognised, except that the son of Sir Peter Halket was called by the shrill whistle of a savage to the great tree near which his father and his brother had been seen to fall together; and while Benjamin West and a company of Pennsylvanians formed a circle around, the Indians removed the thick covering of leaves, till they bared the relics of the youth lying across those of the older officer. The frames of the two, thus united in death, were wrapped in a Highland plaid, and consigned to one separate grave, amidst the ceremonies that belong to the burial of the brave. The bones of the undistinguishable multitude, more than four hundred and fifty in number, were indiscrimin- chap. XIII.} 1758. ately cast into the ground, no one knowing for whom specially to weep. The chilling gloom of the forest at the coming of winter, the religious awe that mastered the savages, the grief of the son fainting at the fearful recognition of his father, the groups of soldiers sorrowing over the ghastly ruins of an army, formed a sombre scene of desolation. How is all changed! The banks of the broad and placid Monongahela smile with orchards and teeming harvests and gardens; with workshops and villas; the victories of peace have effaced the memorials of war; a railroad that sends its cars over the Alleghanies in fewer hours than the army had taken weeks for its un-resisted march, passes through the scene where the carnage was the worst; and in all that region no sounds now prevail but of life and activity and joy.

Two regiments composed of Pennsylvanians, Marylanders, and Virginians, remained as a garrison, under the command of Mercer; and for Washington, who at twenty-six retired from the army after having done so much to advance the limits of his country, the next few weeks were filled with happiness and honor. The people of Frederictown had chosen him their representative. On the last day of the year, the affectionate officers who had been under him expressed, with sincerity and openness of soul, their grief at the loss of such an excellent commander, such a sincere friend, and so affable a companion, a man so experienced in military affairs, one so renowned for patriotism, conduct and courage. They publicly acknowledged to have found in him a leader, who had a quick discernment and invariable regard for merit, an earnestness to inculcate genuine sentiments of true honor and passion for glory; chap. XIII.} 1759. whose example inspired alacrity and cheerfulness in encountering severest toils; whose zeal for strict discipline and order gave to his troops a superiority which even the regulars and provincials publicly acknowledged. On the sixth of the following January, the woman of his choice was bound with him in wedlock. The first month of union was hardly over, when, in the House of Burgesses, the speaker, obeying the resolve of the House, publicly gave him the thanks of Virginia for his services to his country; and as the young man, taken by surprise, hesitated for words, in his attempt to reply,—Sit down, interposed the speaker; your modesty is equal to your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language I possess. After these crowded weeks, Washington, no more a soldier, retired to Mount Vernon with the experience of five years of assiduous service. Yet not the quiet of rural life by the side of the Potomac, not the sweets of conjugal love, could turn his fixed mind from the love of glory; and he revealed his passion by adorning his rooms with busts of Eugene and Marlborough, of Alexander, of Caesar, of Charles the Twelfth; and of one only among living men, the king of Prussia, whose struggles he watched with painful sympathy. Thus Washington had ever before his eyes the image of Frederic. Both were eminently founders of nations, childless heroes, fathers only to their countries. The one beat down the dominion of the aristocracy of the Middle Ages by a military monarchy; the Providence which rules the world had elected the other to guide the fiery coursers of revolution along nobler paths, and to check them firmly at the goal

Chapter 14:

The conquest of Canada—Pitt's ministry continued.

1759.

America more and more drew the attention of chap. XIV.} 1759. statesmen; and Pitt, who was well informed, and, though at that time inaccessible to Franklin, had, occasionally, through his under-secretaries, continued to profit by Franklin's wisdom, resolved that the boundless North of that continent should be a conquest for his country. With astonishing unanimity, parliament voted for the year twelve millions sterling, and such forces, by sea and land, as till those days had been unimagined in England. This is Pitt's doing, said Chesterfield, and it is marvellous in our eyes. He declares only what he would have them do, and they do it.

In the arrangements for the campaign, the secretary disregarded seniority of rank. Stanwix was to complete the occupation of the posts at the West from Pittsburg to Lake Erie; Prideaux to reduce Fort Niagara; and Amherst, now commander-in-chief and the sinecure governor of Virginia, to advance with the main army to Lake Champlain. To command the fleet which was to support the attack on Quebec, chap. XIV.} 1759. Pitt selected the generous and kind-hearted Saunders, an officer who to unaffected modesty and steady courage joined the love of civil freedom. The command of the army in the river St. Lawrence was conferred on Wolfe, who, like Washington, could have found happiness in retirement. His nature, at once affectionate and aspiring, mingled the kindliest gentleness with an impetuous courage, which was never exhausted or appalled. He loved letters and wrote well; he had studied the science of war profoundly, joining to experience a creative mind; and the vehement passion for immortal glory overcame his motives to repose. I feel called upon, he had once written, on occasion of his early promotion, to justify the notice taken of me by such exertions and exposure of myself as will probably lead to my fall. And the day before departing for his command, in the inspiring presence of Pitt, he forgot danger, glory, every thing but the overmastering purpose to devote himself for his country.

All the while, ships from every part of the world were bringing messages of the success of British arms. In the preceding April, a small English squadron made a conquest of Senegal; in December, negroes crowded on the heights of the island of Goree to gaze on the strange spectacle of war, and to witness the surrender of its forts to Commodore Augustus Keppel. In the Indian seas, Pococke maintained the superiority of England. In the West Indies, in January, 1759, a fleet of ten line-of-battle ships, with six thousand effective troops, made a fruitless attack on Martinico; but, sailing for Guadaloupe, the best of the West India possessions of France, after the losses and daring deeds of more than three months, in May, chap. XIV.} 1759. it gained, by capitulation, that delightful and well watered island, whose harbor can screen whole navies from hurricanes, whose position gives the command of the neighboring seas.

From the continent of Europe came the joyous assurance, that a victory at Minden had protected Hanover. The French, having repulsed Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick at Frankfort, pursued their advantage, occupied Cassel, compelled Munster to capitulate, and took Minden by assault; so that Hanover could be saved only by a victory. Contades and Broglie, the French generals, with their superior force, were allured from their strong position, and accepted battle on narrow and inconvenient ground, on which their horse occupied the centre, their foot the wings. The French cavalry charged, but, swept by artillery and the rolling fire of the English and Hanoverian infantry, they were repulsed. At the moment, Ferdinand, whose daring forethought had detached the hereditary prince of Brunswick with ten thousand men to cut off the retreat, sent a message to the commander of the British cavalry, Lord George Sackville, by a German aid-de-camp. Lord George affected not to understand. Ligonier came next, with express directions that he should bring up the cavalry and attack the French, who were faltering. See the confusion he is in, cried Sloper to Ligonier; for God's sake repeat your orders. Fitzroy arrived with a third order from Ferdinand. This cannot be so, said Lord George; would he have me break the line? Fitzroy urged the command. Do not be in a hurry, said Lord George. I am out of breath with galloping, replied young Fitzroy, which makes me speak quick; but my chap. XIV.} 1759. orders are positive; the French are in confusion; here is a glorious opportunity for the English to distinguish themselves. It is impossible, repeated Lord George, that the Prince could mean to break the line. I give you his orders, rejoined Fitzroy, word for word. Who will be the guide to the cavalry asked Lord George. I, said the brave boy, and led the way. Lord George, pretending to be puzzled, was reminded by Smith, one of his aids, of the necessity of immediate obedience; on which, he sent Smith to lead on the British cavalry, while he himself rode to the Prince for explanation. Ferdinand, in scorn, renewed his orders to the Marquis of Granby, the second in command, and was obeyed with alacrity; but the decisive moment was lost. Lord George's fall was prodigious, said Horace Walpole; nobody stood higher; nobody had more ambition or more sense. Pitt softened his misfortune with all the offices of humanity, but condemned his conduct. George the Second dismissed him from all his posts. A courtmartial, the next year, found him guilty of disobeying orders, and unfit for employment in any military capacity; on which, the king struck his name out of the council-book and forbade his appearance at court. The ability of Sackville had been greatly overrated. He was restless, and loved intrigue; ambitious, opinionated, and full of envy; when he spoke, it was arrogantly, as if to set others right; his nature combined haughtiness and meanness of spirit; without fidelity, fixed principles, or logical clearness of mind, unfit to conduct armies or affairs, he joined cowardice with love of superiority and malevolence.

Lord Mahon's History of England, IV. 271. George III. Doubted Sackville's courage. See George III. to Lord North.

In America success depended on union. The chap. XIV.} 1759. Board of Trade was compelled to adjourn questions of internal authority; while Pitt won the free services of the Americans by respecting their liberties and alleviating their excessive burdens from the British exchequer. Every colony north of Maryland seconded his zeal. The military spirit especially pervaded New York and all New England, so that there was not one of their villages but grew familiar with war from the experience of its own people. Massachusetts, though it was gasping under the fruitless efforts of former years, sent into the field, to the frontier, and to garrisons, more than seven thousand men, or nearly one sixth part of all who were able to bear arms. Connecticut, which distinguished itself by disproportionate exertions, raised, as in the previous year, five thousand men. To meet the past expense, the little colony incurred heavy debts, and, learning political economy from native thrift, appointed taxes on property to discharge them.

The whole continent was exerting its utmost strength, and eager to prove its loyalty. New Jersey, in which the fencible men in time of peace would have been about fifteen thousand, had already lost one thousand men, and yet voted to raise one thousand more.

Gov. Bernard (successor to Belcher) to Secretary W. Pitt, Perth Amboy, 20 March, 1759.

Its yearly expenditure for the service of the war was equal to about five dollars for each living being in the province. Such was the aid willingly furnished to an administration which respected colonial liberty.

To encounter the preparations of England and America, Canada received scanty supplies of provi- chap. XIV.} 1759. sions from France. The king, wrote the minister to Montcalm, the king relies on your zeal and obstinacy of courage. But Montcalm informed Belle-Isle plainly, that, without unexpected good fortune, or great fault in the enemy, Canada must be taken this campaign, or certainly the next. Its census showed but a population of about eighty-two thousand, of whom not more than seven thousand men could serve as soldiers; the eight French battalions counted but thirty-two hundred; while the English were thought to have almost fifty thousand men in arms. There was a continuing scarcity in the land; the fields were hardly cultivated; the domestic animals were failing; the soldiers were unpaid; paper money had increased to thirty millions of livres, and would that year be increased twelve millions more; while the civil officers were making haste to enrich themselves before the surrender, which was to screen their frauds.

The western brigade, commanded by Prideaux, composed of two battalions from New York, a battalion of Royal Americans, and two British regiments, with a detachment of royal artillery, and reinforcements of Indian auxiliaries under Sir William Johnson, was the first to engage actively. Fort Niagara stood, as its ruins yet stand, on the fiat and narrow promontory round which the deep and rapid Niagara sweeps into the lower lake. There La Salle, first of Europeans, had driven a light palisade. There Denonville had constructed a fortress and left a garrison for a winter. It commanded the portage between Ontario and Erie, and gave the dominion of the western fur-trade. Leaving a detachment with Colonel Haldimand to construct a tenable post at the chap. XIV.} 1759. mouth of the wild Oswego, the united American, British, and Indian forces embarked, on the first day of July, on Lake Ontario, and landed without opposition at one of its inlets, six miles exist of the junction of the Niagara. The fortress on the peninsula was easily invested.

Aware of the importance of the station, D'Aubry collected from Detroit and Erie, Le Boeuf and Venango, a little army of twelve hundred men, larger than that which defeated Braddock, and marched to the rescue. Prideaux made the best dispositions to frustrate the design; but, on the fifteenth of July, he was killed by the bursting of a cohorn, leaving his honors immature. Sir William Johnson, who succeeded to the command, commemorated his rare abilities and zeal, and carefully executed his plans. He posted the British army on the left, above the fort, so as to intercept the approach of the enemy and to support the guard in the trenches. On the morning of the twenty-fourth of July, the French made their appearance. The Mohawks gave a sign for a parley with the French Indians; but, as it was not returned, they raised the war-whoop. While the regulars advanced to meet the French in front, the English Indians gained their flanks and threw them into disorder; on which, the English rushed to the charge with irresistible fury. The French broke, retreated, and were pursued. The carnage continued till fatigue stayed its hand. The bodies of the dead lay uncounted among the forests. On the next day, the garrison, consisting of about six hundred men, capitulated. Thus did New York extend its limits to the Niagara River and Lake Erie. The victory was so decisive, that the officer and troops chap. XIV.} 1759. sent by Stanwix from Pittsburg took possession of the French posts as far as Erie without resistance.

The success of the English on Lake Ontario drew De Levi, the second in military command in New France, from before Quebec. He ascended beyond the rapids, and endeavored to guard against a descent to Montreal by occupying the passes of the river near Ogdensburg. The number of men at his disposal was too few to accomplish the object; and Amherst directed Gage, whom he detached as successor to Prideaux, to take possession of the post. But Gage made excuses for neglecting the orders, and whiled away his harvest-time of honor.

Meantime, the commander-in-chief assembled the main army at Lake George. The tranquil temper of Amherst was never ruffled by collisions with the Americans; his displeasure, when excited, was concealed under apparent apathy or impenetrable selfcommand. His judgment was slow, but safe; his mind solid, but never inventive. Taciturn, and stoical, he displayed respectable abilities as a commander, without fertility of resources, or daring enterprise. In five British regiments, with the Royal Americans, he had fifty-seven hundred and fortythree regulars; of provincials and Gage's light infantry he had nearly as many more. On the longest day in June, he reached the lake, and, with useless precaution, traced out the ground for a fort, On the twenty-first of July, the invincible flotilla moved in four columns down the water, with artillery, and more than eleven thousand men. On the twenty-second, the army disembarked on the eastern shore, nearly opposite the landing-place of Abercrom- chap. XIV.} 1759. bie; and that night, after a skirmish of the advanced guard, they lay under arms at the saw-mills. The next day, the French army under Bourlamarque, leaving a garrison of but four hundred in Fort Carillon, deserted their lines, of which possession was immediately taken.

Conscious of their inability to resist the British artillery and army, the French, on the twenty-sixth, abandoned Ticonderoga, and, five days afterwards, retreated from Crown Point to intrench themselves on Isle-aux-Noix. The whole mass of the people of Canada had been called to arms; the noblesse piqued themselves much on the antiquity of their families, their own military glory and that of their ancestors;

Murray to Shelburne, 30 August, 1766.

nor had the world known greater courage and loyalty than they displayed. So general had been the levy, that there were not men enough left to reap the fields round Montreal; and, to prevent starvation, women, old men, and children were ordered to gather in the harvest alike for rich and poor. Yet, as the chief force was with Montcalm near Quebec, as the Indians no longer thronged to the camp of the French, the army that opposed Amherst had but one-fourth of his numbers, and could not be recruited. An immediate descent on Montreal was universally expected. In a fortnight, Crown Point was occupied, without opposition. Amherst must advance, or Wolfe may perish. But, after repairing Ticonderoga, he wasted labor in building fortifications at Crown Point, which the conquest of Canada would render useless. Thus he let all August, all September, and ten days of October go by, before boats were ready; and when at chap. XIV.} 1759. last he embarked, and victory, not without honor, might still have been within his grasp, he received messengers from Quebec, and turned back, having done nothing but occupy and repair deserted forts. Sending a detachment against the St. Francis Indians, he himself went into winter-quarters, leaving his unfinished work for another costly campaign. Amherst was a brave and faithful officer, but his intellect was dull. He gained a great name, because New France was occupied during his chief command; but, had Wolfe resembled him, Quebec would not have fallen.

As soon as the floating masses of ice permitted, June. the forces for the expedition against Quebec had repaired to Louisburg; and already Wolfe, by his activity and zeal, his good judgment and the clearness of his orders, inspired unbounded confidence. His army consisted of eight regiments, two battalions of Royal Americans, three companies of rangers, artillery, and a brigade of engineers,—in all, about eight thousand men; the fleet under Saunders had twoand-twenty ships of the line, and as many frigates and armed vessels. On board of one of the ships was Jervis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent; another, which followed, bore as master James Cook, the navigator, who was destined to explore and reveal the unknown paths and thousand isles of the Pacific. The brigades had for their commanders the brave, open-hearted, and liberal Robert Monckton, afterwards governor of New York and conqueror of Martinico; George Townshend, elder brother of Charles Townshend, soon to succeed his father in the peerage, and become known as a legislator for America, a man of quick perception, but unsafe judgment; and the rash and inconsider- chap. XIV.} 1759. June. ate James Murray. For his adjutant-general, Wolfe selected Isaac Barre, an old associate at Louisburg; an Irishman of humble birth, eloquent, ambitious, and fearless. The grenadiers of the army were formed into a corps, commanded by Colonel Guy Carleton; a detachment of light infantry were to receive orders from Lieutenant-Colonel, afterwards Sir William, Howe.

On the twenty-sixth of June, the whole armament arrived, without the least accident, off the Isle of Orleans, on which, the next day, they disembarked. A little south of west the cliff of Quebec was seen distinctly, seemingly impregnable, rising precipitously in the midst of one of the grandest scenes in nature. To protect this guardian citadel of New France, Montcalm had of regular troops no more than six wasted battalions; of Indian warriors few appeared, the wary savages preferring the security of neutrals; the Canadian militia gave him the superiority in numbers; but he put his chief confidence in the natural strength of the country. Above Quebec, the high promontory on which the upper town is built expands into an elevated plain, having towards the river the steepest acclivities. For nine miles or more above the city, as far as Cape Rouge, every landing-place was intrenched and protected. The river St. Charles, after meandering through a fertile valley, sweeps the rocky base of the town, which it covers by expanding into sedgy marshes. Nine miles below Quebec, the impetuous Montmorenci, after fretting itself a whirlpool route, and leaping for miles down the steps of a rocky bed, rushes with velocity towards the ledge, over which, falling two hundred chap. XIV.} 1759. June. and fifty feet, it pours its fleecy cataract into the chasm.

As Wolfe disembarked on the Isle of Orleans, what scene could be more imposing? On his left lay at anchor the fleet with the numerous transports; the tents of his army stretched across the island; the intrenched troops of France, having their centre at the village of Beauport, extended from the Montmorenci to the St. Charles; the city of Quebec, garrisoned by five battalions, bounded the horizon. At midnight, on the twenty-eighth, the short darkness was lighted up by a fleet of fire-ships, that, after a furious storm of wind, came down with the tide in the proper direction. But the British sailors grappled with them and towed them free of the shipping.

The river was Wolfe's; the men-of-war made it so; and, being master of the deep water, he also had the superiority on the south shore of the St. Lawrence. In the night of the twenty-ninth, Monckton, with four battalions, having crossed the south channel, occupied Point Levi; and where the mighty current, which below the town expands as a bay, narrows to a deep stream of but a mile in width, batteries of mortar and cannon were constructed. The citizens of Quebec, foreseeing the ruin of their July. houses, volunteered to pass over the river and destroy the works; but, at the trial, their courage failed them, and they retreated. The English, by the discharge of red-hot balls and shells, set on fire fifty houses in a night, demolished the lower town, and injured the upper. But the citadel was beyond their reach, and every avenue from the river to the cliff was too strongly intrenched for an assault.

As yet no real progress had been made. Wolfe was eager for battle; being willing to risk all his chap. XIV.} 1759. July. hopes on the issue. He saw that the eastern bank of the Montmorenci was higher than the ground occupied by Montcalm, and, on the ninth of July, he crossed the north channel and encamped there; but the armies and their chiefs were still divided by the river precipitating itself down its rocky way in impassable eddies and rapids. Three miles in the interior, a ford was found; but the opposite bank was steep, woody, and well intrenched. Not a spot on the line of the Montmorenci for miles into the interior, nor on the St. Lawrence to Quebec, was left unprotected by the vigilance of the inaccessible Montcalm.

The general proceeded to reconnoitre the shore above the town. In concert with Saunders, on the eighteenth of July, he sailed along the well defended bank from Montmorenci to the St. Charles; he passed the deep and spacious harbor, which, at four hundred miles from the sea, can shelter a hundred ships of the line; he neared the high cliff of Cape Diamond, towering like a bastion over the waters, and surmounted by the banner of the Bourbons; he coasted along the craggy wall of rock that extends beyond the citadel; he marked the outline of the precipitous hill that forms the north bank of the river,—and every where he beheld a natural fastness, vigilantly defended, intrenchments, cannon, boats, and floating batteries guarding every access. Had a detachment landed between the city and Cape Rouge, it would have encountered the danger of being cut off before it could receive support. He would have risked a landing at St. Michael's Cove, three miles above the city, but the enemy prevented him by planting artillery and a mortar to play upon chap. XIV.} 1759. July. the shipping.

Meantime, at midnight, on the twenty-eighth of July, the French sent down a raft of fire-stages, consisting of nearly a hundred pieces; but these, like the fire-ships a month before, did but light up the river, without injuring the British fleet. Scarcely a day passed but there were skirmishes of the English with the Indians and Canadians, who were sure to tread stealthily in the footsteps of every exploring party.

Wolfe returned to Montmorenci. July was almost gone, and he had made no effective advances. He resolved on an engagement. The Montmorenci, after falling over a perpendicular rock, flows for three hundred yards, amidst clouds of spray and rainbow glories, in a gentle stream to the St. Lawrence. Near the junction, the river may, for a few hours of the tide, be passed on foot. It was planned that two brigades should ford the Montmorenci at the proper time of the tide, while Monckton's regiments should cross the St. Lawrence in boats from Point Levi. The signal was made, but some of the boats grounded on a ledge of rocks that runs out into the river. While the seamen were getting them off, and the enemy were firing a vast number of shot and shells, Wolfe, with some of the navy officers as companions, selected a landing-place; and his desperate courage thought it not yet too late to begin the attack. Thirteen companies of grenadiers, and two hundred of the second battalion of the Royal Americans, who got first on shore, not waiting for support, ran hastily towards the intrenchments, and were repulsed in such disorder that they could not again come into line; though Monckton's regiments had chap. XIV.} 1759. July. arrived, and had formed with the coolness of invincible valor. But hours hurried by; night was near; the clouds of midsummer gathered heavily, as if for a storm; the tide rose; and Wolfe, wiser than Frederic at Colin, ordered a timely retreat. A strand of deep mud, a hill-side, steep, and in many places impracticable, the heavy fire of a brave, numerous, and well protected enemy, were obstacles which intrepidity and discipline could not overcome. In general orders, Wolfe censured the impetuosity of the grenadiers; he praised the coolness of Monckton's regiments, as able alone to beat back the whole Canadian army.

This severe check, in which four hundred lives were lost, happened on the last day of July. Murray was next sent, with twelve hundred men, above the Aug. town, to destroy the French ships and open a communication with Amherst. Twice he attempted a landing on the north shore, without success; at Deschambault, a place of refuge for women and children, he won advantages over a guard of invalid soldiers; and learned that Niagara had surrendered; that the French had abandoned Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The eyes of Wolfe were strained to see Amherst approach. Vain hope! The commander-in-chief, though opposed by no more than three thousand men, was loitering at Crown Point, nor did even a messenger from him arrive. Wolfe was alone to struggle with difficulties which every hour made more appalling. The numerous body of armed men under Montcalm could not, he said, he called an army; but the French had the strongest country, perhaps, in the world, on which chap. XIV.} 1759. Aug. to rest the defence of the town. Their boats were numerous, and weak points were guarded by floating batteries. The keen eye of the Indian prevented surprise. The vigilance and hardihood of the Canadians made intrenchments every where necessary. The peasantry were zealous to defend their homes, language, and religion. Old men of seventy and boys of fifteen fired at the English detachments from the edges of the wood. Every one able to bear arms was in the field. Little quarter was given on either side. Thus for two months the British fleet had ridden idly at anchor; the army had lain in their tents. The feeble frame of Wolfe sunk under the energy of his restless spirit, and the pain of anxious inactivity.

Yet, while disabled by fever, he laid before the brigadiers three several and equally desperate methods of attacking Montcalm in his intrenchments at Beauport. Meeting at Monckton's quarters, they wisely and unanimously gave their opinions against them all, and advised to convey four or five thousand men above the town, and thus draw Montcalm from his impregnable situation to an open action. Wolfe acquiesced in their proposal, and, with despair in his heart, yet as one conscious that he lived under the eye of Pitt and of his country, he prepared to carry it into effect. Attended by the Admiral, he examined once more the citadel: with a view to a general assault. Although every one of the five passages from the lower to the upper town was carefully intrenched, Saunders was willing to join in any hazard for the public service; but I could not propose to him, said Wolfe, an undertaking of so dangerous a nature and promising so little success. He had the whole chap. XIV.} 1759. Sept. force of Canada to oppose, and, by the nature of the river, the fleet could render no assistance. In this situation, wrote Wolfe to Pitt, on the second of September, there is such a choice of difficulties, that I am myself at a loss how to determine. The affairs of Great Britain require most vigorous measures; but then the courage of a handful of brave men should be exerted only where there is some hope. England read the dispatch with dismay, and feared to hear further tidings.

Securing the posts on the Isle of Orleans and opposite Quebec, he marched, with the army, on the fifth and sixth of September, from Point Levi, to which place he had transferred all the troops from Montmorenci, and embarked them in transports that had passed the town for the purpose. On the three following days, Admiral Holmes, with the ships, ascended the river to amuse Bougainville, who had been sent up the north shore to watch the movements of the British army, and prevent a landing. New France began to feel a sentiment of joy, believing the worst dangers of the campaign over. De Levi, the second officer in command, was sent to protect Montreal with a detachment, it was said, of three thousand men. Summer, which in that climate hurries through the sky, was over; and the British fleet must soon withdraw from the river. My constitution, wrote the General to Holdernesse on the ninth, just four days before his death, is entirely ruined, without the consolation of having done any considerable service to the state, and without any prospect of it.

But, in the mean time, Wolfe applied himself in- chap. XIV.} 1759. Sept. tently to reconnoitring the north shore above Quebec. Nature had given him good eyes, as well as a warmth of temper to follow first impressions.

Wolfe to Win. Rickson, 1 Dec., 1758.

He himself discovered the cove which now bears his name, where the bending promontories almost form a basin with a very narrow margin, over which the hill rises precipitously. He saw the path that wound up the steep, though so narrow that two men could hardly march in it abreast;

Vice Admiral Saunders to Secretary Pitt, 20 Sept., 1759.

and he knew, by the number of tents which he counted on the summit, that the Canadian post which guarded it could not exceed a hundred. Here he resolved to land his army by surprise. To mislead the enemy, his troops were kept far above the town, while Saunders, as if an attack was intended at Beauport, set Cook, the great mariner, with others, to sound the water and plant buoys along that shore.

The day and night of the twelfth were employed in preparations. The autumn evening was bright; and the General, under the clear starlight, visited his stations, to make his final inspection, and utter his last words of encouragement. As he passed from ship to ship, he spoke to those in the boat with him of the poet Gray, and the Elegy in a Country Churchyard. I, said he, would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow;

I owe my knowledge of this incident to J. C. Fisher, of Quebec; to whose personal kindness I am indebted for explanations given me on the battle ground itself. The Picture of Quebec, published by Hawkins, in 1834, is indebted to him for its historical value.

and while the oars struck the river as it rippled in the silence of the night air under the flowing tide, he chap. XIV.} 1759. Sept. repeated: The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, Sept. And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inexorable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Every officer knew his appointed duty, when, at one o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of September, Wolfe, with Monckton and Murray, and about half the forces, set off in boats, and, without sail or oars, glided down with the tide. In three quarters of an hour the ships followed, and, though the night had become dark, aided by the rapid current, they reached the cove just in time to cover the landing. Wolfe and the troops with him leaped on shore; the light infantry, who found themselves borne by the current a little below the intrenched path, clambered up the steep hill, staying themselves by the roots and boughs of the maple and spruce and ash trees that covered the precipitous declivity, and, after a little firing, dispersed the picket which guarded the height. The rest ascended safely by the pathway. A battery of four guns on the left was abandoned to Colonel Howe. When Townshend's division disembarked, the English had already gained one of the roads to Quebec, and, advancing in front of the forest, Wolfe stood at daybreak with his invincible battalions on the plains of Abraham, the battlefield of empire.

It can be but a small party, come to burn a few houses and retire, said Montcalm, in amazement as the news reached him in his intrenchments the other side of the St. Charles; but, obtaining better information,—Then, he cried, they have at last chap. XIV.} 1759. Sept. got to the weak side of this miserable garrison; we must give battle and crush them before mid-day. And before ten the two armies, equal in numbers, each being composed of less than five thousand men, were ranged in presence of one another for battle. The English, not easily accessible from intervening shallow ravines and rail fences, were all regulars, perfect in discipline, terrible in their fearless enthusiasm, thrilling with pride at their morning's success, commanded by a man whom they obeyed with confidence and love. The doomed and devoted Montcalm had what Wolfe had called but five weak French battalions, of less than two thousand men, mingled with disorderly peasantry,

Three several French accounts represent Montcalm's forces in the battle as only equal, or even inferior, to the British. Augement Impartial sur les Operations Militaires de la Campagne en Canada en 1759, 5, printed at Quebec in 1840. Compare also, in the New York Paris Papers, Extrait Journal, tenu à l'armee, &c., and the letter of Bigot to the Minister, of October 25, 1759. Knox, in Journal, i., 74, which seems to be followed in the New Picture of Quebec, 345, makes the number of Canadian militia in the battle 5,000. But Bougainville had 2,000 up the river; 1,500 remained at the camp with Vaudreuil; De Levi had also been sent with a detachment to as-sist in opposing Amherst. There d'un were not Indians enough with the French to be of moment. In the summer of 1837, I examined the country round Quebec.

formed on ground which commanded the position of the English. The French had three little pieces of artillery; the English one or two. The two armies cannonaded each other for nearly an hour; when Montcalm, having summoned Bougainville to his aid, and dispatched messenger after messenger for De Vaudreuil, who had fifteen hundred men at the camp, to come up, before he should be driven from the ground, endeavored to flank the British and crowd them down the high bank of the river. Wolfe counteracted the movement by detaching Townshend with Amherst's regi- chap. XIV.} 1759. Sept. ment, and afterwards a part of the royal Americans, who formed on the left with a double front.

Waiting no longer for more troops, Montcalm led Sept the French army impetuously to the attack. The ill-disciplined companies broke by their precipitation and the unevenness of the ground; and fired by platoons, without unity. The English, especially the forty-third and forty-seventh, where Monckton stood, received the shock with calmness; and after having, at Wolfe's command, reserved their fire till their enemy was within forty yards, their line began a regular, rapid, and exact discharge of musketry. Montcalm was present every where, braving danger, wounded, but cheering by his example. The second in command, De Sennezergues, an associate in glory at Ticonderoga, was killed. The brave but untried Canadians, flinching from a hot fire in the open field, began to waver; and, so soon as Wolfe, placing himself at the head of the twenty-eighth and the Louisburg grenadiers, charged with bayonets, they every where gave way. Of the English officers, Carleton was wounded; Barre, who fought near Wolfe, received in the head a ball which destroyed the power of vision of one eye, and ultimately made him blind. Wolfe, also, as he led the charge, was wounded in the wrist, but still pressing forward, he received a second ball; and, having decided the day, was struck a third time, and mortally, in the breast. Support me, he cried to an officer near him: let not my brave fellows see me drop. He was carried to the rear, and they brought him water to quench his thirst. They run, they run, spoke the officer on whom he leaned. Who run? asked Wolfe, as his life was fast ebbing. The French, replied the offi- chap. XIV.} 1759. Sept. cer, give way every where. What, cried the expiring hero, do they run already? Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton; bid him march Webb's regiment with all speed to Charles River to cut off the fugitives. Four days before, he had looked forward to early death with dismay. Now, God be praised, I die happy. These were his words as his spirit escaped in the blaze of his glory. Night, silence, the rushing tide, veteran discipline, the sure inspiration of genius, had been his allies; his battle-field, high over the ocean-river, was the grandest theatre on earth for illustrious deeds; his victory, one of the most momentous in the annals of mankind, gave to the English tongue and the institutions of the Germanic race the unexplored and seemingly infinite West and North. He crowded into a few hours actions that would have given lustre to length of life; and filling his day with greatness, completed it before its noon.

Monckton, the first brigadier, after greatly distinguishing himself, was shot through the lungs. The next in command, Townshend, brave, but deficient in sagacity and attractive power and the delicate perception of right, recalled the troops from the pursuit; and when De Bougainville appeared in view, declined a contest with a fresh enemy. But already the hope of New France was gone. Born and educated in camps, Montcalm had been carefully instructed, and was skilled in the language of Homer as well as in the art of war. Greatly laborious, just, disinterested, hopeful even to rashness, sagacious in council, swift in action, his mind was a well-spring of bold designs; his career in Canada a wonderful struggle against inexorable destiny. Sustaining hun- chap. XIV.} 1759. Sept. ger and cold, vigils and incessant toil, anxious for his soldiers, unmindful of himself, he set, even to the forest-trained red men, an example of self-denial and endurance; and in the midst of corruption made the public good his aim. Struck by a musket-ball, as he fought opposite Monckton, he continued in the engagement, till, in attempting to rally a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John's gate,

Bigot to the minister, 25 October, 1759, N. Y. Paris Documents, XVI. 39.

he was mortally wounded.

On hearing from the surgeon that death was certain,—I am glad of it, he cried; how long shall I survive? Ten or twelve hours, perhaps less. So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec. To the council of war he showed that in twelve hours all the troops near at hand might be concentrated and renew the attack before the English were intrenched. When De Ramsay, who commanded the garrison, asked his advice about defending the city,—To your keeping, he replied, I commend the honor of France. As for me, I shall pass the night with God, and prepare myself for death. Having written a letter recommending the French prisoners to the generosity of the English, his last hours were given to the hope of endless life, and at five the next morning he expired.

The day of the battle had not passed, when De Vaudreuil, who had no capacity for war, wrote to De Ramsay at Quebec not to wait for an assault, but, as soon as his provisions were exhausted to raise the white flag of surrender.

Vaudreuil to De Ramsay, 18 Sept., 1759, N. Y Paris Documents, XVI. 27.

We have cheerfully sacrificed our fortunes and our houses, said the citi- chap. XIV.} 1759. Sept. zens; but we cannot expose our wives and children to a massacre.

Relation du Siege de Quebec.

At a council of war, Fiedmont, a captain of artillery, was the only one who wished to hold out

Proces Verbal du Conseil de Guerre, 15 September, 1759, N. Y. Paris Documents, XVI. 28, and other papers on the subject in the same volume.

to the last extremity; and, on the seventeenth of September, before the English had constructed batteries, De Ramsay capitulated.

America rung with exultation; the towns were bright with illuminations, the hills with bonfires; legislatures, the pulpit, the press, echoed the general joy; provinces and families gave thanks to God. England, too, which had shared the despondency of Wolfe, triumphed at his victory and wept for his death. Joy, grief, curiosity, amazement, were on every countenance.

Walpole's Memoires of the Reign of Geo. II.

When the parliament assembled, Pitt modestly and gracefully put aside the praises that were showered on him. The more a man is versed in business, said he, the more he finds the hand of Providence every where. I will own I have a zeal to serve my country beyond what the weakness of my frail body admits of;

Report of the speech by Jared Ingersoll of Connecticut, in a letter dated 22 December, 1759.

and he foretold new successes at sea. November fulfilled his predictions. In that month, Sir Edward Hawke attacked the fleet of Constans off the northern coast of France; and, though it retired to the shelter of shoals and rocks, he gained the battle during a storm at night-fall.

Chapter 15:

Invasion of the valley of the Tennessee.— Pitts administration continued.

1759-1760.

the capitulation of Quebec was received by chap. XV.} 1759. Townshend, as though the achievement had been his own; and his narrative of the battle left out the name of Wolfe, whom he indirectly censured. He had himself come over for a single summer's campaign, to be afterwards gloried about and rewarded.

Barrington's Barrington.

As he hurried from the citadel, which he believed untenable, back to the secure gayeties of London, Charles Paxton, an American by birth, one of the revenue officers of Boston, ever on the alert to propitiate members of government and men of influence with ministers, purchased

J. Adams: Diary, 220.

his future favor, which might bring with it that of his younger brother, by lending him money that was never to be repaid.

Such was the usage of those days. Officers of the customs gave as their excuse for habitually permitting evasions of the laws of trade, that it was their only mode of getting rich; for they were quartered chap. XV.} 1759. upon by their English patrons for more than the amount of all their honest perquisites.

See their own statement to Hutchinson, in the Hutchinson Correspondence.

Townshend returned home, to advocate governing America by concentrating power in England; and like Braddock, Sharpe, Shirley, Abercrombie, Loudoun, Gage, and so many more of his profession, to look upon taxation of the colonies by the metropolis as the exercise of a necessary duty.

In Georgia, Ellis, the able governor, who had great influence in the public offices, was studying how the colonies could be administered by the central authority. In South Carolina Lyttleton persuaded himself that he had restored the royal sway. Yet the fruits of his administration were distrust and discontent. The arbitrary manner in which he had suspended a councillor, had even made it a matter of pride with the planters of Carolina not to accept appointments to the royal council;

Lieut. Gov. Bull to Secretary of State.

and their confiding loyalty was requited by contemptuous insolence, more difficult to be endured than oppression.

While victory protected the northern frontiers of America, the South would have enjoyed unbroken repose but for the pride of Lyttleton, who at once contended with South Carolina, to regain the powers of government which his predecessors, as he said, had unfaithfully given away,

Chalmers's History of the Revolt of the Colonies, II. 794.

and awakened an Indian war by his zeal for reducing the native mountaineers to his own criminal code. He could not discern in the red man's morals the eternal principles chap. XV.} 1759. which inspire all justice; and as he brought the maxims of civilized society into conflict with the unwritten law of the Cherokees, the European rule proved the most treacherous and cruel.

The Cherokees had ever been in friendship with the English, as Virginia had acknowledged in 1755 by a deputation with a present. In 1757, their warriors had volunteered to protect the American frontier south of the Potomac; yet, after they had won trophies of honor in the general service, they were disregarded by the State, and would have been left to return without reward, or even supplies of food, but for the generosity of Washington and his officers.

Washington's Writings, II. 10, 114, 147, 260, 261, 269, 270.

The parties, which, in the following year, joined the expedition to the Ohio, were neglected, so that their hearts told them to return to their cherished highlands.

Adair's History of the American Indians.

In July, 1758, the backwoodsmen of Virginia, finding that their half-starved allies took what they needed on their way home, seized their arms, and, in three skirmishes, several of the beloved men of the Cherokees were slain and scalped.

Hewat's History of South Carolina, II. 214.

The wailing of the women for their deceased relatives, at the dawn of each day and at the gray of the evening, provoked the nation to retaliate. The blood of your beloved kinsmen calls for revenge, cried the Muskohgees; and the chiefs of the Cherokees sent out their young men to take what they deemed such just and equal vengeance as became good warriors.

Adair, 247.

The upland settlements of North Carolina ceased to be safe; of the garrison at Telli- chap. XV.} 1759. quo, two soldiers fell victims.

In November, 1758, Tiftoe and five other chieftains came down from their mountains to Charleston to reconcile differences and treat of an amnesty.

Speech of Gov. Lyttleton to Oconostata, on council records, of 22 Oct., 1759. Chalmers's History of the Revolt, II. 793.

The old covenant between them and the English, of which one of the clauses stipulated that murderers should be given up, was revived; they accepted presents to cover up their losses, and gave pledges of inviolable peace. Before the return of the delegates of the remote upper towns,

Letter from Old Hop and the Little Carpenter.

warriors of Settico on the Tennessee and of Telliquo had been out

Lyttleton's Talk to the Cherokee Chief, 22 May, 1759.

on the Yadkin and the Catawba, beyond the jurisdiction of South Carolina; but the Cherokee chiefs themselves interposed to recall them, and soothed their anger. It now seemed to them, that aggression and equal revenge had reciprocally done their work, and that harmony was restored.

Not so reasoned Lyttleton, who could not hear the voice of humanity as it spoke from the mountain glades. The legislators of Carolina, who understood the jurisprudence of forest life, meeting at Charleston in March, 1759, refused to consider hostilities with the Cherokees as existing, or to be apprehended; but Lyttleton set aside their decision as an invasion of the prerogative, which alone could treat of peace or war, and give directions for training and employing the militia.

Having inflamed the colonists by asserting authority so exclusive, he next made a demand on the Head- chap. XV.} 1759. men and Warriors of the towns on the branches of the Tennessee, to give him satisfaction for the past,

Lyttleton's Letter to the emperor Old Hop and the Little Carpenter, 22 May. 1759.

by which, as he explained, was meant that a certain number of Cherokees guilty of the murders, should be delivered up or be put to death in their nation.

Governor Lyttleton to Lords of Trade, 22 October, 1759.

This would only make bad worse, answered the Red Men; the Great Warrior will never consent to it; at the same time they entreated peace.

Old Hop and Little Carpenter to Gov. Lyttleton, 27 June, 1759.

We live at present in great harmony, wrote Demere from Fort Loudoun; and there are no bad talks.

Capt. Paul Demere to Lyttleton, 10 July, 1759.

Tranquillity and confidence were returning, but in obedience to orders,

Instructions to Capt. DeInerb and to Lieut. Coytmore, 22 May, 1759. Lyttleton to Lords of Trade, f 16 Oct., 1759.

Demere insisted on the surrender or execution of the offending chiefs of Settico and Telliquo, while Coytmore, at Fort Prince George, intercepted all ammunition and merchandise on their way to the Upper Nation. Consternation spread along the mountain sides; the hand of the young men grasped at the tomahawk; the warriors spoke much together concerning Settico and Telliquo,

Capt. Paul Demere to Gov. Lyttleton, 22 July, 1759.

and hostile speeches went round. Still they dispatched to Charleston a letter with friendly strings of wampum; while the Middle and the Lower Settlements, which had taken no part in the expedition complained of, sent also their belts of white shells.

Gov. Lyttleton to Lords of Trade, 1 Sept., 1759.

But Lyttleton, dreading some concert of the Cherokees with the Creeks, rigorously enforced the interruption of trade as a chastisement; and haughtily chap. XV.} 1759. added, if you desire peace with us, and will send deputies to me as the mouth of your nation, I promise you, you shall come and return in safety.

The Indians had become dependent on civilization; and to withhold supplies, was not only like a general embargo, but also like disarming a nation. The English, said they, would leave us defenseless, that they may utterly destroy us. Jealousy spread from wigwam to wigwam; belts circulated more and more among the villages. They feared the worst,

Captain Paul Demere to Gov. Lyttleton, 13 September, 1759. I can assure you, that the Indians over here were peaceable until they heard the ammunition was stop, and then they grew very uneasy.

and narrowly watched the roads, that no white man might pass. We have nothing to do, said some among them, wild with rage, but to kill the white people here, and carry their scalps to the French, who will supply us with plenty of ammunition and every thing else.

Ibid.

The nation was, however, far from being united against the English; a large number of towns were even ready, if they had been encouraged, to fight on their side;

Adair, 248, 249.

but the general distrust announced the approach of war.

Captain Stuart to Governor Lyttleton, 26 September, 1759. Lieutenant Coytmore to Lyttleton, 26 September, 1759.

Lyttleton, hurried on by zeal to display authority, and eager to gain the glory of conducting an unusual expedition against the Cherokees, instantly gave orders to the colonels of three regiments of militia nearest the frontier to fire an alarm and assemble their corps; called out all the regulars and provincials in Charleston; asked aid of the governors of Georgia chap. XV.} 1759. and North Carolina; invited Virginia to send reinfor cements and supplies to Fort Loudoun by the road from that province; sought the active alliance of the Chickasaws as ancient enemies to the French;

J. Buckells to J. Courtonne, Journal of a Chickasaw Trader, May, 1759.

of the Catawbas, the Tuscaroras, and even the Creeks, whose hostility he pretended to have feared;

Governor Lyttleton to the Lords of Trade, 16 October, 1759.

and then convening the legislature, on the fifth of October sent a message to the Assembly for supplies. Aware of his intentions to make a declaration of war, they addressed him against so precipitate a measure, unanimously desiring him to defer it. He readily consented, I consented to do so. Lyttleton's own account promising that he would do nothing to prevent an accommodation, on which the Assembly made grants of money and provided for calling fifteen hundred men into service, if necessary. The perfidious governor reproved them for the scantiness of the supply; and breaking his promise, not yet a day old, he added that he should persevere in his intended measures.

See the Legislative Documents, and Lyttleton's own account to Lords of Trade, 18 October, 1759.

On the twelfth of October, he ordered the alarm to be fired in all parts of the province, where it had not been before; and one half of the militia was draughted to be in readiness to repel any invasion, or suppress any insurrection that might happen during his absence.

But hardly had the word been spoken when, on the seventeenth of October, a great deputation from the Upper and Lower Towns, Oconostata the great warrior himself, with thirty other of the most honored men, relying on their safe conduct from the gov- chap. XV.} 1759. ernor, arrived in Charleston to deplore all deeds of violence, and to say that their nation truly loved peace. Bull, the discreet lieutenant governor, urged the wisdom of making an agreement, before more blood should be spilt.

Hewat's S. Carolina, II. 217.

The Cherokees were unequivocally sincere; and many of their towns were thor, oughly devoted to the English.

Adair's History, 248, 249.

I am come, said Oconostata in council on the eighteenth, to hearken to what you have to say, and to deliver words of friendship. But Lyttleton would not speak to them, saying: I did not invite you to come down; I only permitted you to do so; therefore, you are to expect no talk from me, till I hear what you have to say.

Minutes of Council, Thursday, 18 October, 1759.

The next day, the proud Oconostata condescended to recount what had been ill done; explained its causes; declared that the great civil chief of the Cherokees loved and respected the English; and making an offering of deer-skins, and pleading for a renewal of trade, he added for himself: I love the white people; they and the Indians shall not hurt one another; I reckon myself as one with you.

Minutes of Council, Friday, 19 October, 1759.

Tiftoe of Keowee complained of Coytmore, the officer in command at Fort Prince George, as intemperate and licentious. The former commander had been more acceptable to them. But still he would hold the English fast by the hand.—The head warrior of Estatoe would have the trade go on, and no more blood spilt.—Killianaca, the Black Dog of Hiwassie, was able to say that no English blood had chap. XV.} 1759. ever been spilled by the young men of his village; and he gave assurances of peace from all the towns in his region.

But the governor, by a precipitate exercise of the prerogative, had, against the wish of the province, called out the militia, and invited the governors of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, the warriors of the Catawbas, Chickasaws, Creeks, Tuscaroras, and other friendly Indians, to join his expedition; and therefore, in spite of the opposition of four of his council,

Speaker of S. O. House of Assembly, to Mr. Wright, their Agent, Charleston, 10 November 1759,

he went on. I am now going with a great many of my warriors to your nation, said he finally to the deputies, in order to demand satisfaction of them. If you will not give it, when I come to your nation, I shall take it.

Oconostata, and those with him, claimed for themselves the benefit of the safe conduct under which they had come down. And Lyttleton spoke, concealing his purpose under words more false than the wiles of the savage: You, Oconostata, and all with you, shall return in safety to your own country; and it is not my intention to hurt a hair of your head. There is but one way by which I can insure your safety; you shall go with my warriors, and they shall protect you.

Minutes of Council held 22, October, 1759.

On Friday, the twenty-seventh, Lyttleton, with the Cherokee envoys, left Charleston to repair to Congaree, the gathering place for the militia of Carolina. Thither came Christopher Gadsden,

Ramsay's History of South Carolina, II. 458.

born in chap. XV.} 1759. 1724, long the colonial representative of Charleston, dear to his constituents; at whose instance and under whose command an artillery company had just been formed, in a province which till then had not had a mounted field-piece. There, too, was the heroic Francis Marion,

Simms's Life of Marion, 33, 46. I have not seen James's Life of Marion. Weems's Marion, 22.

as yet an untried soldier, just six-and twenty, the youngest of five sons of an impoverished planter, reserved and silent, small in stature, and of a slender frame, so temperate that he drank only water, elastic, persevering, and of sincerest purity of soul.

H. Lee's Southern Campaign, 432.

Yet the state of the troops, both as to equipments and temper, was such as might have been expected from the suddenness of their summons to take the field against the judgment of their legislature. It was still hoped that there would be no occasion to make use of them.

Speaker of the House of Assembly to Mr. Wright the Agent, 27 Oct. 1759.

Before leaving Congaree, Oconostata and his associates, though their persons were sacred by the laws of savage and of civilized man, were arrested; and on arriving at Fort Prince George, they were crowded into a hut hardly large enough for six of them.

To Attakulla-kulla, the Little Carpenter, a feeble old man, who in 1730 had been in England, but now had little influence with the tribe, Lyttleton, on the eighteenth day of December, 1759, pronounced a very long speech, rehearsing the conditions of their treaty. There are twenty-four men of your nation, said he, whom I demand to be delivered up to me, to be put to death, or otherwise disposed of, as I shall think fit. Your people have killed that number of ours, and chap. XV.} 1759. more, and therefore that is the least I will accept of I shall give you till to-morrow morning to consider of it, and then I shall expect your answer.

The speeches are in Hewat, II. 219.

I have ever been the firm friend of the English, answered the chief; I will ever continue so; but for giving up the men, we have no authority one over another.

Yet after the governor had exchanged Oconostata and one or two more for other Indians, he sent again to Attakulla-kulla, and on the twenty-sixth of December got the signature of six Cherokees to a treaty of peace, which seemed to sanction the governor's retaining the imprisoned envoys as hostages, till four andtwenty men should be delivered up to undergo punishment for the murders. It was further covenanted that the French should not be received in their towns, and that the English traders should be safe.

This treaty was not made by chiefs duly authorized, nor ratified in council; nor could Indian usage give effect to its conditions. Hostages are unknown in the forest, where prisoners are slaves. No one was deceived.

Ellis, Governor of Georgia, to the Lords of Trade, 15 Feb. 1760.

Lyttleton, in fact, had only with profligate falsehood violated the word he had plighted, and retained in prison the ambassadors of peace, true friends to the English, the beloved men of the Cherokees, who had come to him under his own safe conduct. And yet he gloried in having obtained concessions such as savage man had never before granted; and, returning to Charleston, he took to himself the honor of a triumphant entry.

The Cherokees longed to secure peace; but the young braves, whose names were already honor- chap. XV.} 1760. ed in the glades of Tennessee, could not be surrendered to death or servitude; and Oconostata resolved to rescue the hostages. The commandant at Fort Prince George was allured to a dark thicket by the river side, and was shot by Indians in an ambush. The garrison had reason to be incensed; but in their anger, they butchered every one of their unfortunate prisoners, and to conceal the atrocity of their crime, invented foolish falsehoods of a plan that their hostages had formed to poison the wells of the garrison.

Ensign Miln to Gov. Lyttleton, 24 February, 1760. Adair, 250. Lyttleton to Lords of Trade, 8 March, 1760.

At the news of the massacre, the villages of which there was scarce one that did not wail for a chief, quivered with anger, like a chafed rattlesnake in the heats of midsummer. The spirits, said they, of our murdered brothers are flying around us, screaming for vengeance. The mountains echoed the warsong; and the braves dashed upon the frontiers for scalps, even to the skirts of Ninety-Six. In their attack on that fort, several of them fell. We fatten our dogs with their carcasses, wrote Francis to Lyttleton; and display their scalps, neatly ornamented, on the tops of our bastions.

J. Francis to Gov. Lyttleton, 6 March, 1760. Drayton's South Carolina, 246.

Yet Fort Loudoun, on the Tennessee, was exposed to the savages, beyond the reach of succor.

Adair's History, 254.

From Louisiana

Annual Register, III. 61.

the Cherokees obtained military stores; and, extending their alliance, they exchanged with the restless Muskohgees the swans' wings painted with red and black, and crimsoned tomahawks, that were the emblems of war.

Annual Register, III. 61.

Carolina was now in conflict with the moun- chap. XV.} 1760. taineers. Yet, at the meeting of the legislature in February, 1760, the delegates, still more alarmed at the unwarrantable interference of Lyttleton with the usages of colonial liberty, first of all vindicated their birthrights as British subjects, and resisted the violation of undoubted privileges. But no governor was more esteemed by the Lords of Trade; they never could find words strong enough to express their approbation of his whole conduct. His zeal for the prerogative, and his powerful connections in England gained him advancement; and he was not only transferred from South Carolina to the more lucrative government of Jamaica, but directed to return home to receive his instructions, a direction which implied a wish on the part of the Board of Trade to consult him on questions of colonial administration.

See Lord Lyttelton to his brother, Gov. Lyttleton, 30 January, 1758, in Phillimore, II. 601; and same to same, 4 Dec. 1759. Ibid. 622.

In April, General Amherst, whose thoughts were all intent upon Canada, detached from the central army that had conquered Ohio six hundred Highlanders and six hundred Royal Americans under Colonel Montgomery, afterwards Lord Eglinton, and Major Grant, to strike a sudden blow at the Cherokees and return. At Ninety-Six, near the end of May, they joined seven hundred Carolina rangers, among whom Moultrie, and, as some think, Marion, served as officers.

On the first day of June, the little army, after a march of eighteen miles from Beaver Dams, crossed Twelve-mile River; and leaving their tents standing on advantageous ground, at eight in the evening they chap. XV.} 1760. moved onward through the woods to surprise Estatoe, which was twenty-five miles distant. The baying of a watch-dog alarmed the village of Little Keowee, when the English rushed upon its people and killed nearly all except women and children.

Early in the morning, they arrived at Estatoe, which its inhabitants had but just abandoned, leaving their mats still warm. The vale of Keowee

Bartram's Travels, 354, 331.

is famed for its beauty and fertility, extending for seven or eight miles, till a high, narrow ridge of hills comes down on each side to the river. Below the ridge it opens again for ten or twelve miles more. This lovely region was the delight of the Cherokees; the sides of the adjacent hills bore their habitations, and on the rich level ground beneath stood their fields of maize, all clambered over by the prolific bean. The mountain-sides blushed with flowers in their season, and resounded with the melody of birds. The river now flowed in gentle meanders, now with arrowy swiftness, between banks where the strawberry mixed its crimson with the rich verdure, or beat against the hills that rose boldly in cones upon the border of the interval, and were the abutments of loftier mountains. Every village of the Cherokees within this beautiful country, Estatoe, Qualatchee, and Conasatchee, with its stockaded town-house, was first plundered and then destroyed by fire.

Virginia Gazette, 496, 2, 1, 11 July, 1760.

The Indians were plainly observed on the tops of the mountains, gazing at the flames. For years, the half-charred rafters of their houses might be seen on the desolate hill-sides. I could not help pitying them a little, writes Grant; their villages were agreeably situated; their houses chap. XV.} 1760. neatly built; there were every where astonishing magazines of corn, which were all consumed. The surprise was in every town almost equal, for the whole was the work of a few hours; the Indians had no time to save even what they valued most; but left for the pillagers money and watches, wampum and skins. From sixty to eighty Cherokees were killed; forty, chiefly women and children, were made prisoners. Those who escaped could live only on horseflesh and wild roots,

Timberlake on the Cherokees.

or must fly over the mountains.

Resting at Fort Prince George, Montgomery sent Tiftoe and the Old Warrior of Estatoe through the Upper and Middle Town, to summon their head men to treat of peace, or all the towns in the Upper Nation should be reduced to ashes.

Virginia Gazette, 496, 2, 1.

But the chiefs of the Cherokees gave no heed to the peremptory message; and the British army prepared to pass the barriers of the Alleghany.

From the valley of Keowee, Montgomery, on the twenty-fourth day of June, 1760, began his march, and at night encamped at the old town of Oconnee. The next day he passed from the vale of the Seneca River over the Oconnee Mountain, and encamped at the War-Woman's Creek. On the twenty-sixth, he crossed the Blue Mountains from the head spring of the Savannah to the vale of the Little Tennessee, and made his encampment at the deserted town of Stecoe. The Royal Scots and Highlanders trod the rugged defiles, which were as dangerous as men had ever penetrated, with fearless alacrity, and seemed refreshed by coming into the presence of mountains.

On the morning of the twenty-seventh, the whole chap. XV.} 1760. party began their march early having a distance of eighteen miles to travel to the town of Etchowee, the nearest of the middle settlements of the Cherokees. Let Montgomery be wary, wrote Washington; he has a subtle enemy, that may give him most trouble when he least expects it. The army passed down the valley of the Little Tennessee, along the mountain stream which, taking its rise in Rabun County in Georgia, flows through Macon County in North Carolina. Not far from Franklin, their path lay along the muddy river with its steep clay banks, through a plain covered with the dense thicket, overlooked on one side by a high mountain, and on the other by hilly, uneven ground.

Gentleman's Magazine, XXX. 442

At this narrow pass, which was then called Crow's Creek, the Cherokees emerged from an ambush.

Adair's History, 252.

Morrison, a gallant officer, was killed at the head of the advanced party. But the Highlanders and provincials drove the enemy from their lurking-places; and returning to their yells three huzzas and three waves of their bonnets and hats, they chased them from height and hollow. At the ford, the army passed the river; and, protected by it on their right, and by a flankingparty on the left, treading a path sometimes so narrow that they were obliged to march in Indian file, fired upon from the rear, and twice from the front, they were not collected at Etchowee till midnight, and after a loss of twenty men, besides seventy-six wounded.

Virginia Gazette, 501, 2, 1. 15 Aug., 1760.

For one day, and one day only, Montgomery rested in the heart of the Alleghanies.

Lieut. Gov. Bull to Montgomery, 12 July, 1760. Same to Lords of Trade, 20 July, 1760.

If he had chap. XV.} 1760. advanced to relieve, the siege of Fort Loudoun, he must have abandoned his wounded men and his baggage. On the following night, deceiving the Cherokees by kindling lights at Etchowee, the army retreated, and, marching twenty-five miles, they never halted till they came to War-Woman's Creek in the valley of the Savannah. On the thirtieth, they crossed the Oconnee Mountain; and on the first day of July, reached Fort Prince George.

The retreat of Montgomery was the knell of the famished Fort Loudoun. By the unanimous resolve of the officers, James Stuart, afterwards Indian agent for the Southern division, repaired to Chotee, and agreed on terms of capitulation,

In Lords of Trade, of Nov. 11, 1760

which neither party observed; and, on the morning of the eighth of August, Oconostata himself received the surrender of the fort, and sent its garrison of two hundred on their way to Carolina. The next day, at Telliquo, the fugitives were surrounded; Demere and three other officers, with twenty-three privates, were killed. The Cherokee warriors were very exact in that number, as being the amount of hostages who had been retained by Lyttleton

Lieut. Gov. Bull to the Lords of Trade, 9 September, 1760.

in the previous December. The rest were brought back and distributed among the tribes.

Lieut. Gov. Fauquier to Lords of Trade, 17 Sept., 1760.

Their English prisoners, including captives carried from the back settlements of North and South Carolina, were thought to have amounted to near three hundred souls.

Lieut. Gov. Bull to Lords of Trade, 21 Oct., 1760.

But friendship lives in the heart of the savage. chap. XV.} 1760. Listen to the tale of a red man's fidelity. Attakullakulla, hearing that Stuart, his friend, was a prisoner, hastened to ransom him, by giving every thing he could command; and when Oconostata, in a great council at Chotee, would have compelled the assistance of the English agent in the proposed siege of Fort Prince George, the Little Carpenter took him away as if to hunt for venison, and struck through the wilderness for Virginia. Nine days and nights they travelled, with such game as they killed for their food, with the light in the sky for their guide, through gaps rarely trodden, even by wild beasts,— for the beasts of the forests pick their paths;—on the tenth day, they met a detachment of Virginians on Holston River.

Major Lewis to the Honorable Col. Byrd, of Virginia, without date, but probably near the 8th of September, in Lords of Trade, 11 Nov., 1760.

The country beyond the mountains was deserted; nor was Carolina safe. But Montgomery, by his expedition had only inflamed the war,

Bull to Lords of Trade, July, 1760.

and, having obeyed the letter of his instructions by reaching the country of the Cherokees,

Col. Montgomery to Lieut. of Governor Bull, July, 1760.

prepared to embark precipitately for the North. The province was in the greatest consternation. On the eleventh of July, the General Assembly represented their inability to prevent the Cherokees from ravaging the back settlements; and unanimously entreated the lieutenant governor to use the most pressing instances with Colonel Montgomery not to depart with the king's troops, as it might be attended with the most pernicious consequences. But Montgomery, though warned, that he was but giving the Cherokees occa- chap. XV.} 1760. sion to boast throughout the wilderness in their own towns, and among the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, and the Creeks, of their having obliged the English army to retreat, not from their mountains only but from the province, shunned the path of duty, and leaving four companies of Royal Scots, sailed for Halifax by way of New York; for, wrote he, I cannot help the people's fears. And afterwards, in his place in the House of Commons, he acted as one who thought the Americans factious in peace and feeble in war.

Ellis, the governor of Georgia, wiser than Lyttleton, had been less peremptory with the Creeks, and had been able to secure their good will.

Elis to Lords of Trade, 20 Oct., 1760.

Chapter 16:

Possession taken of Michigan and the country on the Lakes.—Pitts administration continued.

1760.

had Amherst been more active, the preceding chap. XVI.} 1760. campaign would have reduced Canada. His delay and retreat to Crown Point gave De Levi, Montcalm's successor, a last opportunity of concentrating the remaining forces of France at Jacques Cartier for the recovery of Quebec. In that city Saunders had left abundant stores and heavy artillery, with a garrison of seven thousand men, under the command of the brave but shallow Murray. When De Levi found it impossible to surprise the place in mid-winter, he still resolved on undertaking its reduction. George Townshend, now in England, publicly rejected the opinion, that it was able to hold out a considerable siege; and Murray, the commander, himself prepared for the last extremity, by selecting the Isle of Orleans for his refuge.

As soon as the river opened, De Levi proceeded with an army of less than ten thousand

Murray in his official account writes 15,000, and in the same letter comes down to 10,000 men and 500 barbarians.

men to besiege Quebec. On the twenty-eighth of April, the chap. XVI.} 1760. vainglorious governor, marching out from the city, left the advantageous ground which he first occupied, and incautiously hazarded an attack near Sillery Wood. The advance-guard, under De Bourlamarque, met the shock with firmness, and returned the attack with ardor. In danger of being surrounded, Murray was obliged to fly, leaving his very fine train of artillery, and losing a thousand men. The French appear to have lost about three hundred,

Mante, 281. The loss of the French was not so considerable as that of the English. Memoires, 183. L'on perdit dans le choc environ 800 hommes.

though Murray's report increased it more than eight-fold. During the two next days, De Levi opened trenches against the town; but the frost delayed the works. The English garrison, reduced by death during the winter, sickness, and the unfortunate battle, to twenty-two hundred effective men, exerted themselves with alacrity. The women, and even the cripples, were set to light work. In the French army not a word would be listened to of the possibility of failure. But Pitt's sagacity had foreseen and prepared for all. A fleet at his bidding was on its way to relieve the city; and to his wife, the sister of Lord Temple and George Grenville, he was able to write in June,—Join, my love, with me, in most humble and grateful thanks to the Almighty. The siege of Quebec was raised on the seventeenth of May, with every happy circumstance. The enemy left their camp standing, abandoned forty pieces of cannon. Swanton arrived there in the Vanguard on the fifteenth, and destroyed all the French shipping, six or seven in number. Happy, happy day! My joy and hurry are inexpressible.

Pitt to Lady Hester, 27 June

Amherst had been notified of the intended siege; chap. XVI.} 1760. but he persevered in the systematic and tardy plan which he had formed. When the spring opened, he had no difficulties to encounter in taking possession of Canada, but such as he himself should create. A country suffering from a four years scarcity, a disheartened, starving peasantry, the feeble remains of five or six battalions, wasted by incredible services, and not recruited from France, offered no opposition The party which was conducted from Crown Point towards Montreal, by Colohel Haviland, found the fort on Isle-aux-Noix deserted. Amherst himself led the main army of ten thousand men by way of Oswego; it is not easy to say why; for the labor of getting there was greater than that of proceeding directly upon Montreal. After toiling to Oswego, he descended the St. Lawrence cautiously, taking possession of the feeble works at Ogdensburg; treating the helpless Canadians with humanity, and with no loss of lives except in passing the rapids, on the seventh of September he met before Montreal the army under Murray, who, as he came up from Quebec, had intimidated the people-and amused himself by now and then burning a village and hanging a Canadian. The next day, Haviland arrived with forces from Crown Point. Thus the three armies came together in overwhelming strength to take an open town of a few hundred inhabitants, which Vaudreuil had resolved to give up on the first appearance of the English; and on the eighth day of September, the flag of St. George floated in triumph on the gate of Montreal, the admired island of Jacques Cartier, the ancient hearth of the council-fires of the Wyandots, the village consecrated by the Roman Church to the Virgin Mary, a site connected by rivers and lakes with an inland chap. XVI.} 1760. world, and needing only a somewhat milder climate to be one of the most attractive spots on the continent. The capitulation included all Canada, which was said to extend to the crest of land dividing branches of Erie and Michigan from those of the Miami, the Wabash, and the Illinois rivers. Property and religion were cared for in the terms; but for civil liberty no stipulation was even thought of. Thus Canada, under the forms of a despotic administration, came into the possession of England by conquest; and in a conquered country the law was held to be the pleasure of the king.

On the fifth day after the capitulation, Rogers departed with two hundred rangers to carry English banners to the upper posts.

Rogers: Journals, 197.

At Frontenac, now Kingston, an Indian hunting-party brought them wild fowl and venison. At Niagara, they provided themselves with the fit costume of the wilderness. From Erie in the chilly days of November they went forward in boats, being the first considerable party of men whose tongue was the English that ever spread sails on Lake Erie or swept it with their oars. The Indians on the Lakes were at peace, united under Pontiac, the great chief of the Ottawas, happy in a country fruitful of corn and abounding in game. As the Americans advanced triumphantly towards the realms where the native huntsman had chased the deer through the unbroken woodlands, they were met at the mouth of a river

Rogers: Concise Account of North America, 240. Rogers: Journal, 214. The River was not the Cuyahoga, but one forty-six miles to the eastward of the river then called the Elk, and one hundred nine and a half miles to the eastward from Sandusky Bay. Howe's Ohio, 125. See the maps of Evans, 1755, and of T. Pownall, 1776. On parting from Pontiac, Rogers says he kept a southwesterly course for about forty-eight miles; which could not be done by a vessel sailing from Cleveland to Sandusky. Rogers seems not accurate, though professing to be so to the half or the quarter of a mile. The distances appear to refer to the Ashtabula River; the name Chogage to the Geauga.

by a deputation of Ottawas from the west. Pontiac, said they, is the chief chap. XVI.} 1760. and lord of the country you are in; wait till he can see you with his own eyes.

When Pontiac and Rogers met, the savage chieftain asked,—How have you dared to enter my country without my leave? I come, replied tile English agent, with no design against the Indians, but to remove the French out of your country; and he gave the wampum of peace. But Pontiac returned a belt, which arrested the march of the party, till his leave should be granted.

The next day, the chief sent presents of bags of parched corn, and, at a second meeting, smoked the calumet with the American leader, inviting him to pass onward unmolested, with an escort of warriors, to assist in driving his herd of oxen along the shore. To the tribes southeast of Erie he sent word that the strangers came with his consent; yet while he studied to inform himself how wool could be changed into cloth, how iron could be extracted from the earth, how warriors could be disciplined like the English, he spoke as an independent prince, who would not brook the presence of white men within his dominions but at his pleasure.

After this interview, Rogers hastened to the straits which connect Erie and St. Clair, and took possession of Detroit. Thus was Michigan won by Great Britain, yet not for itself. There were those who foresaw that the acquisition of Canada was the chap. XVI.} 1760. prelude of American independence.

England began hostilities for Nova Scotia and the Ohio. These she had gained, and had added Canada and Guadaloupe. I will snatch at the first moment of peace, said Pitt. The desire of my heart, said George the Second to parliament, is to see a stop put to the effusion of blood; and the public mind was discussing how far the conquests should be retained. So great a subject of consideration had never before presented itself to British statesmen.

We have had bloodshed enough, urged Pulteney, Earl of Bath, who, when in the House of Commons, had been cherished in America as the friend of its liberties, and who now in his old age pleaded for the termination of a truly national war by a solid and reasonable peace. Our North American conquests, said he to Pitt and Newcastle, and to the world, cannot be retaken. Give up none of them; or you lay the foundation of another war. Unless we would choose to be obliged to keep great bodies of troops in America, in full peace, we can never leave the French any footing in Canada. Not Senegal and Goree, nor even Guadaloupe, ought to be insisted upon as a condition of peace, provided Canada be left to us. Such seemed the infinite consequence of North America, which, by its increasing inhabitants, would consume British manufactures; by its trade, employ innumerable British ships; by its provisions, support the sugar islands; by its products, fit out the whole navy of England.

Peace, too, was to be desired in behalf of England's ally, the only Protestant sovereign in Germany who could preserve the privileges of his religion chap. XVI.} 1760. from being trampled under foot. How calmly, said Bath, the King of Prussia possesses himself under distress! how ably he can extricate himself! having amazing resources in his own unbounded genius. The warm support of the Protestant nation of Great Britain must be called forth, or the war begun to wrest Silesia from him would, in the end, be found to be a war to overturn the liberties and religion of Germany.

Peace was, moreover, to be solicited from love to political freedom. The increase of the navy, army, and public debt, and the consequent influence of the crown, was much too great for the independency of the constitution.

Earl of Bath's Letter to Two Great Men, &c., 1760.

The generous and wise sentiments of the Earl of Bath were acceptable to the people of England. But there were not wanting a reflecting few who doubted. Foremost among them, William Burke,

Remarks on the Letter to Two Great Men. Compare Almon's Biographical Anecdotes of Eminent Persons, II. 347. Mr. William Burke has always been said and believed to have been the author. I know no authority for attributing the pamphlet to Edmund Burke; but compare on the intimacy between the two, Edmund Burke's Correspondence, i. 36.

the kinsman and friend, and often the associate, of Edmund Burke, found arguments for retaining Guadaloupe in the opportunity it would afford of profitable investment, the richness of the soil, the number of its slaves, the absence of all rivalry between England and a tropical island. Besides, he added, to alarm his countrymen, if the people of our colonies find no check from Canada, they will extend themselves almost without bound into the inland parts. They will chap. XVI.} 1760. increase infinitely from all causes. What the consequence will be, to have a numerous, hardy, independent people, possessed of a strong country, communicating little or not at all with England, I leave to your own reflections.

By eagerly grasping at extensive territory, we may run the risk, and in no very distant period, of losing what we now possess. A neighbor that keeps us in some awe is not always the worst of neighbors. So that, far from sacrificing Guadaloupe to Canada, perhaps, if we might have Canada without any sacrifice at all, we ought not to desire it. There should be a balance of power in America. And the writer revealed his connections by advising, that, as the war had been an American war, Lord Halifax, one of the few whom inclinations, studies, opportunities, and talents had made perfectly masters of the state and interests of the colonies, should be appointed to negotiate peace.

Private letters

Almon's Anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham, III. Appendix M.

from Guadaloupe gave warning that a country of such vast resources, and so distant as North America, could never remain long subject to Britain. The acquisition of Canada would strengthen America to revolt. One can foresee these events clearly, said the unnamed writer; it is no gift of prophecy. It is a natural and unavoidable consequence, and must appear so to every man whose head is not too much affected with popular madness or political enthusiasm. The islands, from their weakness, can never revolt; but, if we acquire all Canada, we shall soon find North America itself too powerful and too populous to be governed by us chap. XVI.} 1760. at a distance. If Canada were annexed, the Americans, it was objected in conversation, would be at leisure to manufacture for themselves, and throw off their dependence on the mother country.

Rutherford's Importance of the Colonies, 9, 10.

On the other side, Benjamin Franklin, having many in England and all reflecting men in his native land for his hearers, replying to Burke, defended the annexation of Canada as the only mode of securing America. The Indians, from the necessity of commerce, would cease to massacre the planters, and cherish perpetual peace. There would be no vast inland frontier to be defended against France, at an incalculable expense. The number of British subjects would, indeed, increase more rapidly than if the mountains should remain their barrier; but they would be more diffused, and their employment in agriculture would free England from the fear of American manufactures.

With Canada in our possession, he remarked, our people in America will increase amazingly. I know that their common rate of increase is doubling their numbers every twenty-five years, by natural generation only, exclusive of the accession of foreigners. This increase continuing would, in a century more, make the British subjects on that side the water more numerous than they now are on this. Should the ministry surrender their own judgment to the fears of others, it would prevent the assuring to the British name and nation a stability and permanency that no man acquainted with history durst have hoped for, till our American possessions opened the chap. XVI.} 1760. pleasing prospect.

To the objection, that England could supply only the seacoast, that the inhabitants of the interior must manufacture for themselves, Franklin evoked from futurity the splendid vision of wide navigation on the great rivers and inland seas of America. Even the poor Indian on Lake Superior was already able to pay for wares furnished from French and English factories; and would not industrious farmers, hereafter settled in those countries, be better able to pay for what should be brought them?

The trade to the West India Islands, he continued, is undoubtedly a valuable one; but it has long been at a stand. The trade to our northern colonies is not only greater, but yearly increasing with the increase of people; and even in a greater proportion, as the people increase in wealth.

That their growth may render them dangerous I have not the least conception. We have already fourteen separate governments on the maritime coast of the continent; and shall probably have as many more behind them on the inland side. Their jealousy of each other is so great, they have never been able to effect a union among themselves, nor even to agree in requesting the mother country to establish it for them. If they could not agree to unite for their defence against the French and Indians, who were perpetually harassing their settlements, burning their villages, and murdering their people, is there any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which they all love much more than they love one another?

Such a union is impossible, without the most grievous tyranny and oppression. People who have chap. XVI.} 1760. property in a country, which they may lose, and privileges which they may endanger, are generally disposed to be quiet, and even to bear much, rather than hazard all. While the government is mild and just, while important civil and religious rights are secure, such subjects will be dutiful and obedient. The waves do not rise, but when the winds blow.

Thus Franklin offered the great advice which sprung from his love of English freedom and his truly American heart. Appealing also to the men of letters, he communed with David Hume on the jealousy of trade; and shared the more agreeable system of economy that promised to the world freedom of commerce, a brotherhood of the nations, and mutual benefits from mutual prosperity. He rejoiced that the great master of English historic style,—who by his natural character and deliberate opinion was at heart a republican,

Hume's Correspondence in Burton's Life of Hume.

—loved to promote by his writings that common good of mankind, which the American, inventing a new form of expression, called the interest of humanity; Franklin to Hume, 27 Sept, 1760. Writings, VIII. 210. and he summoned before the mind of the Scottish philosopher that audience of innumerable millions which a century or two would prepare in America for all who should use English well. England cheerfully and proudly accepted the counsels which his magnanimity inspired. Promising herself wealth from colonial trade, she was also occupied by the thought of filling the wilderness, instructing it with the products of her intelligence, and blessing it with free institutions. Homer sang from isle to isle; the bards of England would find hear- chap. XVI.} 1760. ers in every zone, and in the admiration of genius continent respond to continent.

Pitt would not weigh the West India islands against half a hemisphere; he desired to retain them both; but being overruled in the cabinet he held fast to Canada. The liberties of the English in America were his delight; he made it his glory to extend the boundaries throughout which they were to be enjoyed; and yet, at that very time the Board of Trade retained the patronage and internal administration of the colonies, and were persuaded more than ever of the necessity of radical changes in the government in favor of the central authority. While they waited for peace as the proper season for their interference, Thomas Pownall, the Governor of Massachusetts, a statesman who had generous feelings, but no logic, flashes of sagacity, but no clear comprehension, who from inclination associated with liberal men, even while he framed plans for strengthening the prerogative, affirmed, and many times reiterated, that the independence of America was certain, and near at hand. Not for centuries, replied Hutchinson, who knew the strong affection of New England for the home of its fathers.

See Hutchinson to T. Pownall, 8 March, 1766, where Pownall is reminded of the prophecy.

But the Lords of Trade shared the foreboding. In every province, the people, from design, or from their nature and position, seemed gradually confirming their sway. Virginia, once so orderly, had assumed the right of equitably adjusting the emoluments secured by law to the Church. In 1759, Sherlock, then Bishop of London, had confided his griefs to the chap. XVI.} 1760. Board of Trade, at the great change in the temper of the people of Virginia. It is surely high time, said he, to look about us and consider of the several steps lately taken to the diminution of the prerogative of the crown. The rights of the clergy and the authority of the king must stand or fall together.

Connecticut, wrote a royalist Churchman, in July, 1760, to Seeker, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Connecticut is little more than a mere democracy; most of them upon a level, and each man thinking himself an able divine and politician; and to make them a good sort of people, he urged upon Halifax and Pitt, that the Church should be supported, and the charters of that colony, and of its eastward neighbors, be demolished. The present republican form of those governments was indeed pernicious. The people were rampant in their high notions of liberty, and thence perpetually running into intrigue and faction; and he advocated an act of parliament establishing one model for all America. As a principle of union, a viceroy, or lord-lieutenant, was to be appointed, with a council of two from each province, like the Amphictyons of Greece, to consult for union, stability, and the good of the whole; and there being the strongest connection between fearing God and honoring the king, prayer was made for bishops, at least two or three.

From the draught of a correspondence with Archbishop Secker.

In the winter after the taking of Quebec, the rumor got abroad of the fixed design in England to remodel the provinces.

John Adams: Works, IV. 6, 7.

Many officers of the British army expressed the opinion openly, that America chap. XVI.} 1760. should be compelled to yield a revenue at the disposition of the crown. Some of them, at New York, suggested such a requisition of quitrents, as would be virtually a general land-tax, by act of parliament. While I can wield this weapon, cried Livingston, the large landholder, grasping his sword, England shall never get it but with my heart's blood.

Reunion of Great Britain, &c., 88.

In the Assembly at New York, which had been chosen in the previous year, the popular party was strengthened by those who battled with Episcopacy, and the Livingstons, descendants of Scottish Presbyterians, were recognised as its leaders. Of these were Philip, the popular alderman, a merchant of New York, and William, who represented his brother's manor, a scholar, and an able lawyer, the incorruptible advocate of civil and religious liberty, in manners plain, by his nature republican. Nor may Robert R. Livingston, of Duchess County, be forgotten,—an only son, heir to very large estates, a man of spirit and honor, keenly sensitive to right, faultless as a son, a son-in-law, a husband, possessing a gentleness of nature and a candor that ever endeared him to the friends of freedom.

In the opinion of Cadwallader Colden, the president of the Council,

This plan is in Colden's handwriting. No date is annexed; but its general tone points to the year 1760, just before he was made lieu-tenant-governor, and after the death of Delancey. He includes in his plan permanent commissions to the judges, which was the subject that at that time occupied his mind.

the democratical or popular part of the American constitution was too strong for the other parts, and in time might swallow them both up, and endanger the dependence of the plantations on the crown of Great Britain. His reme- chap. XVI.} 1760. dies were, a perpetual revenue, fixed salaries, and an hereditary council of privileged landholders, in imitation of the Lords of parliament. At the same time, he warned against the danger of applying a standing revenue to favorites, or bestowing beneficial employments on strangers alone, to the great discouragement of the people of the plantations. Influenced by a most favorable opinion of Colden's zeal for the rights of the crown, Lord Halifax conferred on him the vacant post of lieutenantgov-ernor of New York.

Compare Colden to Halifax, 11 August, 1760, and Golden to John Pownall, 12 August, 1761.

In the neighboring province of New Jersey, Francis Bernard, as its governor, a royalist, selected for office by Halifax, had, from 1758, the time of his arrival in America, been brooding over the plans for enlarging royal power which he afterwards reduced to form. But Pennsylvania, of all the colonies, led the van of what the royalists called Democracy. Its Assembly succeeded in obtaining its governor's assent to their favorite assessment bill, by which the estates of the proprietaries were subjected to taxation. They revived and continued for sixteen years their excise, which was collected by officers of their own appointment; and they kept its very considerable proceeds solely and entirely at their own disposal. This act alone, it was thought, must, in effect, vest them with almost all the power in that government. Still, these measures, they said, did not yet sufficiently secure their constitution; and by other bills they enlarged popular power, taking from the governor all influence over the judiciary, by chap. XVI.} 1760 making good behavior its tenure of office. Maryland repeated the same contests, and adopted the same policy.

Already the negative had been wrested from the Council of Pennsylvania, and from the proprietaries themselves. The latter, therefore, in March, 1760, appealed to the king against seventeen acts that had been passed in 1758 and 1759, as equally affecting the royal prerogative, their chartered immunities, and their rights as men. When, in May, 1760, Franklin appeared with able counsel to defend the liberties of his adopted home before the Board of Trade, he was encountered by Pratt, the attorney-general, and Charles Yorke, the son of Lord Hardwicke, then the solicitor-general, who appeared for the prerogative and the proprietaries. Of the acts complained of, it was held that some were unjust to the private fortunes of the Penns, and all, by their dangerous encroachments, fatal to the constitution in a public consideration. In behalf of the people it was pleaded, that the consent of the governor, who was the deputy of the proprietaries, included the consent of his principals. To this it was replied, that his consent was fraudulent, for the amount of his emoluments had depended on his compliance; that it was subversive of the constitution for the Assembly first to take to themselves the supervision of the treasure, and then to employ it to corrupt the governor. Even the liberal Pratt, as well as Yorke, said much of the intention to establish a democracy, in place of his Majesty's government, and urged upon the proprietaries their duty of resistance. The Lords of Trade found that in Pennsylvania, as in every other colony, the delegates far exceeded the largest claims of the chap. XVI.} 1760. House of Commons, not only by raising the money, but by investing themselves with the sole application of it, and usurping by this means the most valuable prerogative of the executive power. The Board, therefore, in June, assured the cabinet ministers, that experience had shown how vain it was to negotiate away his Majesty's authority, since every new concession became a foundation for some new demand, and that of some new dispute; and they recommended that the constitution should be brought back to its proper principles, to restore to the crown, in the person of the proprietaries, its just prerogative, to check the growing influence of assemblies, by distinguishing, what they are perpetually confounding, the executive from the legislative power.

When, in July, the subject was discussed before the Privy Council, Lord Mansfield made the extraordinary motion, that the attorney and solicitor general be instructed to report their opinion whether his Majesty could not disapprove of parts of an act and confirm other parts of it.

Proprietary to Thomas Penn, 22 August, 1760.

But so violent an attempt to extend the king's prerogative, at the expense of the people of the colonies and the proprietaries, met with no favor.

At last, of the seventeen acts objected to, the six which encroached most on the executive power were negatived by the king; but by the influence of Lord Mansfield, and against the advice of the Board of Trade, the assessment bill, which taxed the estates of the proprietaries, was made the subject of an informal capitulation between them and the agent of the people of Pennsylvania, and was included among those chap. XVI.} 1760. that were confirmed.

There were two men in England whose interest in these transactions was especially memorable: Pitt, the secretary of state for America, and Edmund Burke, a man of letters, at that time in the service of William Gerard Hamilton, the colleague of Lord Halifax. Burke shared the opinions of the Board of Trade, that all the offensive acts of Pennsylvania should be rejected, and censured with severity the temporizing facility of Lord Mansfield as a feeble and unmanly surrender of just authority.

The early life of Edmund Burke is not much known. I have seen a letter from John Pownall to Lieut. Gov. Colden of New York, dated 10 January, 1760, recommending Thomas Burke for the post of agent for that colony, and describing him as a gentleman of honor, ability, and industry, who has particularly made the state and interest of our colonies his study. If this was meant for Edmund (and there appears to have been no one of the Burkes named Thomas), it would seem that the great orator was not then a person of importance enough for a patronizing secretary of the Board of Trade to remember his christian name. Edmund came to be agent of New York, but at a later day and under other auspices. At this time he acted in the employment of one of the Board of Trade; and at that Board and in Ireland rendered service enough to obtain through Halifax a pension of £ 300. It is observable that Burke never reveals any thing relating to his employers; and in his historic sketches of the origin of the troubles with America, spares the memory of Halifax. Indeed the name of Halifax scarcely appears in all his published writings. We may see in what school Burke learnt the doctrine of the right of Parliament to tax America.

The time was near at hand when the young Irishman's opinions upon the extent of British authority over America would become of moment. Great efforts were made to win the immediate interposition of William Pitt, to appall the colonies by his censure, or to mould them by British legislation. After diligent and long-continued inquiry, I cannot find that he ever consented to menace any restriction on the freedom of the people in the colonies, or even so much as ex- chap. XVI.} 1760. pressed an opinion that they were more in fault than the champions of prerogative. So little did he interest himself in the strifes of Pennsylvania, that, during his whole ministry, Franklin was never once admitted to his presence. Every one of his letters which I have seen—and I think I have seen every considerable one to every colony—is marked by liberality and respect for American rights; and the governor of Maryland, who desired taxation by parliament, and had appealed to the secretary, in hopes that measures would have been taken to end the dispute between the officers of the crown and the Assembly, was left to complain that his Majesty's ministers had not as yet interfered, that Pitt would only blame both houses for their failure to make appropriations. The threat of interference, on the close of the war, was incessant from Halifax and the Board of Trade; I can trace no such purpose to Pitt.

In the history of the American Revolution by the inquisitive but credulous Gordon, Pitt is said to have told Franklin, that, when the war closed, he should take measures of authority against the colonies. This is erroneous. Pitt at that time had not even seen Franklin, as we know from a memoir by Franklin himself. Gordon adds, that Pitt, in 1759 or 1760, wrote to Fauquier, of Virginia, that they should tax the colonies when the war was over, and that Fauquier dissuaded from it. I have seen Fauquier's correspondence; both the letters to him, and his replies; and there is nothing in either of them giving a shadow of corroboration to the statement. Gordon may have built on rumor, or carelessly substituted the name of Pitt for Halifax and the Board of Trade. The narrative in the text I could confirm by many special quotations, and still more by the uniform tendency of the correspondence at that time between England and America.

Yet a circular from the secretary, who was informed by Amherst that the French islands were supplied during the war with provisions from America, was connected with the first strong expressions of discontent in New England. American merchants were incited, by the French commercial regulations, to chap. XVI.} 1760. engage in the carrying-trade of the French sugar, islands; and they gained by its immense profits. This trade was protected by flags of truce, which were granted by the colonial governors. For each flag, wrote Horatio Sharpe, who longed to share in the spoils, for each flag, my neighbor, Governor Denny, receives a handsome douceur, and I have been told that Governor Bernard in particular has also done business in the same way.

Lieutenant Gov. Sharpe to his brother Philip, 8 Feb., 1760.

I, said Fauquier, of Virginia, have never been prevailed on to grant one; though I have been tempted by large offers, and pitiful stories of relations lying in French dungeons for want of such flags.

Fauquier to Pitt, 1760. I have very many letters on this subject.

In vehement and imperative words, Pitt rebuked the practice; not with a view permanently to restrain the trade of the continent with the foreign islands, but only in time of war to distress the enemy by famine.

In August, the same month in which this impassioned interdict was issued, Francis Bernard, whom the Board of Trade favored as the most willing friend to the English Church and to British authority, was removed from the government of New Jersey to that of Massachusetts. But the distrust that was never to be removed, had already planted itself very deeply in the province. These English, men said to one another, will overturn every thing. We must resist them; and that by force. And they reasoned together on the necessity of a general attention to the militia, to their exercises and discipline; for they repeated, we must resist in arms.

John Adams's Works, IV. 6.

In September of chap. XVI.} 1760. that year, Bernard manifested the purpose of his appointment, by informing the legislature of Massachusetts that they derived blessings from their subjection to Great Britain. Subjection to Great Britain was a new doctrine in New England; whose people professed loyalty to the king, but shunned a new master in the collective people of England. The Council, in its reply, owned only a beneficial relation to Great Britain; the House of Representatives spoke vaguely of the connection between the mother country and the provinces, on the principles of filial obedience, protection, and justice.

The colonists had been promised, after the conquest of Canada, that they should sit quietly under their own vines and fig-trees, with none to make them afraid; and already they began to fear aggressions on their freedom. To check illicit trade, the officers of the customs had even demanded of the Supreme Court general writs of assistance; but the writs had been withheld, because Stephen Sewall, the chief justice of the province, a man of great integrity, respected and beloved by the people, doubted their legality.

In September, Sewall died, to the universal sorrow of the province; and the character of his successor would control the decision of the court on the legality of writs of assistance, involving the whole subject of enforcing the British Acts of Trade; by the utmost exertion of arbitrary and irresponsible discretion; as well as the degree of political support which the judiciary would grant to the intended new system of administration. Public opinion selected for the vacancy James Otis, of Barnstable, a good lawyer, a member chap. XVI.} 1760. of the Council, and acceptable to the community. Besides, former governors had promised him a seat on the bench at the first vacancy.

Oakes Angiers Journal, i.

But Bernard appointed Thomas Hutchinson, originally a merchant by profession, subservient in his politics, already lieutenant governor, councillor, and judge of probate. A burst of indignation broke from the colony at this union of such high executive, legislative, and judicial functions in one person, who was not bred to the law, and was expected to interpret it for the benefit of the prerogative. Oxenbridge Thacher, a lawyer of great merit, a man of sagacity and patriotism, respected for learning, ability, purity of life, and moderation, discerned the dangerous character of Hutchinson's ambition, and from this time denounced him openly and always; while James Otis, the younger, offended as a son and a patriot, resigned the office of advocate-general, and by his eloquence in opposition to the royalists, set the province in a flame. But the new chief justice received the iterated application for writs of assistance, and delayed the decision of the court only till he could write to England.

There the Board of Trade had matured its system. They agreed with what Dobbs had written from North Carolina, that it was not prudent, when unusual supplies were asked, to litigate any point with the factious assemblies; but upon an approaching peace, it would be proper to insist on the king's prerogative. Lord Halifax, said Seeker of that nobleman, about the time of his forfeiting an advantageous marriage by a licentious connection with an chap. XVI.} 1760. opera girl, Lord Halifax is earnest for bishops in America, and he hoped for success in that great point, when it should please God to bless them with a peace. The opinions of Ellis, the governor of Georgia, who had represented the want of a small military force to keep the Assembly from encroachments; of Lyttleton, who, from South Carolina, had sent word that the root of all the difficulties of the king's servants lay in having no standing revenue, were kept in mind. It has been hinted to me, said the secretary of Maryland, that, at the peace, acts of parliament will be moved for amendment of government and a standing force in America, and that the colonies, for whose protection the force will be established, must bear at least the greatest share of charge. This, wrote Calvert, in January, 1760,

Calvert to H. Sharpe, Janunary, 1760

will occasion a tax; and he made preparations to give the Board of Trade his answer to their propositions on the safest modes of raising a revenue in America by act of parliament.

For all what you Americans say of your loyalty, observed Pratt, the attorney-general, better known in America as Lord Camden, to Franklin, and notwithstanding your boasted affection, you will one day set up for independence. No such idea, replied Franklin, sincerely, is entertained by the Americans, or ever will be, unless you grossly abuse them. Very true, rejoined Pratt; that I see will happen, and will produce the event.

Quincy's Life of Quincy. 269.

Peace with foreign states was to bring for America an alteration of charters, a new system of administration, a standing army, and for the support of that chap. XVI.} 1760. army a grant of an American revenue by a British parliament. The decision was settled, after eleven years reflection and experience, by Halifax and his associates at the Board of Trade, and for its execution needed only a prime minister and a resolute monarch to lend it countenance. In the midst of these schemes, surrounded by victory, the aged George the Second died suddenly of apoplexy; and on the morning of the twenty-fifth day of October, 1760, his grandson, the pupil of Leicester House, then but twenty-two years of age, while riding with the Earl of Bute, was overtaken by a secret message that he was king.

Chapter 17:

The king and the aristocracy against the Great Commoner.—George the Third Drives out Pitt.

1760-1761.

My horse is lame, said the new king, as a rea- chap. XVII.} 1760. Oct. son for turning back; nor did he manifest any sign of emotion or surprise at the intelligence which he had received. Continuing his concealment, I have said this horse was lame, he remarked to the groom at Kew; I forbid you to say the contrary; and he went directly to Carleton House, the residence of his mother.

Walpole's George III. i. 6.

The first person whom he sent for was Newcastle; who came in a great hurry as soon as he could put on his clothes. None knew better than those who were to receive the duke, that Pitt had forced a way into the highest place in the ministry over the heads of an envious and unwilling aristocracy; and that, under a reluctant coalition, there rankled an incurable alienation between the members of the administration itself.

Burke, Thoughts on the cause of the present Discontents. Works i. 362.

Newcastle had no sooner entered Carleton House, than Bute came to him, and told him that the king would see him before any body and before holding a council. Compliments from me, he added, are now unnecessary. I have been and shall be your chap. XVII.} 1760. Oct. friend, and you shall see it. The veteran courtier caught at the naked hook as soon as thrown out, and answered in the same strain.

The king, so young and so determined to rule, praised the loyalty of Newcastle, who in return was profuse of promises.

Newcastle himself gives the account of all this. I made suitable returns.

My Lord Bute, said the king, is your good friend. He will tell you my thoughts at large. And before the ashes of the late king were cold,

William Pitt to Nuthall, 10 Dec., 1765. Chat. Corr. II. 349. It was not known how literally true was the accusation of Pitt, till the publication of Newcastle's letter to Hardwicke, 26 Oct., 1760, con containing his own account of his interview with the king.

the faithless duke was conspiring with the new influences on and around the throne to subvert the system, by which Pitt had not only restored but exalted his country.

On meeting the council, the king, and with good reason, appeared agitated and embarrassed; for his speech, which had been drawn by Bute, set up adhesion to his plan of government as the test of honesty; calumniated the war as bloody and expensive; and silently abandoned the king of Prussia. Newcastle, who was directed to read it aloud, seemed to find it unexceptionable; and opportunely lowered his voice at the offensive parts, so that his words could not be distinguished. Is there any thing wrong in point of form? asked the king; and then dismissed his ministers; and the declaration was projected, executed and entered in the council books without any previous notice to Pitt.

The Great Commoner was extremely hurt;

Harris's Hardwicke, III. 215.

he discerned what was plotting; and after vainly seeking to inspire Newcastle with truth and firmness,

Walpole's Memoirs of George III., i. 10.

he insisted that the address should be amended; that chap. XVII.} 1760. Oct. it was false to say the war had been to England a bloody war;

Newcastle to Hardwicke.

and after an altercation of two or three hours with Lord Bute, he extorted the king's reluctant consent to substitute as his own these words: As I mount the throne in the midst of an expensive but just and necessary war, I shall endeavor to prosecute it in a manner most likely to bring on an honorable and lasting peace in concert with my allies.

The amendments of Pitt gave to the address dignity and nationality. The wound to the royal authority rankled in the breast of the king. He took care to distinguish Newcastle above all others; and on the third day after his accession, he called Bute, who was but his groom of the stole, and who had forfeited Pitt's friendship,

Adolphus: Hist. of England, i. 11.

not to the Privy Council only, but also to the cabinet.

Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of King George III., i. 8, and Sir Denis Le Marchant's Note.

On the last day of October, the king published a proclamation for the encouragement of piety, and for preventing immorality. This public appeal corresponded with his personal habits; and in a kingdom, where, for nearly fifty years, the king's mistresses, in rank the peeresses of the highest aristocracy, had introduced vulgarity with licentiousness, and had rivalled the ministry in political influence, the serious people of England were fired with loyalty towards a monarch who had been trained in seclusion as temperately and chastely as a nun.

To the draft which Hardwicke and Pitt had made Nov. for his first speech to parliament, he on his own au- chap. XVII.} 1760. Nov. thority added the words, Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton: thus putting himself with just complacency rather than invidiously in contrast with his predecessors, who were Hanoverians by birth and by affection. A greater concourse of the beauty and gentility of the kingdom attended him at parliament than had ever graced that assembly. His manner, said Ingersoll, of Connecticut, who was present, has the beauty of an accomplished speaker. He is not only, as a king, disposed to do all in his power to make his subjects happy, but is undoubtedly of a disposition truly religious. Horace Walpole echoed the praises of his grace, dignity, and good-nature; expressed his admiration in courtly verses, and began a friendly correspondence with Bute. All his dispositions are good, said Secker, the archbishop; he is a regular, worthy, and pious young man, and hath the interest of religion sincerely at heart.

Seeker to Johnson, 4 Nov., in Chandler's Life of Johnson, 182.

The poet Churchil did but echo the voice of the nation, when he wrote:

Stripped of her gaudy plumes and vain disguise, See where Ambition, mean and loathsome, lies! Reflection with relentless hand pulls down The tyrant's bloody wreath and ravished crown. In vain he tells of battles bravely won, Of nations conquered, and of worlds undone. But if, in searching round the world, we find Some generous youth, the friend of all mankind, Whose anger, like the bolt of Jove, is sped In terrors only at the guilty head, Whose mercies, like heaven's dew, refreshing fall In general love and charity to all, Pleased we behold such worth on any throne, And doubly pleased, we find it on our own.

Such acclamations welcomed the accession of George chap. XVII.} 1760. Nov. the Third, whom youth and victory, conquest and the love of glory, popular acclamation and the voice of Pitt, the prospect of winning all America and all the Indies, could not, as it seemed, swerve from the fixed purpose of moderation in triumph and the earliest practicable peace. But the ruling idea of his mind, early developed and indelibly branded in, was the restoration of the prerogative, which in America the provincial assemblies had resisted and defied; which in England had one obstacle in the rising importance of the people, as represented by Pitt, and another in the established power of the oligarchy under the banner of Newcastle.

Burke: Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontent.

The man at maturity is but the continuation of the youth; from the day of his accession, George the Third displayed an innate love of authority, and, with a reluctant yielding to present obstacles, the reserved purpose of asserting his self-will, which doomed him in a universe of change to oppose reform, and struggle continuously, though hopelessly, against the slow but resistless approaches of popular power.

Our young man,

Holdernesse to Mitchell.

wrote Holdernesse, one of the secretaries of state, shows great attention to his affairs, and an earnest desire of being truly informed of the state of them. He is patient and diligent in business, and gives evident marks of perspicuity and good sense. Nothing can be more amiable, more virtuous, or better disposed, than our present monarch, reported Barrington,

Lord Barrington to Sir Andrew Mitchell, 5 Jan., 1761, in the British Museum.

the secretary at war, but a few weeks later; he applies himself thoroughly to his affairs, and understands them astonishingly well. chap. XVII.} 1760. Nov. His faculties seem to me equal to his good intentions. A most uncommon attention, a quick and just conception, great mildness, great civility, which takes nothing from his dignity, caution and firmness are conspicuous in the highest degree. The king, said the chief proprietary of Pennsylvania,

Penn to Hamilton.

attends daily to business; shows great steadiness in his resolutions, and is very exact to all his applications, whether of business or recreation. But Charles Townshend, being questioned as to his character, deliberated a moment, and replied, The young man is very obstinate; and four months had not passed, when Pratt, the attorney-general predicted that this would be a weak and inglorious reign.

Nicholls's Recollections.

To place himself above aristocratic dictation and dictation of all sorts, was the ruling passion of George the Third; and for its gratification he was bent on securing to the court the unlimited and uncontrolled use of its own vast influence under the sole direction of its private favor.

Burke: Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent. Works, i. 358.

For his instrument in accomplishing this purpose, he cherished the Earl of Bute, whom he valued only because he found in him an obsequious friend, ready to give effect to the new system; and within five weeks from the commencement of his reign, Bute was planning how to make a place for himself among the ministers. To the party of the court he brought no strength whatever. He had neither experience, nor political connections, nor powerful family friendships, nor great capacity; and owed his public distinction solely to the royal favor. chap. XVII.} 1760. Nov. He was to the king such a confidential companion as the attendant on a heroine in the plays of the earlier French dramatists. By theory he acquiesced in royal authority. He was inferior to George the Third, even in those qualities in which that prince was most deficient; greatly his inferior in vigor of understanding and energy of character. The one had a daring hardihood and self-relying inflexibility, which danger could not startle and the dread of responsibility could not appall; while Bute, who was timid by nature, united persistence with pusillanimity; and as a consequence, had the habit of duplicity. He was ignorant of men and ignorant of business, without sagacity or courage; so that it is difficult to express adequately his unfitness for the conduct of a party, or the management of the foreign relations and public affairs of his country.

Had Bute been left to his own resources, he must have failed from the beginning. Even his earnest desire to restore peace could not have brought about his advancement; the way was opened for him by the jealous impatience of the aristocracy at power derived, independently of themselves, from the good opinion of the people of England. The ministers will drop off, ere long, wrote the vain, rich Dodington; think with yourself and your royal master of proper persons to fill up the first rank with you, in case of death or desertion. . . . . . .Remember, my noble and generous friend, that to recover monarchy from the inveterate usurpation of oligarchy is a point too arduous and important to be achieved without much difficulty and some degree of danger. They will beat every thing, said Glover, of Bute and the king; only a little time must be allowed for the chap. XVII.} 1760. Dec. madness of popularity to cool. But from that day forward, popularity, as the influence and power of the people were sometimes called by the public men of England, was the movement of the age, which could as little be repressed as Providence dethroned; and George, who hated it almost to madness, was the instrument chosen by Heaven to accelerate that movement, till it proceeded with a force which involved the whole human race, and could not be checked by all the weight of ancient authority.

The king was eager to renounce the connection 1761. Jan. with Prussia, and to leave that kingdom to meet its own ruin, while he negotiated separately with France; but Pitt prevailed with the cabinet to renew the annual treaty with Frederic, and with parliament to vote the subsidy without a question. He has no thought of abandoning the continent, said Bute, in January; he is madder than ever. But Newcastle, clinging fondly to office, and aware of the purposes of the king, shrunk from sustaining the secretary, and professed himself most sincerely desirous of peace, most willing to go any length to obtain it. Pitt, on his part, never ceased to despise the feebleness, and never forgave the treachery of Newcastle. They neither are nor can be united, said Bute; and early in January, 1761, his friends urged him to put himself at the head, in a great office of business, and to take the lead.

But Newcastle began also to be conscious of his own want of favor. He had complained to Bedford, who despised him, of the very little weight he had in the closet, and of the daily means used to let him have as little in the coming parliament, and talked of resignation; then, conspiring against Pitt and sub- chap. XVII.} 1761. Jan. mitting to every thing; he remained at his post. In the approaching election, he was thwarted in his desire to use for his own purposes his old system of corruption; but of whatever he complained, it was answered, The king had ordered it so. To the king's boroughs the king himself would name. Where a public order gave permission to the voters in the king's interest, to vote as they pleased, a private one was annexed, naming the person for whom they were all to vote; and Newcastle was limited to those where the crown had only an influence. The new parliament, said Bute, confidently, will be the Feb. king's. George the Third began his reign by competing with the aristocracy at the elections for the majority in that body; and in the choice of the twelfth parliament, his first effort was successful.

Changes in the cabinet were preparing. From the opening of the new reign Holdernesse had been ready to quarrel with his fellow-ministers, and throw up in seeming anger, so that Bute might then come in without appearing to displace any one. But this was too foolish a scheme to be approved of. It is very easy, thought the Favorite, in February, to make the Duke of Newcastle resign, but who is to take it? He had not courage to aim at once at the highest station.

On the nineteenth of March, 1761, as the session March closed, the eleventh parliament of Great Britain was dissolved. On the same day, to gratify a grudge of George the Third, conceived when Prince of Wales, Legge, the chancellor of the exchequer, was dismissed. When it was known that that officer was to be turned out, George Grenville, who piqued himself on his knowledge of finance, expressed to his brother-in- chap. XVII.} 1761. March law his desire of the vacant place; but Pitt took no notice of his wishes, upon which a coolness commenced between them. Fortune, exclaimed Barrington, on receiving the appointment, may at last make me pope. I am equally fit to be at the head of the Church as of the exchequer. But no man knows what is good for him. My invariable rule, therefore, is, to ask nothing, to refuse nothing. He was willing to serve with any ministry, making the king's wish his only oracle.

Two days later, the resignation of Holdernesse was purchased by a pension, with the reversion of the wardenship of the Cinque Ports for life; and Bute, on the king's own recommendation,

That Jenkinson was recommended by the king to Bute, and not, as is sometimes said, introduced by Bute to the king, I have received from private information of the highest authority.

accepting Charles Jenkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, as his confidential secretary, took the seals for the Northern Department.

At the same time an office was given to Sir Francis Dashwood, the open and resolute opponent of Pitt's engagements with Germany; and Charles Townshend, described by Hume as the cleverest fellow in England, celebrated for his knowledge of America, and his zeal for new-modelling its governments, swore allegiance to Bute, at least for a time, and was made secretary at war. He who holds that post is not a member of the cabinet, but rather the king's military secretary; and, as such, is frequently admitted to the closet. Townshend was ever careful to cultivate the favor of his sovereign. He was, in parliament and in life, for ever on the rack of exertion; of ill-regulated ambition; unsteady in his polit- chap. XVII.} 1761. March ical connections; inclining always to the king, yet so conscious of the power conferred on him in the House of Commons by his eloquence, as never to become the servant of the king's friends. Too able to be dependent, too indifferent to liberty to advocate it freely, he floated between the two parties, not from change of views, but because, from his nature and his convictions, he was attached sincerely to neither.

In the House of Commons, Charles Townshend never feared to appear as the rival of the minister; that there might also be in the cabinet one man who dared to stand up against Pitt, contradict him, and oppose his measures, the Duke of Bedford, though without employment, was, by the king's command, summoned to attend its meetings. The Duke was indifferent to office, and incapable of guile; as bold and as open as Pitt, and more regardless of consequences. Halifax, who had so long been trained at the Board of Trade to the assertion of the prerogative, was sent as Lord Lieutenant to carry out the system in Ireland; while the patronage and chief correspondence with the American colonies were taken from the Board of Trade, and restored to the Southern Department.

These changes in the cabinet hastened the period of conflict with the colonies; the course of negotiations for peace between England and France was still more momentous for America.

Since we do not know how to make war, said Choiseul, we must make peace. Choiseul had succeeded Bernis, as the minister of foreign affairs; in January, 1761, had, on the death of Belle-Isle, become minister of war, and soon annexed to these chap. XVII.} 1761. March departments the care of the marine. It is certain, said Grimaldi, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, they ardently wish for a negotiation for peace here. Kaunitz, of Austria, who might well believe that Silesia was about to be recovered for his sovereign, interposed objections. We have these three years, answered Choiseul, been sacrificing our interests in America to serve the queen of Hungary; we can do it no longer. France will not be bound by the will of her allies.

Flassan: VI. 377, 381. Grimaldi to Fuentes in Chatham Correspondence, II. 92.

Spain saw with alarm the disposition for peace; she had demanded the evacuation of the British posts in the Bay of Honduras, and on the shore of Campeachy; and in the pride of maritime ascendency, England, violating treaties and its own recognition of its obligations, required that Spain should first come into stipulations for the continuance of the trade which had occasioned the intrusive settlements. Unwilling to be left to negotiate alone, Grimaldi, urging the utmost secrecy, began working to see if he could make some protecting alliance with France. You have waited, he was answered, till we are destroyed, and you are consequently of no use. And on the twenty-fifth day of March, within five days of Bute's accession to the cabinet, on occasion of proposing a general congress at Augsburg, for the pacification of the Continent, Choiseul offered to negotiate separately with England. Pitt assented. Little April. did the two great statesmen foresee that their attempts at a treaty of peace would only generate permanent passions and alliances, which would leave England without a friend in its coming contest with chap. XVII.} 1761. April. America.

Choiseul was, like Pitt, a statesman of consummate ability; but while Pitt overawed by the authoritative grandeur of his designs, the lively and indiscreet Choiseul had the genius of intrigue. He was by nature an agitator, and carried into the cabinet restless activity and the arts of cabal. Pitt treated all subjects with stateliness; Choiseul discussed the most weighty in jest. Of high rank and great wealth, he was the first person at court, and virtually the sole minister. Did the king's mistress, who had ruled his predecessor, interfere with affairs? He would reply, that she was handsome as an angel, but throw her memorial into the fire; and with railleries and sarcasms, he maintained his exclusive power by a clear superiority of spirit and resolution.

Stanley to Pitt.

For personal intrepidity he was distinguished even among the French gentry, so remarkable for courage; and as he carried the cabinet by his decided character, so he brought into the foreign politics of his country as daring a mind as animated any man in France or England. It was the judgment of Pitt, that he was the greatest minister France had seen since the days of Richelieu. In depth, refinement, and quick perceptions, he had no superior; and his freedom from prejudice opened his mind and affections to the philosophic movement of his age. No motive of bigotry or antipathy could lead him to crush the power of Frederic, or to subject France to the influence of a state still overshadowed, like Austria, by the cumbrous forms and superstitions of the Middle Age. To the Dauphin, who cherished the traditions of the past, chap. XVII.} 1761. April. he said, I may one day be your subject, your servant never. A free-thinker, an enemy to the clergy, and above all to the Jesuits, he united himself closely with the parliaments, and seemed to know that public opinion was beginning to outweigh that of the monarch. Perceiving that America was lost to France, he proposed, as the basis of the treaty, that the two crowns should remain each in the possession of what it had conquered from the other; and while he named epochs from which possession was to date in every continent, he was willing that England itself should suggest other periods. On this footing, which left all Canada, Senegal, perhaps Goree also, and the ascendency in the East Indies to England, and to France nothing but Minorca to exchange for her losses in the West Indies, all Paris believed peace to be certain. George the Third wished it from his heart; and though Fuentes, the Spanish ambassador at London, irritated by the haughtiness of Pitt, breathed nothing but war, though the king of Spain proposed to France an alliance offensive and defensive, Choiseul, consulting the well-being of his exhausted country, sincerely desired repose.

But the hardy and unaccommodating nature of Pitt, inflamed by success, was unfit for the work of reconciliation. He expected, and had led his countrymen to expect, that the marked superiority of England would be imprinted on the treaty of peace. He accepted as the basis, that each nation should retain its acquisitions; but delayed the settlement of the epochs, till the fleet of one hundred and fifteen vessels, which had sailed on the very day of his answer to the proposition of Choiseul, could make the conquest of the island of Belle-Isle. This is the chap. XVII.} 1761. April. great stain on the fame of William Pitt. Every object of the war had been accomplished; but he insisted on its continuance for the purpose of making more extended acquisitions. England may forgive a lofty and impassioned attachment to her greatness: impartial history awards the palm to the tempered ambition of the young sovereign, who desired the purer glory of arresting victory by a reasonable peace.

There may be quarrelling yet, predicted Grimaldi. To further the negotiations, Bussy repaired May. to London, furnished with authority to offer bribes to members of the English cabinet;

Flassan: Hist. de la Diplomatie Francaise, VI. 399.

and the circumspect, distrustful Hans Stanley, who dared only reflect the will of his employer, made his way to Paris. But the frank haughtiness and inflexibility of Pitt were apparent from the beginning; and Choiseul, deluding himself no more with belief in peace, employed the remaining years of his ministry to unite around France the defenders of the freedom of the seas.

Still the negotiation continued, and subjects of June. detail were brought into discussion. Here the greatness of Pitt appeared, in his quickness of perception, his comprehensiveness, and sagacity; in the energy of his nervous, imperative dialectics, resting on exact information, and throwing light on the most abstruse questions. Concede that a continuance of the war was no crime against humanity, and the courage, sagacity, and prudent preparations of Pitt must extort admiration.

With regard to the German war, France proposed chap. XVII.} 1761. June. that England, on recovering Hanover, should refrain from interference. In favor of this policy a large party existed in England itself, and had its head in the king, its open supporter in the Duke of Bedford. The king of Prussia, whose chances of ruin, even with the aid of England, were computed as three to one, knew that George the Third was indifferent to his interests and disliked his character; and his ministers had reported that Bute and the British king would advise him to make peace by the sacrifice of territory. How is it possible, such were the words addressed by Frederic

Chatham Corr., II. 109, 111, without date.

to Pitt,

how can the English nation propose to me to make cessions to my enemies; that nation which has guarantied my possessions by authentic acts, known to the whole world? I have not always been successful; and what man in the universe can dispose of fortune? Yet, in spite of the number of my enemies, I am still in possession of a part of Saxony, and I am firmly resolved never to yield it but on condition that the Austrians, the Russians, and the French shall restore to me every thing that they have taken from me.

I govern myself by two principles: the one is honor, and the other the interest of the State which Heaven has given me to rule. The laws which these principles prescribe to me are, first, never to do an act for which I should have cause to blush, if I were to render an account of it to my people; and the second, to sacrifice for the welfare and glory of my country the last drop of my blood. With these maxims I can never yield to my enemies. Rome, after the battle of Cannae,—your great Queen Eliza- chap. XVII.} 1761. June. beth, against Philip the Second and the invincible armada,—Gustavus Vasa, who restored Sweden,—the Prince of Orange, whose magnanimity, valor, and perseverance founded the republic of the United Provinces,—these are the models I follow. You, who have grandeur and elevation of soul, disapprove my choice, if you can,

All Europe turns its eye on the beginning of the reign of kings, and by the first fruits infers the future. The king of England has but to elect, whether, in negotiating peace, he will think only of his own kingdom, or, preserving his word and his glory, he will also have care for the welfare of his allies. If he chooses the latter course, I shall owe him a lively gratitude; and posterity, which judges kings, will crown him with benedictions.

Would to God, replied Pitt, that the moments of anxiety for the states and the safety of the most invincible of monarchs were entirely passed, away; and Stanley, in his first interview with Choiseul, avowed the purpose of England to support its great ally with efficacy and good faith. But France had no motive to ruin Prussia; a just regard for whose interests would have been no insurmountable obstacle to the peace.

When France expressed a hope of recovering Canada, as a compensation for her German conquests, They must not be put in the scale, said Pitt to Bussy. The members of the Empire and your own allies will never allow you to hold one inch of ground in Germany. The whole fruit of your expeditions, after the immense waste of treasure and men, will be to make the house of Austria more powerful. I wonder, said Choiseul to Stanley, that your great chap. XVII.} 1761. June. Pitt should be so attached to the acquisition of Canada. The inferiority of its population will never suffer it to be dangerous; and being in the hands of France, it will always be of service to you to keep your colonies in that dependence which they will not fail to stake off, the moment Canada shall be ceded.

Second Thoughts, or Observations upon Lord Abingdon's Thoughts.

And he readily consented to abandon that province to England.

The restitution of the merchant-ships, which the English cruisers had seized before the war, was justly demanded. They were afloat on the ocean, under every guaranty of safety; they were the property of private citizens, who knew nothing and could know nothing of the diplomatic disputes of the two countries. The capture was unjustifiable by every reason of equity and public law. The cannon, said Pitt, has settled the question in our favor; and in the absence of a tribunal, this decision is a sentence. The last cannon has not yet been fired, retorted Bussy; and destiny showed in the shadowy distance still other desperate wars between the nations for dominion and for equality on the seas.

France desired to escape from the humiliating condition of demolishing the harbor of Dunkirk. Since England has acquired the dominion of the seas, said Pitt to Bussy, I myself fear Dunkirk but little; but the people regard its demolition as an eternal monument of the yoke imposed on France.

Flassan, VI. 403, 405.

Choiseul was ready to admit concessions with regard to Dunkirk, if France could retain a harbor in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with the freedom of the fisheries. Without these, he would himself decline chap. XVII.} 1761. June. further negotiation. In those days, maritime power was thought to depend on the encouragement of the fisheries; and to renounce them seemed like renouncing the power of manning a navy. Pitt refused the fisheries altogether. The union of France with Spain was the necessary consequence, and was promoted by the reduction of Belle-Isle. You have effectually roused France in every part of it, wrote Keppel, in June, just after that success; they feel themselves so hurt and dishonored, that they will risk their ships and every thing to wipe it off.

Keppel to Pitt, 18 June, 1761.

Towards such efforts Pitt looked in the proud serenity of conscious strength; and yet it was observed that he was becoming sombre and anxious;

Flassan, VI. 406.

for his own king had prepared for him opposition in the cabinet.

The peace which is offered, said Granville, the July. Lord President, is more advantageous to England than any ever concluded with France, since King Henry the Fifth's time. I pray to God, said Bedford to Bute, in July, his majesty may avail himself of this opportunity of excelling in glory and magnanimity the most famous of his predecessors, by giving his people a reasonable and lasting peace. Did any argue that efforts could be made during the summer from Belle-Isle? Bedford expected nothing, but possibly the taking another island, or burning a few more miserable villages on the continent.

Wiffen's House of Russell, II. 468, 469, 470, 471.

Did Pitt say, Before December, I will take Martinico? Will that, rejoined Bedford, be the means of obtaining a better peace than we can command at present, or induce the French to relinquish a right of chap. XVII.} 1761. July. fishery? Indeed, he pursued, with good judgment and good feeling,

the endeavoring to drive France entirely out of any naval power is fighting against nature, and can tend to no one good to this country; but, on the contrary, must excite all the naval powers in Europe to enter into a confederacy against us, as adopting a system of a monopoly of all naval power, dangerous to the liberties of Europe. . . .

. .In case it shall be decided to carry on the war for another campaign, I,

he added, wash my hands from all the guilt of the blood that may be shed.

At the king's special request, Bedford attended the cabinet council of the twentieth of July, to discuss the conditions of peace. All the rest who were present cowered before Pitt, in dread lest he should frown. Bedford was the single man who dared to deliver an opinion contrary to his, though agreeable to every other person's sentiments.

Rigby in Wiffen, II. 472. See also Bedford Corr.

I, said Newcastle, envy him that spirit more than his great fortune and abilities. But the union between France and Spain was already so far consummated, that, in connection with the French memorial, Bussy had on the fifteenth of July presented a note, requiring England to afford no succour to the king of Prussia, and a private paper, demanding, on behalf of Spain, indemnity for seizures, the right to fish at Newfoundland, and the demolition of the English settlements in the Bay of Honduras. These differences, if not adjusted, gave room, it was said, to fear a fresh war in Europe and America.

This note and this memorial, containing the men- chap. XVII.} 1761. July. ace of a Spanish war, gave Pitt the ascendency. To the private intercession of the king he yielded but a little, and in appearance only, on the subject of the fishery. I was overruled, said he afterwards, I was overruled, not by the foreign enemy, but by another enemy; and at the next council he presented his reply to France, not for deliberation, but acceptance. Bute dared not express dissent, and as Bedford disavowed all responsibility and retired with indignant surprise, Pitt, with the unanimous consent of the cabinet, returned the memorials relative to Prussia and to Spanish affairs as wholly inadmissible; declaring that the king would not suffer the disputes with Spain to be blended in any manner whatever in the negotiations of peace between the two nations.

On the twenty-ninth of July, Stanley, bearing the ultimatum of England, demanded Canada; the fisheries, with a limited and valueless concession to the French, and that only on the humiliating condition of reducing Dunkirk; half the neutral islands, especially St. Lucia and Tobago; Senegal and Goree, that is, a monopoly of the slave-trade; Minorca; freedom to assist the king of-Prussia; and British ascendency in the East Indies. The ministers of Spain and Austria could not conceal their exultation. Aug. My honor, replied Choiseul to the English envoy,

will be the same fifty years hence as now; I am as indifferent to my place as Pitt can be; I admit with out the least reserve the king's propensity to peace, his Majesty may sign such a treaty as England demands, but my hand shall never be to that deed. Thackeray's Life of Chatham, II. 580.

And claiming the right to interfere in Spanish affairs, chap. XVII.} 1761. Aug. with the approbation of Spain, he submitted modifications of the British offer. He still desired peace;

Bussy to Pitt, 5 Aug., 1761.

but he already was convinced that Pitt would never agree to a reasonable treaty, and his only hope was in delay.

Thus far Pitt had encountered in the cabinet no avowed opposition except from Bedford. On this point the king and his friends made a rally,

Wiffen's Russell, II. 473.

and the answer to the French ultimatum, peremptorily rejecting it and making the appeal to arms,

Pitt to Bussy, 15 Aug., 1761.

was adopted in the cabinet by a majority of but one voice. Why, asked George, as he read it, why were not words chosen in which all might have concurred? and his agitation was such as he had never before shown.

Bute to Pitt, 14 Aug., 1761.

The friends of Bedford mourned over the continuance of the war, and the danger of its involving Spain. Pitt, said they, does govern, not in the cabinet council only, but in the opinions of the people. Rigby forgot his country so far as to wish ill success to its arms;

Rigby 27 Aug. in Wiffen, II. 473.

but with the multitude, the thirst for conquest was the madness of the times. Men applauded a war which was continued for no definite purpose whatever.

But on the fifteenth of August, the very day on which Pitt despatched his abrupt declaration, Choiseul concluded that Family Compact

Martens: Receuil, VI. 69.

which was designed to unite all the branches of the House of Bourbon as a counterpoise to the maritime ascendency of England. From the period of the termination of existing chap. XVII.} 1761. Aug. hostilities, France and Spain, in the whole extent of their dominions, were to stand towards foreign powers as one state. A war begun against one of the two crowns was to become the personal and proper war of the other. No peace should be made but in common. In war and in peace, each should regard the interests of his ally as his own; should reciprocally share benefits and losses, and make each other corresponding compensations. This is the famous treaty which secured to America in advance aid from the superstitious, kind-hearted, and equitable Charles the Third of Spain. For that monarchy, which was the weaker power and more nearly insulated, having fewer points for collision in Europe and every thing at hazard in America, the compact was altogether unwise. We shall see presently, that, as its only great result in the history of the world, it placed the fleets of the European sovereign whose power was the most absolute, whose colonies were the most extended, on the side of a confederacy of republican insurgents in their struggle for independence.

On the same fifteenth of August, and not without the knowledge of Pitt, France and Spain concluded a special convention,

Of this special convention Pitt was correctly informed. He knew, also, that the court of Spain wanted to gain time, till the fleet should arrive at Cadiz. Compare the letters of Grimaldi to Fuentes, of August 31, and September 13, in Chatham Correspondence, II. 139-144, and the private note of Stanley to Pitt, of September 2.

The existence of this special convention, so well known to Pitt, and so decisive of his policy, appears to have escaped the notice of British historians, with the exception of Lord Mahon. In the edition of Adolphus's History of England published in 1840, that writer assumes that Pitt was misinformed, and hazards the conjecture, that the communication made to Mr. Stanley was a refined piece of finesse in the French ministry.—Adolphus, i. 46, note. Yet, in the second edition of Flassan's Histoire de la Diplomatie Francaise, VI. 322-326, an abstract of the convention itself may be found. I endeavored to obtain from the French archives an authentic copy of the whole paper; but was informed that the document had been misplaced or lost. The allusion of Grimaldi, in his letter of September 13, to the stipulations of the treaty between the two courts, is also to the special convention; though the editors of the Correspondence of the Earl of Chatham, in their comment on the passage, refer it to the Family Compact.

The accurate knowledge of this transaction is essential to a vindication of the course pursued by Pitt towards Spain. He did not insist on war with that power, till he had evidence in his possession, that Spain had already made itself a party to the war by a ratified treaty with France. The advice of Pitt on this occasion was alike wise and just. The error comes from confounding the Special Convention, regulating the conditions on which an immediate war was to be conducted, with the General Treaty of alliance between the princes of the House of Bourbon. The last was no ground for war; the first was war itself.

by which Spain herself engaged to declare war against England, unless contrary to chap. XVII.} 1761. Aug. all expectation, peace should be concluded between France and England before the first day of May, 1762. Extending his eye to all the states interested in the rights of neutral flags, to Portugal, Savoy, Holland, and Denmark, Choiseul covenanted with Spain that Portugal should be compelled, and the others invited, to join the federative union for the common advantage of all maritime powers.

Article VI: and VII. of the Special Convention. Flassan, VI. 322, 323.

Yet, still anxious for peace, and certain either to Sept. secure it or to place the sympathy of all Europe on the side of France, Choiseul resolved on a last most ultimate attempt at reconciliation by abundant concessions; and on the thirteenth day of September, just five days after the youthful sovereign of England had taken as his consort the blue-eyed, considerate, but not very lovely German princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,—a girl of seventeen, who became well known as the parsimonious and correct Queen Charlotte,—Bussy presented the final propositions of France. By Pitt, who was accurately acquainted with the special convention between France and Spain, they were received with disdainful indif- chap. XVII.} 1761. Sept. ference. A smile of irony, and a few broken words, were his only answer; and when the negotiation was broken off, Pitt said plainly, that his own demands throughout had been made in earnest. If I had been the master, he added, I should not have gone so far; the propositions which France finds too severe, would have appeared too favorable to a great part of the English nation.

Flassen, VI 445.

A war with Spain could no longer be avoided by England. To the proposal for the regulation of the privilege of cutting logwood by the subjects of Great Britain, the Catholic King replied through Wall, his minister, by a despatch which reached England on the thirteenth of September. The evacuation of the logwood establishments is offered, if his Catholic Majesty will assure to the English the logwood! He who avows that he has entered another man's house to seize his jewels says, I will go out of your house, if you will first give me what I am come to seize. Pitt's anger was inflamed at the comparison of England with house-breakers and robbers; and his vehement will became more overbearing and impracticable than ever. He exulted in the prospect of benefits to be derived to his country, and glory to be acquired for his own name, in every zone and throughout the globe. With one hand he prepared to smite the whole family of Bourbons, and wield in the other the democracy of England.

Grattan's Character of Pitt.

His eye penetrated futurity; the vastest schemes flashed before his mind,—to change the destinies of continents, and mould the fortunes of the world. He resolved to seize the remaining French islands, especially Martinico; and to con- chap. XVII.} 1761. Sept. quer Havana. You must take Panama,

Chatham Anecdotes, i. 366. Choiseul in his later Correspondence says he was aware of Pitt's Plans.

he exclaimed, to a general officer. The Philippine islands were next to fall; and the Spanish monopoly in the New World to be broken at one blow and for ever by a general resignation of all Spanish America, in all matters which might be deemed beneficial to Great Britain.

But humanity had reserved to itself a different mode of extricating Spanish America from colonial monopoly. On the eighteenth day of September, Pitt, joined only by his brother-in-law, the Earl of Temple, submitted to the cabinet his written advice to recall Lord Bristol, the British ambassador, from Madrid. At three several meetings, the question was discussed. From prudence, as well as spirit, affirmed the secretary, we ought to secure to ourselves the first blow. If any war can provide its own resources, it must be a war with Spain. Their flota has not arrived; the taking it disables their hands and strengthens ours. Bute, speaking the opinion of the king, was the first to oppose the project as rash and ill-advised; Granville wished not to be precipitate; Temple supported Pitt; Newcastle was neuter. During these discussions, all classes of the people of England were gazing at the pageant of the coronation, or relating to each other how the king, kneeling before the altar in Westminster Abbey, with piety formal but sincere, reverently put off his crown, as he received the sacrament from the archbishop. A second meeting of the cabinet was attended by all the ministers; they heard Pitt explain correctly the private convention by which Spain had bound itself to declare chap. XVII.} 1761. war against Great Britain in the following May, but they came to no decision. At a third meeting all the great Whig lords objected, having combined with the favorite to drive the great representative of the people from power. Newcastle and Hardwicke, Devonshire and Bedford, even Ligonier and Anson, as well as Bute and Mansfield, assisted in his defeat. Pitt, with his brother-in-law Temple, stood alone. Stung by the opposition of the united oligarchy, Pitt remembered how he made his way into the cabinet, and what objects he had steadily pursued. This—he exclaimed to his colleagues, summoning up all his haughtiness as he bade defiance to the aristocracy and appealed from them to the country which his inspiring influence had rescued from disgrace,—This is the moment for humbling the whole House of Bourbon; if I cannot in this instance prevail, this shall be the last time I will sit in this council. Called to the ministry by the voice of the people, to whom I conceive myself accountable for my conduct, I will not remain in a situation which makes me responsible for measures I am no longer allowed to guide. If the right honorable gentleman, replied Granville, be resolved to assume the right of directing the operations of the war, to what purpose are we called to this council? When he talks of being responsible to the people, he talks the language of the House of Commons, and forgets that at this board he is responsible only to the king.

Annual Register, IV. 42. Hist. Minority. Walpole's George III, IV. 144. Adolphus, i. 44.

The Duke of Newcastle was never seen in higher spirits,

Sir George Colebrooke's Memoirs in a note to Walpole's Geo. III., i. 82.

than on this occasion. His experienced hand

Pitt to Nuthall, in Chatham Corr. II. 345.

chap XVII.} 1761 had been able to mould and direct events so as to thwart the policy of Pitt by the concerted junction of Bute and all the great Whig Lords. The minister attributed his defeat not so much to the king and Bute as to Newcastle and Bedford; yet the king was himself a partner in the conspiracy; and as he rejected the written advice that Pitt and Temple had given him, the man whose

Grattan's Character of Pitt.

august presence overawed majesty, resolved to resign.

On Monday, the fifth day of October, William Pitt, now venerable from years and glory, the greatest minister of his century, one of the few very great men of his age, among orators the only peer of Demosthenes, the man without title or fortune, who, finding England in an abyss of weakness and disgrace, conquered Canada and the Ohio valley and Guadaloupe, and sustained Prussia from annihilation, humbled France, gained the dominion of the seas, won supremacy in Hindostan, and at home vanquished faction, stood in the presence of George to resign his power. It was a moment to test the self-possession and manly vigor of the young and inexperienced king. He received the seals with ease and firmness, without requesting that Pitt should resume his office; yet he manifested concern for the loss of so valuable a minister, approved his past services, and made him an unlimited offer of rewards. At the same time, he expressed himself satisfied with the opinion of the majority of his council, and declared he should have found himself under the greatest difficulty how to have acted, had that council concurred as fully in chap. XVII.} 1762. Oct. supporting the measure proposed, as they had done in rejecting it. The Great Commoner began to reply; but the anxious and never ceasing application, which his post as the leading minister had required, combined with repeated and nearly fatal attacks of hereditary disease, had completely shattered his constitution, and his nervous system was becoming tremulous and enfeebled. I confess, Sir, said he, I had but too much reason to expect your Majesty's displeasure. I did not come prepared for this exceeding goodness; pardon me, Sir, it overpowers me, it oppresses me; and the man who by his words and his spirit had restored his country's affairs, and lifted it to unprecedented power and honor, to extended dominion and proud self-reliance, burst into tears.

Annual Register for 1761.—The Grenville Papers, I. 413.

On the next day, the king seemed impatient to bestow some mark of favor; and as Canada had been acquired by the ability and firmness of his minister, he offered him that government, with a salary of five thousand pounds. But Pitt, whose proud hardihood never blenched in the presence of an adversary, had a heart that overflowed with fond affection for his wife and children. The state of his private affairs was distressed in consequence of the exemplary disinterestedness of his public conduct. I should be doubly happy, he avowed, could I see those dearer to me than myself comprehended in that monument of royal approbation and goodness. A peerage, therefore, was conferred on lady Hester, his wife, with a grant of three thousand pounds on the plantation duties, to be paid annually during the lives of herself, her husband and her eldest son. And these marks of the royal appro- chap. XVII.} 1761. Oct. bation, very moderate in comparison with his merits, if indeed those merits had not placed him above all rewards, were accepted with veneration and gratitude. Thus he retired, having destroyed the balance of the European colonial system by the ascendency of England, confirmed the implacable hostility of France and Spain to his country, and impaired his own-popularity by accepting a pension and surrendering his family as hostages to the aristocracy.

Chapter 18:

The Acts of Trade provoke Revolution.—the remodelling of the colonial governments

1761-1762.

Lord Barrington, who was but an echo of the chap. XVIII.} 1761. opinions of the king, approved the resignation of Pitt, as important and fortunate; Dodington, now raised to the peerage as the ostentatious and childless lord Melcombe, wished Bute joy of being delivered of a most impracticable colleague, his Majesty of a most imperious servant, and the country of a most dangerous minister. But Bute at the moment had misgivings; for he saw that his own situation was become more perilous.

The Earl of Egremont, Pitt's successor, was a son of the illustrious Windham, of a Tory family, himself both weak and passionate, and of infirm health; George Grenville, the husband of his sister, renounced well-founded aspirations to the speaker's chair for a sinecure, and, remaining in the ministry, still agreed to do his best in the House; while Bedford became Lord Privy Seal.

Peace was an immediate object of the king; and as the letters of Bristol, the English minister at Madrid, promised friendly relations with Spain, the king chap. XVIII.} 1761. directed, that, through Fuentes, the Spanish ambassador at London, the French court should be invited to renew its last propositions. It is only with a second Pitt, said Choiseul, that I should dare to treat on such offers. War is the only part to be chosen. Firmness and patience will not build ships for us; but they will give us a triumph over our enemies. As the weeks rolled on, and the Spanish treasure ships arrived, Spain used bolder language, and before the year was over, a rupture with that power was unavoidable.

Yet peace was still sought with perseverance; for it was the abiding purpose of the young sovereign to assert and maintain the royal authority in Great Britain, in Ireland, and in America. I was bred and will die a monarchy man, said Melcombe, who was to Bute what Bute was to George the Third; men of the city are not to demand reasons of measures; they must and they easily may be taught better manners. He is the best and most amiable master that ever lived since the days of Titus, said Barrington of the king, to whom he devoted himself entirely; having no political connection with any man, joining those who declared that it was for the king alone to consider whom he should raise to his council, or whom he should exclude for ever from his closet: God had adorned him with the prerogative, and left to his servants the glory of obedience. Cost what it may, wrote Halifax, the Lord Lieutenant, from Ireland, my good royal master's authority shall never suffer in my hands; and the measures for reducing the colonies also to obedience were in like manner vigorously prosecuted.

America knew that the Board of Trade had pro- chap. XVIII.} 1761. posed to annul colonial charters, to reduce all the colonies to royal governments, and to gain a revenue by lowering and collecting the duties prescribed by the Sugar Act of 1733. She knew, that, if the British legislature should tax her people, it would increase the fees and salaries of the crown officers in the plantations, and the pensions and sinecure places held by favorites in England. The legislature of Massachusetts still acknowledged that their own resolve could not alter an act of parliament, and that every proceeding of theirs which was in conflict with a British statute was for that reason void. And yet the justice of the restrictions on trade was denied, and their authority questioned; and when the officers of the customs asked for writs of assistance to enforce them, the colony regarded its liberties in peril. This is the opening scene of American resistance.

John Adams to the Abbe Mably. Works v. 492.

It began in New England, and made its first battle-ground in a court-room. A lawyer of Boston, with a tongue of flame and the inspiration of a seer, stepped forward to demonstrate that all arbitrary authority was unconstitutional and against the law.

In February, 1761, Hutchinson, the new chief justice, and his four associates, sat in the crowded councilchamber of the old Town-House in Boston, to hear arguments on the question, whether the persons employed in enforcing the Acts of Trade should have power to invoke generally the assistance of all the executive officers of the colony.

A statute of Charles the Second, argued Jeremiah Gridley for the crown, allows writs of assistance to be issued by the English Court of Exchequer; a colo- chap. XVIII.} 1761. nial law devolves the power of that court on the Colonial Superior Court; and a statute of William the Third extends to the revenue officers in America like powers, and a right to like assistance, as in England. To refuse the writ is, then, to deny that the parliament of Great Britain is the sovereign legislator of the British empire.

Oxenbridge Thacher, who first rose in reply, reasoned mildly, wisely, and with learning, showing that the rule of the English courts was in this case not applicable to America.

But James Otis, a native of Barnstable, whose irritable nature was rocked by the stormy impulses of his fitful passions, disdaining fees or rewards, stood up amidst the crowd, the champion of the colonies and the prophet of their greatness. I am determined, such were his words, to sacrifice estate, ease, health, applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of my country, in opposition to a kind of power, the exercise of which cost one king of England his head and another his throne. He pointed out the nature of writs of assistance; that they were universal, being directed to all officers and subjects throughout the colony, and compelling the whole government and people to render aid in enforcing the revenue laws for the plantations; that they were perpetual, no method existing by which they could be returned or accounted for; that they gave even to the menial servants employed in the customs, on bare suspicion, without oath, without inquiry, perhaps from malice or revenge, authority to violate the sanctity of a man's own house, in which the laws should be as the impregnable battlements of his castle. These writs, he exclaimed, are the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the chap. XVIII.} 1761. most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law. And he invoked attention to the whole range of an argument which might, he acknowledged, appear uncommon in many things, and which rested on universal principles, founded in truth. Tracing the lineage of freedom to its origin, he opposed the claims of the British officers by the authority of reason; and that they were at war with the constitution he proved by appeals to the charter of Massachusetts and its English liberties. The precedent cited against him belonged to the reign of Charles the Second, and was but evidence of the subserviency of some ignorant clerk of the exchequer. But even if there were precedents, all precedents, he insisted, are under the control of the principles of law. Nor could the authority of an express statute sanction the enforcement of Acts of Trade by general writs of assistance. No act of parliament, such were his memorable words, can establish such a writ; even though made in the very language of the petition, it would be a nullity. . . . An act of parliament against the constitution is void.

Authorities to be relied on for this speech of Otis are the contemporary ones: 1. The minutes taken down at the time, and inserted in Minot, and now published more correctly in the appendix to the Diary of John Adams, 523, 524: 2. Various incidental allusions in letters of Bernard; 3. Letters of Hutchinson; and 4. The History of Hutchinson, of which the plan was formed as early, at least, as in 1762. All agree, particularly the letters of hutchinson, that this argument by Otis was the origin of the party of revolution in Massachusetts. The account of the speech, which I give in the text, goes to that extent, and includes the revolutionary doctrine ultimately relied on, which esteemed reason and the constitution superior to an act of parliament. In his extreme old age, the elder Adams was asked for an analysis of this speech, which was four or five hours long. He answered, that no man could have written the argument from memory the day after it was spoken, much less after a lapse of fifty-seven years! And he then proceeded to compose a series of letters on the subject, filling thirty-three closely-printed octavo pages. Comparing these letters with letters written at or near the time, I am obliged to think that the venerable man blended together his recollections of the totality of the influence and doctrines of Otis, as developed on various occasions during the years 1761, 1762, 1763, 1764, and 1765, and even 1766. It is plain that his statement was prepared by aid of references to the British statute book and to printed documents. Thus, Appendix to Novanglus, p. 294, he quotes several laws, and adds, I cannot search for any more of these mincing laws. Again, he asserts that the warm speech of 1762 was a second edition of the speech on the writs of assistance. But of that warm speech Otis himself published a report which may be read and compared. Further: the doctrine of the virtual representation of America in the British parliament does not seem to have come into public discussion till the winter of 1763-4; and Bernard expressly writes, that the power of parliament to levy port-duties had not been questioned or denied in Boston till the year 1764. On page 294, Mr. Otis is said to have quoted, in 1761, a remark first made by a member of parliament in 1766. The principle, says Mr. Adams, I perfectly remember. The authorities in detail I could not be supposed to retain. I own I have had embarrassment in adjusting these authorities; but, after research and deliberation, adhering strictly to the rules of historical skepticism, weighing the accounts of contemporaries written at the time, I will trust that my narrative conveys with precision the scope of the remarks of Otis. The truth, for which there is clear evidence, is sufficient for illustrating his glory and for establishing his momentous influence. A protest against negro slavery seems not to have been uttered on that occasion; but he pronounced such a protest in a later year, as will be related in its place.

My readers must pardon this long note, which is prompted by my great anxiety and care to make statements exactly right, and to have them so recognised. In narrating the incidents which are of universal interest, I desire to escape exaggeration, and yet not from timidity to divest any fact of its proper coloring.

Thus did Otis lay a foundation for independence. His chap. XVIII.} 1761. words were as a penetrating fire, kindling the souls of his hearers. The majority of the judges were awestruck, and believed him in the right. Hutchinson cowered before him, as the great incendiary of New England. The crowded audience seemed ready to take up arms against the arbitrary enforcement of the restrictive system; especially the youngest barrister in the colony, the choleric John Adams, a stubborn and honest lover of his country, extensively learned and a bold thinker, listened in rapt admiration, and caught the inspiration which was to call forth his own heroic opposition to British authority. From that chap. XVIII.} 1761. time he declares that he could never read the Acts of Trade without anger, nor any section of them without a curse.

John Adams to Wm. Tudor, in Appendix to Novanglus, 269.

The people of the town of Boston, a small provincial seaport of merchants and shipbuild-ers, with scarcely fifteen thousand inhabitants, became alive with political excitement. It seemed as if the words spoken on that day were a spell powerful enough to break the paper chains that left to America no free highway on the seas but that to England, and to open for the New World all the infinite paths of the ocean. Nay, more! As reason and the constitution are avowed to be paramount to the power of the British parliament, America becomes conscious of a life of her own. She sees in dim outlines along the future the vision of her own independence, with freedom of commerce and self-imposed laws. Her understanding is not yet enlightened and convinced, but her sentiments are just. Not from the intellect,

Out of the heart, Rises the bright ideal of that dream. Longfellow's Spanish Student.

The old members of the Superior Court, after hearing the arguments of Thacher and Otis, the friends to liberty, inclined to their side. But I, said the ambitious Hutchinson, who never grew weary of recalling to the British ministry this claim to favor, I prevailed with my brethren to continue the cause till the next term, and in the mean time wrote to England. The answer came; and the subservient court, obeying authority, and disregarding law, granted writs of assistance, whenever the officers chap. XVIII.} 1761. of the revenue applied for them.

Bernard to Shelburne, 22 Dec., 1766.

But Otis was borne onward by a spirit which mastered him, and increased in vigor as the storm rose. Gifted with a delicately sensitive and most sympathetic nature, his soul was agitated in the popular tempest as certainly as the gold leaf in the electrometer flutters at the passing by of the thundercloud. He led the van of American patriots. Yet impassioned rather than cautious, disinterested and incapable of cold calculation, now foaming with rage, now desponding without hope, he was often like one who, as he rushes into battle, forgets his shield. Excitable and indulging in vehement personal criminations, he yet had not a drop of rancor in his breast, and, when the fit of passion had passed away, was mild and easy to be entreated. His impulses were always for liberty, and full of confidence; yet his understanding, in moments of depression, would often shrink back from his own inspirations. He never met an excited audience, but his mind caught and increased the contagion, and rushed onward with fervid and impetuous eloquence; but when quieted by retirement, and away from the crowd, he could be soothed into a yielding inconsistency. Thus he toiled and suffered, an uncertain leader of a party, yet thrilling and informing the multitude; not steadfast in conduct, yet by flashes of sagacity lighting the people along their perilous way; the man of the American protest, not destined to enjoy his country's triumph. He that will study closely the remarkable union in Otis of legal learning with speculative opinion, chap. XVIII.} 1761. of principles of natural justice the most abstract and the most radical, with a deeply-fixed respect for the rights of property and obedience to the law, will become familiar with a cast of mind still common in New England.

The subserviency of Hutchinson increased the public discontent. Men lost confidence in the integrity of their highest judicial tribunal. Innovations under pretence of law were confirmed by judgments incompatible with English liberties. The Admiralty Court, hateful because instituted by a British parliament to punish infringements of the Acts of Trade in America without the intervention of a jury, had in distributing the proceeds of forfeitures, violated the very statutes which it was appointed to enforce. Otis endeavored to compel a restitution of the third of forfeitures, which by the revenue laws belonged to the king for the use of the province, but had been misappropriated for the benefit of officers and informers.

Gov. Bernard to Lords of Trade, 6 August, 1761. Boston Gazette, 14 Sept., 1769. Bernard to Shelburne, 22 Dec., 1766.

The injury done the province was admitted by the chief justice, who yet had no jurisdiction to redress it. The Court of Admiralty, in which the wrong originated, had always been deemed grievous, because unconstitutional; its authority seemed now established by judges devoted to the prerogative.

Unable to arrest the progress of illiberal doctrines in the courts, the people of Boston, in May, 1761, with unbounded and very general enthusiasm, elected Otis one of their representatives to the Assembly. Out of this, said Ruggles to the royalist Chandler of Worcester, a faction will arise that will shake this province to its foundation. Bernard became chap. XVIII.} 1761. alarmed, and concealing his determined purpose of effecting a change in the charter of the colony, he entreated the new legislature to lay aside divisions and distinctions. Let me recommend to you, said he, to give no attention to declamations tending to promote a suspicion of the civil rights of the people being in danger. Such harangues might well suit in the reigns of Charles and James, but in the times of the Georges they are groundless and unjust. Thus he spoke, regardless of truth; for he knew well the settled policy of the Board of Trade, and was secretly the most eager instrument in executing their designs; ever restless to stimulate them to encroachments that should destroy the charter and efface the boundaries of the province.

Massachusetts invalidated the British commercial system, which Virginia resisted from abhorrence of the slave-trade. Never before had England pursued the traffic in negroes with such eager avarice. The remonstrances of philanthropy and of the colonies were unheeded, and categorical instructions from the Board of Trade kept every American port open as markets for men. The legislature of Virginia had repeatedly showed a disposition to obstruct the commerce; a deeply-seated public opinion began more and more to avow the evils and the injustice of slavery itself; and in 1761, it was proposed to suppress the importation of Africans by a prohibitory duty. Among those who took part in the long and violent debate was Richard Henry Lee, the representative of Westmoreland. Descended from one of the oldest families in Virginia, he had been educated in England, and had returned to his native land familiar with the spirit of chap. XVIII.} 1761. Grotius and Cudworth, of Locke and Montesquieu; his first recorded speech was against negro slavery, in behalf of human freedom. In the continued importation of slaves, he foreboded danger to the political and moral interests of the Old Dominion; an increase of the free Anglo-Saxons, he argued, would foster arts and varied agriculture, while a race doomed to abject bondage was of necessity an enemy to social happiness. He painted from ancient history the horrors of servile insurrections. He deprecated the barbarous atrocity of the trade with Africa, and its violation of the equal rights of men created like ourselves in the image of God. Christianity, thus he spoke in conclusion, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of universal benevolence and brotherly love, happily abolished civil slavery. Let us who profess the same religion practise its precepts, and, by agreeing to this duty, pay a proper regard to our true interests and to the dictates of justice and humanity.

Lee's Lee, chap. II.

The tax for which Lee raised his voice was carried through the Assembly of Virginia by a majority of one; but from England a negative followed with certainty every colonial act tending to diminish the slave-trade.

South Carolina, also, appalled by the great increase of its black population, endeavored by its own laws to restrain importations of slaves, and in like manner came into collision with the same British policy. But the war with the Cherokees weaned its citizens still more from Great Britain.

I am for war, said Saloue, the young warrior of chap. XVIII.} 1761. Estatoe, at a great council of his nation. The spirits of our murdered brothers still call on us to avenge them; he that will not take up this hatchet and follow me is no better than a woman. To reduce the native mountaineers of Carolina, General Amherst, early in 1761, sent a regiment and two companies of light infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant, the same who, in 1758, had been shamefully beaten near Pittsburg. The province added to the regular forces a regiment of its own, under the command of Henry Middleton, who counted among his officers Henry Laurens, William Moultrie,

Virginia Gazette, 554, 2, 2.

and Francis Marion.

At Fort Prince George, Attakulla-kulla met the expedition, entreating delay for a conference. But on the seventh day of June, the army, which was formed of about thirteen hundred regulars, and as many more of the men of Carolina, pursued their march, followed by about seven hundred pack-horses, and more than four hundred cattle. A party of Chickasaws and Catawbas attended as allies. On the eighth, they marched through the dreaded defiles of War-Woman's Creek,

Moultrie's Memoirs of the American Revolution, II. 223.

by a rocky and very narrow path between the overhanging mountain of granite and a deep precipice which had the rushing rivulet at its base. Yet they came upon no trace of the enemy, till, on the next day, they saw by the way-side, crayoned in April vermilion on a blazed forest-tree, a war-party of Cherokee braves, with a white man as a captive.

On the morning of the tenth, at about half past 8, as the English army, having suffered from forced marches and rainy weather, were walking chap. XVIII.} 1761. through thick woods on the bank of the Cowhowee, or, as we call it, the Little Tennessee, about two miles from the battle-ground of Montgomery, at a place where the path runs along the foot of a mountain on the right, and near the river on the left, the Cherokees were discovered hovering over the right flank, while others fired from beyond the river. Quintine Kennedy, with a corps of ninety Indians and thirty Carolina woodsmen, began the attack. The unseen enemy were driven from their ambush near the river, but again rallied, mingling the noise of musketry with shouts and yells. After three hours exposure to an irregular fire, the troops, following the river, emerged from the defile into an open savanna. Meantime the Indian whoop was heard as it passed from the front to the encumbered rear of the long-extended line, where the Cherokee fire seemed heaviest; but Middleton sent opportune relief, which secured the baggage. Happily for Grant, the Cherokees were in great need of ammunition. Of the white men, ten were killed and forty badly wounded; to save the dead from the scalping-knife, the river was their place of burial. Not till midnight did the army reach its place of encampment at Etchowe.

For thirty days the whites sojourned west of the Alleghanies. They walked through every town in the middle settlement; and the Outside Towns, which lay on another branch of the Tennessee The lovely hamlets, fifteen in number, were pillaged, burned, and utterly destroyed. That year the Cherokees had opened new fields for maize, not in the vales only, but on the sides and summits of the hills, where the fugitives from the lower settlements were to make their bread. But all the plantations, teeming with chap. XVIII.} 1761. prodigious quantities of corn, were laid waste; and four thousand of the red people were driven to wander among the mountains.

The English army, till its return in July to Fort Prince George, suffered from heat, thirst, watchings, and fatigue of all sorts; in bad weather they had no shelter but boughs and bowers; for twenty days they were on short allowance; their feet were torn by briers and mangled by the rocks; but they extended the English frontier seventy miles towards the west; and they compelled the Cherokees to covenant peace, at Charleston, with the royal governor and council. I am come to you, said Attakulla-kulla, as a messenger from the whole nation, to see what can be done for my people in their distress. Here he produced the belts of wampum from the several towns, in token of his investment with full authority from all. As to what has happened, he added, I believe it has been ordered by our Great Father above. We are of different color from the white people; but the same Great Spirit made all. As we live in one land, let us love one another as one people. And the Cherokees pledged anew to Carolina the friendship, which was to last as long as the light of morning should break above their villages, or the bright fountains gush from their hill-sides.

Lieut. Gov, Bull to the Lords of Trade, 23 Sept., 1761. Terms of Peace for the Cherokees, in the Lords of Trade, of 11 Dec., 1761.

Then they returned to dwell once more in their ancient homes. Around them nature, with the tranquillity of exhaustless power, renewed her beauty; the forests blossomed as before; the thickets were alive with melody; the rivers bounded exultingly in their course; the glades sparkled with the strawberry and the wild chap. XVIII.} 1761. flowers; but for the men of that region the inspiring confidence of independence in their mountain fastnesses was gone. They knew that they had come into the presence of a race more powerful than their own; and the course of their destiny was irrevocably changed.

In these expeditions to the valley of the Tennessee, Gadsden and Middleton, Moultrie and Marion, were trained to arms. At Pittsburg, the Virginians, as all agreed, had saved Grant from utter ruin; the Carolinians believed his return from their western country was due to provincial courage. The Scottish colonel concealed the wound of his self-love by affecting towards the Southern colonists that contemptuous superciliousness which had been promoted by Montgomery, and which had so infused itself into the British nation, that it even colored the writings of Adam Smith. Resenting the arrogance with scorn, Middleton challenged his superior officer, and they met. The challenge was generally censured; for Grant had come to defend their frontiers; but all the province took part in the indignant excitement, and its longcherished affection for England was mingled with disgust and anger.

The discontent of New York sprang from a cause which influenced the calmest minds, and was but strengthened and extended by deliberate reflection. It was not because the Episcopal clergy of that colony urged Seeker, Archbishop of Canterbury, to promote the abrogation of provincial charters; for the correspondence was concealed. It was not because they importunately demanded bishops in America, as was their duty, if they sincerely be- chap. XVIII.} 1761. lieved that renovating truth is transmitted from generation to generation, not through the common mind of the ages, but through a separate order having perpetual succession; for, on this point, the British ministry was disinclined to act, while the American people were alarmed at Episcopacy only from its connection with politics. New York was aroused to opposition, because, as the first fruits of the removal of Pitt from power, within six weeks of his resignation,

Representation of the Board of Trade to the king, 11 November, 1761.

the independency of the judiciary was struck at

Egremont to Monckton, 9 December, 1761.

throughout all America, making revolution inevitable.

On the death of the chief justice of New York, his successor, one Pratt, a Boston lawyer, was appointed at the king's pleasure, and not during good behavior, as had been done before the late king's death. The Assembly held the new tenure of judicial power to be inconsistent with American liberty; the generous but dissolute Monckton, coming in glory from Quebec to enter on the government of New York, before seeking fresh dangers in the West Indies, censured it in the presence of the Council;

Letter to the Lords of Trade, 7 April, 1762.

even Colden advised against it.

Golden to the Board of Trade, 25 Sept., 1761.

As the parliament, argued Pratt,

Pratt to Golden, 22 Aug., 1761.

himself, after his selection for the vacant place on the bench, and when quite ready to use the power of a judge to promote the political interests of the crown, as the parliament at the Revolution thought it the necessary right of Englishmen to have the judges safe from being turned out by the crown, the people of New York claim the right of Englishmen in this respect; and he himself was treated chap. XVIII.} 1761. with such indignity for accepting the office on other terms, that it was thought to have shortened his life.

Elbridge Gerry to S. Adams, 2 Nov., 1772.

But the idea of equality in political rights between England and the colonies could not be comprehended by the English officials of that day; and in November, about a month after Pitt's retirement, the Board of Trade reported to the king against the tenure of good behavior, as a pernicious proposition, subversive of all true policy, and tending to lessen the just dependence of the colonies upon the government of the mother country.

Representation of the Lords of Trade to the king, 18 Nov., 1761.

The representation found favor with George; and, as the first fruits of the new system, on the ninth of December the instruction went forth through Egremont to all colonial governors, to grant no judicial commissions but during pleasure.

To make the, tenure of the judicial office the king's will was to make the bench of judges the instruments of the prerogative, and to subject the administration of justice throughout all America to the influence of an arbitrary and irresponsible power. The Assembly of New York rose up against the encroachment, deeming it a deliberate step towards despotic authority; the standing instruction they resolved should be changed, or they, on their part, would grant no salary whatever to the judges.

Things are come to a crisis, wrote Pratt, in 1762. January, 1762, guided by his interest, and chiefly intent on securing a good salary. If I cannot be supported with a competent salary, the office must be abandoned, and his Majesty's prerogative must suffer. Why, asked Colden, should the chief justices of chap. XVIII.} 1762. Nova Scotia and Georgia have certain and fixed salaries from the crown, and a chief justice of so considerable a province as this be left to beg his bread of the people? and reporting to the Board of Trade the source of opposition in New York, For some years past, said he, three popular lawyers educated in Connecticut, who have strongly imbibed the independent principles of that country, calumniate the administration in every exercise of the prerogative, and get the applause of the mob by propagating the doctrine, that all authority is derived from the people. These three popular lawyers were William Livingston, John Morin Scot,

Rev. D. Johnson to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

and—alas, that he should afterwards have turned aside from the career of patriotism!—the historian, William Smith.

The news of the resignation of Pitt, who was almost idolized in America, heightened the rising jealousy and extended it through the whole continent. We have such an idea of the general corruption, said Ezra Stiles, a dissenting minister in Rhode Island, we know not how to confide in any person below the crown.

Ezra Stiles to Franklin, Dec., 1761.

You adore the Oliverian times, said Bernard to Mayhew, at Boston. I adore Him alone who is before all times, answered Mayhew, and at the same time avowed his zeal for the principles of the glorious Revolution of 1688, especially for the freedom of speech and of writing.

Bradford's Life of Jonathan Mayhew, 222.

Already he was known among royalists as an enemy to kings.

The alarm rose every where to an extreme height, and every question of authority in church and state chap. XVIII.} 1762. was debated. The old Puritan strife with prelacy was renewed; and Presbyterians and Congregationalists were jealous of the favor shown by the royal governors to the established church. In New York the college was under Episcopal direction; as New England's Cambridge was in the hands of Dissenters, Bernard sealed a charter for another seminary in the interior. A fund of two thousand pounds was subscribed to a society, which the legislature of Massachusetts had authorized, for propagating knowledge among the Indians; but the king interposed his negative, and reserved the red men for the Anglican form of worship. Mayhew, on the other hand, marshalled public opinion against bishops; while Massachusetts, under the guidance of Otis, dismissed the Episcopalian Bollan, its pedantic but honest agent, and—intending to select a Dissenter who should be able to employ for the protection of their liberties the great political influence of the Nonconformists in England-they intrusted their affairs to Jasper Mauduit, who, though a Dissenter, was connected through his brother with Jenkinson and Bute and the king.

But the great subject of discontent was the enforcement of the Acts of Trade by the Court of Admiralty; the court which was immediately subject to the king, and independent of the province, where a judge determined questions of property without a jury, on information furnished by crown officers, and derived his own emoluments exclusively from his portion of the forfeitures which he himself had the sole power to declare. The governor, too, was sure to lean to the side of large seizures; for he by law enjoyed a full third of all the fines imposed on goods chap. XVIII.} 1762. that were condemned. The legislature, angry that Hutchinson, as chief justice, in defiance of the plain principles of law, should lend himself to the schemes of the crown officers, began to perceive how many offices he had selfishly accumulated in his own hands. Otis, whose mind was deeply imbued with the writings of Montesquieu, pointed out the mischief of uniting in the same person executive, legislative, and judicial powers; but four or five years passed away before the distinction was much heeded; and in the mean time the judges were punished by a reduction of their salaries. The general writs of assistance, which were clearly illegal,

The decision of the Courts of Connecticut, and the decision of the Royalist Governor, Lord Bottetourt, and the Council of Virginia

would have been prohibited by a provincial enactment, but for the negative of the governor.

The commotion, which at first was confined to Boston, was expected to extend to the other ports. The people were resolved that their trade should no longer be kept under restrictions; and began to talk of procuring themselves justice.

Bernard to Lords of Trade.

Chapter 19:

The king Drives out the Newcastle Whigs.— the dawn of the New republic.

1762.

The world did not at once perceive the purposes chap. XIX.} 1762. of the new ministers, who were careful at first to adopt as literally as possible the orders of William Pitt, and his plan for conducting the war. He had infused his own haughtiness and determined spirit into the army and navy of England; the strings which he had struck with power still vibrated; his light, like that of an annihilated star, still shone brilliantly to the world; and it was without fear, that, in the first days of January, 1762, England, justified by the avowed alliance between the branches of the House of Bourbon, extended the strife to the Peninsula and the colonies of Spain.

Behold, then, at last, the great league of the Roman Catholic powers, France, Spain, Austria, and the German Empire, the mighty authorities of the Middle Age, blessed by the consecrating prayers of the see of Rome, and united in arms; but America and the future of humanity were already safe. The character of the war was changed. The alliance of France and Spain had been made under the influence chap. XIX.} 1762. of Choiseul, a pupil of the new ideas, the enemy of the Jesuits, and the patron of philosophy; and the federation of the weaker maritime states presented itself to the world as the protector of equality on the seas. England, on the other hand, had no motive to continue hostilities, but the love of rapine and of conquest; and on the twelfth of January, about a week after the declaration against Spain, the king directed measures to be taken to detach Austria from the House of Bourbon, and recover its alliance for England.

The proposition was made through Sir Joseph Yorke, at the Hague, who was to tempt the empress by the hope of some ulterior acquisitions in Italy. The experienced diplomatist promptly hinted to his employers that offers from Prussia, that is, the offer of the restoration of Silesia, would be more effective. A clandestine proposition from England to Austria was itself a treachery to Frederic and a violation of treaties; it became doubly so, when the consequence of success in the negotiation would certainly have been the employment of England's influence to compel Frederic to the cession of Silesia. To promise acquisitions in Italy, with all whose powers England was at peace, was an outrage on the laws of nations; the proposition, if accepted, equally implied perfidy in Austria towards France. Her Imperial Majesty and her minister, said Kaunitz, cannot understand the proper meaning of this confidential overture of the English; and it did not remain a secret.

No one desired the cessation of hostilities more than Frederic, if he could but secure his own possessions. To terminate this deadly war advantageously, thus he wrote, in January, 1762, to George, chap. XIX.} 1762. there is need of nothing but constancy; but we must persevere to the end. I see difficulties still without number; instead of appalling me, they encourage me by the hope of overcoming them. Nothing could be more praiseworthy than the desire of the British Government to establish peace; but nothing could be more pusillanimous than the method adopted to promote it. Ignorant of continental affairs, George the Third and his Favorite held it necessary to break or bend the firmness of will of the king of Prussia; and with that view invoked the interposition of Russia. The female autocrat of the North, the Empress Elizabeth, who, during her reign, abolished the punishment of death, but, by her hatred of the Prussian king, brought provinces into misery and tens of thousands to massacre on battle-grounds, a childish person, delighting in dress and new clothes, in intoxication and the grossest excesses of lewdness, was no more. So soon as it was known, that she had been succeeded by her nephew, the frank, impetuous Peter the Third, who cherished an unbounded admiration and sincere friendship for Frederic, the British minister at St. Petersburg was provided with a credit of one hundred thousand pounds to be used as bribes,

Bute to Keith, 6. Feb. 1762, in Raumer, II. 492. There is a copy of the letter among the Mitchell Papers in the British Museum.

and was instructed by Bute to moderate the excessive friendship of the emperor for Frederic; the strength of that friendship was a source of anxiety.

Bute to Keith, 26 February, 1762, in Raumer, II. 501.

At the same time an attempt was made to induce parliament to abandon the Prussian alliance; and early in February, Bedford, though a member of the chap. XIX.} 1762. cabinet, offered a resolution in the House of Lords against continuing the war in Germany. In the debate Bute did but assume an appearance of opposition, and the question was only evaded and postponed. It was evidently the royal wish to compel Frederic to the hard necessity of ceding territory to Austria. A statement was demanded of him of his idea on the subject of peace, and of his resources for holding out, as a preliminary to the renewal of the subsidy from England. But he rendered no such account, which could have been but an inventory of his weakness. The armies of Russia were encamped in Prussia Proper; to Gallitzin the minister of Russia at London, Bute intimated that England would aid the emperor to retain a part of the conquests made from the king of Prussia, if he would continue to hold him in check. But the chivalric Czar, indignant at the perfidy, inclosed Gallitzin's despatch to Frederic himself,

Histoire de la Guerre de Sept Ans, chap. 15. But compare the denial, in Adolphus: Hist., i. 80, and Bute to Mitchell, in Appendix to Adolphus, i. 587.

and hastening to reconcile his empire with his illustrious friend, restored all the conquests that had been made from the kingdom to that prince, settled with him a peace including a guaranty of Silesia, and finally transferred a Russian army to his camp. The fact, that Prussia had transformed Russia from an enemy into an ally, while England had a new enemy in Spain, and a dependent in Portugal, gave a plausible reason for discontinuing the grant to Prussia. Still the subsidy was promised; but the condition of the bounty

Bute to Mitchell, 9 April, 1762.

of this nation, wrote Bute, at the king's command, is the employment of it towards the procurement of peace, not the continuance of chap. XIX.} 1762. war. This Englishman, said Frederic, thinks that money does every thing, and that there is no money but in England.

Histoire de la Guerre, &c. in $CEuvres Posthumes, IV. 284.

And, deserted by his ally, he was left to tread in solitude the paths of greatness. Little did George the Third dream that he was filling his own cup with bitterness to the brim; that the day was soon to come, when he in his turn would entreat benefits from Frederic, and find them inexorably withheld.

During these negotiations, and before the end of March, news reached Europe of victories in the West Indies, achieved by Monckton with an army of twelve thousand men, assisted by Rodney and a fleet of sixteen sail of the line and thirteen frigates. On the seventh of January, the British armament appeared off Martinico, the richest and best of the French colonies, strongly guarded by natural defences, which art had improved. Yet, on the fourteenth of February, the governor and inhabitants were forced to capitulate. Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent's, were soon after occupied; so that the outer Caribbee Islands, in the whole extent of the arc which bends from St. Domingo towards the continent of South America, were British. For the siege of Havana the continental colonies were ordered to contribute quotas of men, and reinforcements were on their way from England.

These successes gave new courage to the king's friends to pursue their system. Newcastle, who had received all kinds of disgusts from his associates in the cabinet, seized the occasion of withholding the subsidy from Prussia to indulge with Bute his habit of chap XIX.} 1762. complaint. But the Earl never requested me to continue in office, said Newcastle, nor said a civil thing to me; and at last most lingeringly the veteran statesman resigned. English writers praise his disinterestedness, because the childless man, who himself possessed enormous wealth, who while in office had provided bountifully for his kindred, and who left his post only to struggle in old age to recover it and act his part anew, did not accept a pension. America gives him the better praise, that, beneath all his frivolity and follies, he had a vein of good sense, which restrained him from decisive attacks on colonial liberty.

So fell the old whig aristocracy which had so long governed England. It was false to the cause of liberty and betrayed the man of the people, only to be requited with contumely by those who reaped benefits from its treachery. Its system of government under its old form, could never be restored. It needed to be purified by a long conflict with the inheritors of its methods of corruption, before it could be awakened to a perception of its duty and animated to undertake the work of reform. But the power of the people was coming with an energy which it would be neither safe nor possible to neglect. Royalty itself no less than aristocracy was doomed. In the very days in which the English whig aristocracy was in its agony, Rousseau, the most eloquent writer of French prose, told the world, that nature makes neither princes, nor rich men, nor grandees; that the sovereignty of the people is older than the institutions which restrain it; and that these institutions are not obligatory but by consent.

Contract Social, printed in April, 1762.

You put trust, said he, in the actual order chap. XIX.} 1762. of society, without reflecting that this order is subject to inevitable changes. We are approaching the state of crisis and the age of revolutions. Were all the kings put away, they would hardly be missed, and things would go on none the worse.

From Emile.

I hold it impossible that the great monarchies of Europe should endure much longer.

Note to a passage in the Third Book of Emile. That work was published in May, 1762.

On the retirement of Newcastle, Bute, near the end of May, transferring the seals of the Northern Department to George Grenville, became first lord of the treasury, the feeblest of British prime ministers. Bedford remained privy seal; Egremont, Grenville's brother-in-law, secretary of state for the Southern Department and America; while the able Lord North retained his seat at the Treasury Board. Early in June, on the death of Anson, Halifax returned from Ireland to join the cabinet as first lord of the admiralty. Charles Townshend was still secretary at war, yet having that confidence in his own genius which made him restless in occupying a station inferior to Grenville's.

The confidence of the ministry was confirmed by success in war. The British army and navy had acquired a habit of victory; the British men-of-war reposed in the consciousness of maritime supremacy; and, as the hawk, from his resting-place among the clouds, gazes calmly around for his prey, their eye glanced over every ocean in search of the treasureships of Spain. Great monarchies, Choiseul had said

Choiseul's Despatch of 5 April, 1762. Flassan: Histoire de la Diplomatie Francaise, VI. 466

in April, spite of redoubled misfortunes, chap. XIX.} 1762. should have confidence in the solidity of their existence. If I were the master, we would stand against England as Spain did against the Moors; and if this course were truly adopted, England would be reduced and destroyed within thirty years.

But the exhausted condition of France compelled her to seek peace; in February and March, the subject had been opened for discussion through the ministers of Sardinia in London and Versailles; and after passing April in the consideration of plans, early in May Bute was able to submit to Bedford his project. I am glad of the peace as it has been chalked out, said Bedford; a much longer continuance of the war, however relieved by the lustre of farther conquests, is likely to prove fatal to the nation; and in July he accepted the embassy to France, though the appointment was not declared till the first of September.

A good peace with foreign enemies, said Hutchinson, from Massachusetts, as early as March, would enable us to make a better defence against our domestic foes.. The relations of Ireland and of America to the British king and the British parliament were held to be the same. By Poyning's Act, as it was called, no bill could be accepted in Ireland, until it had been transmitted to England, and returned with the assent of the Privy Council. The principle had already been applied by royal instructions to particular branches of American legislation. The design began to be more and more openly avowed, of chap. XIX.} 1762. demanding a suspending clause in every act.

It had been already decided that every American judge should hold his appointment at the royal pleasure. Hardy, governor of New Jersey, having violated his instructions, by issuing a commission during good behavior, was promptly dismissed; and at a time when the new-modelling of the charter governments was contemplated, William Franklin, the only son of the great adversary of the proprietaries of Pennsylvania, to the extreme astonishment and rage of the younger Penn, at the suggestion of Bute, became his successor.

When New York refused to vote salaries to its chief justice, unless he should receive an independent commission, the Board of Trade, in June, 1762,

Representation of the Board to the king, 11 June, 1762.

recommended that he should have his salary from the royal quitrents. Such a salary, it was pleaded to the Board by the chief justice himself, could not fail to render the office of great service to his Majesty, in securing the dependence of the colony on the crown, and its commerce to Great Britain.

Pratt to the Lords of Trade, 24 May, 1762.

It was further hinted, that it would insure judgments in favor of the crown against all intrusions upon the royal domain by the great landed proprietors of New York, and balance their power and influence in the Assembly. The appeal was irresistible, and, by the direction of Bute and his colleagues, all of whom favored American taxation by act of parliament, the measure was adopted. Thus was consummated the system of subjecting the halls of justice to the prerogative. The king, in the royal provinces, instituted courts, named the judges, removed them at pleasure, fixed chap. XIX.} 1762. the amount of their salaries, and paid them out of funds that were independent of legislative grants. The system, established as yet in one only of the older provinces, was designed for all. In no part of the continent was opposition to the British government more deeply rooted, more rational and steadfast, than in New York, where the popular lawyers continued their appeals, through the weekly press, to the public mind, and, supported by the great landholders, excited the people to menace resistance and to forebode independence.

It began to be widely known, that at the end of the war some general regulation of the governments of the colonies would be attempted; and the officers of the crown who wished to escape the responsibility attached to a dependence on the people, were quite certain that a provision would be made for their independent support.

Bernard to Shelburne, 4 January, 1767. Compare, too, Novanglus.

The purpose of raising a revenue by parliament at the peace was no longer concealed; and chastisement was prepared for Maryland and Pennsylvania, the refractory provinces which had so much tasked the attention of the great English lawyers, Mansfield, Charles Yorke, and Pratt. The perseverance of Maryland in disobeying the royal requisition was laid before the king, who expressed what was called just displeasure at the obstinate disobedience of the Assembly of that province. He censured them as not animated by a sense of their duty to their king and country. Though there is little room, added Egremont, to expect a change in persons who seem determined to adhere to their own opinion, his Majesty has judged it proper to direct me chap. XIX.} 1762. to express his sentiments on the conduct of the Assembly of your province, that they may not deceive themselves by supposing that their behavior is not seen here in its true light.

H. Sharpe to Egremont, 25 April, Egremont to H. Sharpe, 10 July, 1762.

The despatch bore the impress of George the Third, and shadowed forth his intentions.

The reprimand of the legislature of Pennsylvania was delayed till Sir Jeffrey Amherst could report its disregard of his final appeal. On receiving from him full accounts, a similar letter conveyed to the Assembly of Pennsylvania the king's high disapprobation of their artfully evading to pay any obedience to his Majesty's requisitions.

Egremont to Gov. of Pennsylvania, 27 Nov., 1762.

No one was more bent on reducing the colonies to implicit obedience than the blunt, humane, and honest, but self-willed Duke of Bedford, who, on the sixth day of September, sailed for France with full powers to negotiate a peace. Scarcely was he gone, before Egremont, Pitt's successor, desiring, like Pitt, to conduct the negotiation from ministry to ministry, limited the powers of Bedford. The angry duke remonstrated to Bute, who just then, in company with the Duke of York, had been decorated with the order of the Garter, at a very full chapter, where Temple sat directly by his side in silent sullenness. The prime minister incurred the enmity of Egremont, by promising to ask of the cabinet a restitution to Bedford of his full powers. Are you sure of the cabinet's concurrence? asked Rigby. The king will be obeyed, replied Bute, and will talk to the two secre- chap. XIX.} 1762. taries on their scruples. And it was so. The young man of three-and-twenty subdued his two secretaries of state, secretly laughing all the while at their displeasure and dismay. Judge of Grenville's countenance, said he to Bute, by that of his brother, Earl of Temple, at the installation. Lord Egremont was wise enough to fly into a passion in the closet. I have but one sentiment to offer, said he to the king,—which is, to send the Duke of Bedford fixed articles for the preliminaries, upon no event to be changed, and if the French refuse to comply, immediately to recall him. The sentiment, said George, who repeated the conversation, is totally different from mine; a boy of ten years old might as well have been sent to Paris on this errand. The secretary yielded, and some subjects were left at the discretion of Bedford; but Bute, with singular perfidy, indirectly, through the Sardinian minister, and in his own handwriting, communicated

Wiffen's House of Russell, II. 506.

to the French ambassador the decision adopted, and even minutes of the advice given by the various members of the cabinet council, on condition that the details should be kept religiously from Spain, and from the Duke of Bedford. Thus the ministry of the hostile power, with which Bedford was to negotiate a peace, was, without his knowledge, made acquainted with his most secret instructions. Nothing better explains the character of Bute, and its discovery drew on him the implacable displeasure and contempt of Bedford.

The consummation of the peace languished and was delayed; its failure even was anticipated, because Grimaldi, for Spain, was persuaded that the expedi- chap. XIX.} 1762. tion of the English against Havana must be defeated. But before the end of the twenty-ninth day of September news arrived of a very different result.

Havana was then, as now, the chief place in the West Indies, built on a harbor large enough to shelter all the navies of Europe, capable of being made impregnable from the sea, having docks in which ships of war of the first magnitude were constructed, rich from the products of the surrounding country, and the centre of the trade with Mexico. Of this magnificent city England undertook the conquest. The command of her army, in which Carleton and Howe each led two battalions, was given to Albemarle, the friend and pupil of the Duke of Cumberland. The fleet was intrusted to Pococke, already illustrious as the conqueror in two naval battles in the East.

Assembling the fleet and transports at Martinico, and off Cape St. Nicholas, the adventurous admiral sailed directly through the Bahama Straits, and on the sixth day of June came in sight of the low coast round Havana. The Spanish forces for the defence of the city were about forty-six hundred; the English had eleven thousand effective men, and were recruited by nearly a thousand negroes from the Leeward Islands, and by fifteen hundred from Jamaica. Before the end of July, the needed reinforcements arrived from New York and New England; among these was Putnam, the brave ranger of Connecticut, and numbers of men less happy, because never destined to revisit their homes.

On the thirtieth of July, after a siege of twentynine days, during which the Spaniards lost a thousand chap. XIX.} 1762. men, and the brave Don Luis de Velasco was mortally wounded, the Moro Castle was taken by storm. On the eleventh of August, the governor of Havana capitulated, and the most important station in the West Indies fell into the hands of the English. At the same time, nine ships of the line and four frigates were captured in the harbor. The booty of property belonging to the king of Spain was estimated at ten millions of dollars.

This most memorable siege was conducted in midsummer, against a city which lies just within the tropic. The country round the Moro Castle is rocky. To bind and carry the fascines was, of itself, a work of incredible labor, made possible only by aid of African slaves. Sufficient earth to hold the fascines firm was gathered with difficulty from crevices in the rocks. Once, after a drought of fourteen days, the grand battery took fire by the flames, and crackling and spreading where water could not follow it, nor earth stifle it, was wholly consumed. The climate spoiled a great part of the provisions. Wanting good water, very many died in agonies from thirst. More fell victims to a putrid fever, of which the malignity left but three or four hours between robust health and death. Some wasted away with loathsome disease. Over the graves the carrion-crows hovered, and often scratched away the scanty earth which rather hid than buried the dead. Hundreds of carcasses floated on the ocean. And yet such was the enthusiasm of the English, such the resolute zeal of the sailors and soldiers, such the unity of action between the fleet and army, that the vertical sun of June and July, the heavy rains of August, raging fever, and strong and well defended fortresses, all chap. XIX.} 1762. the obstacles of nature and art, were surmounted, and the most decisive victory of the war was completed.

The scene in the British cabinet was changed by the capture of Havana. Bute was indifferent to further acquisitions in America, for he held it of much greater importance to bring the old colonies into order than to plant new ones;

Knox Extra official papers, II. 29.

but all his colleagues thought otherwise; and Bedford was unwilling to restore Havana to Spain except for the cession of Porto Rico and the Floridas. The king, who persisted in the purpose of peace, intervened. He himself solicited the assent of Cumberland to his policy; he caused George Grenville, who hesitated to adopt his views, to exchange with Halifax the post of secretary of state for that of the head of the admiralty; and he purchased the support of Fox as a member of the cabinet and leader of the House of Commons by the offer of a peerage. These movements enraged both the people and the aristocracy; Wilkes, through The North Briton, inflamed the public mind; while the Duke of Devonshire and the Marquis of Rockingham resigned their offices in the royal household. An opposition seemed certain; nor was it expected by the friends of the prerogative, that ancient systems of power would fall to the ground without a struggle.

Lord John Russell's Introduction to vol. III. of the Bedford Correspondence, XXVII.

The king's rest is not disturbed, said Bute; he is pleased to have people fairly take off the mask, and looks with the utmost contempt on what he sees is going forward;

Wiffen, II. 503.

and on the last day of chap. XIX.} 1762. October, he called for the council-book, and struck from it the name of the Duke of Devonshire; a high indignity, almost without example.

The principal representatives of the old whig aristocracy were driven into retirement, and the king was passionately resolved never again to receive them into a ministry. In the impending changes, Charles Townshend coveted the administration of America, and Bute gladly offered him the secretary-ship of the plantations and Board of Trade. Thrice Townshend had interviews with the king, whose favor he always courted; but for the time he declined the station from an unwillingness to attach himself to Fox and Bute, and not from any apprehension of the sweeping whirlwind which was just beginning to rise at the menace of danger.

At that very time, men were earnestly discussing in Boston the exclusive right of America to raise and to apply its own revenues. The governor and council had, in advance of authority by law, expended three or four hundred pounds sterling on a ship and sloop, that were to cruise against privateers, for the protection of fishermen. Otis, in September, 1762, seized the opportunity in a report to claim the right of originating all taxes as the most darling privilege of the representatives. It would be of little consequence to the people, said he, on the floor of the House, whether they were subject to George or Louis, the king of Great Britain, or the French king, if both were arbitrary, as both would be, if both could levy taxes without parliament. Treason! treason! shouted Paine, the member from Worcester. There is not chap. XIX.} 1762. the least ground, said Bernard in a message, for the insinuation under color of which that sacred and well beloved name is brought into question. Otis, who was fiery, but not obstinate, erased the offensive words, as his sentiments were fully expressed without them; but immediately, claiming to be one

Who dared to love his country and be poor, he vindicated himself through the press.

Invoking the authority of the most wise, most honest, and most impartial Locke, as great an ornament as the Church of England ever had, because of moderate and tolerant principles, and one who wrote expressly to establish the throne which George the Third now held, he undertook to reply to those who could not bear that liberty and property should be enjoyed by the vulgar.

Deeply convinced of the reality of the ideas of right and wrong, he derived his argument from original right. God made all men naturally equal. The ideas of earthly grandeur are acquired, not innate. Kings were made for the good of the people, not the people for them. No government has a right to make slaves of the subject. Most governments are, in fact, arbitrary, and consequently the curse and scandal of human nature; yet none are, of right, arbitrary. By the laws of God and nature, government must not raise taxes on the property of the people, without the consent of the people or their deputies. And it was reasoned, that the advantage of being a Briton rather than a Frenchman, consisted in liberty.

As a question of national law, Otis maintained the rights of a colonial assembly to be equal to those of the House of Commons, and that to raise or chap. XIX.} 1762. apply money without its consent, was as great an innovation as for the king and House of Lords to usurp legislative authority.

The privileges of Massachusetts, it was held, were safe under the shelter of its charter and the common law; yet Otis did not fail to cite, also, the preamble to the British statute of 1740, for naturalizing foreigners, where the subjects in the colonies are plainly declared entitled to all the privileges of the people of Great Britain.

In conclusion, he warned all plantation governors not to spend their whole time, as he declared most of them did, in extending the prerogative beyond all bounds; and he pledged himself ever, to the utmost of his capacity and power, to vindicate the liberty of his country and the rights of mankind.

The Vindication of Otis filled the town of Boston with admiration of the patriotism of its author, and the boldness of his doctrines. A more sensible thing, said Brattle, one of the Council, never was written. By the royalists its author was denounced as the chief incendiary, a seditious firebrand, and a leveller. I am almost tempted, confessed the unpopular Hutchinson, to take for my motto Odi profantum vulgus, hatred to the people. I will write the history of my own times, like Bishop Burnet, and paint characters as freely; it shall not be published while I live, but I will be revenged on some of the rascals after I am dead; and he pleaded fervently that Bernard should reserve his favor exclusively for the friends to government. I do not say, cried Mayhew from the pulpit, on the annual Thanksgiving day, I do not say our invaluable rights have been struck at; but if they have, they are not chap. XIX.} 1762. wrested from us; and may righteous Heaven blast the designs, though not the soul, of that man, whoever he be amongst us, that shall have the hardiness to attack them. Thomas Hollis, a wealthy Englishman, a lover of humanity, a devoted friend to America, sent word to Boston to build no hopes upon the king, and already foresaw the approaching and certain independence of America.

Chapter 20:

England, grasping at the colonies of France and Spain, risks the loss of her own.—Bute's ministry.

1762-1763.

while it was yet uncertain who among British chap. XX.} 1762. statesmen would be selected to establish British authority in the colonies, the king, on the twentysixth of October, offering to return Havana to Spain for either the Floridas or Porto Rico, urged the instant consummation of the treaty. The best dispatch I can receive from you will be these preliminaries signed. May Providence, in compassion to human misery, give you the means of executing this great and noble work. Thus beautifully wrote the young monarch to Bedford, not dazzled by victory, and repressing the thirst for conquest; a rare instance of moderation, of which history must gratefully preserve the record. The terms proposed to the French were severe, and even humiliating. But what can we do? said Choiseul, who in his despair had for a time resigned the foreign department to the Duke de Praslin. The English are furiously imperious; they are drunk with success; and, unfortunately, we are not in a condition to abase their pride. France yielded to necessity, and on the third day of Novem- chap. XX.} 1762. ber the preliminaries of peace, a peace so momentous for America, were signed between France and Spain on the one side, and England and Portugal on the other.

To England were ceded, besides islands in the West Indies, the Floridas; Louisiana to the Mississippi, but without the island of New Orleans; all Canada; Acadia; Cape Breton and its dependent islands; and the fisheries, except that France retained a share in them, with the two islets St. Pierre and Miquelon, as a shelter for their fishermen. For the loss of Florida France on the same day indemnified Spain by ceding to that power New Orleans, and all Louisiana west of the Mississippi, with boundaries undefined.

In Africa, England acquired Senegal, with the command of the slave-trade.

In the East Indies, France, according to a modification proposed and insisted upon by Bedford, only recovered in a dismantled and ruined state the little that she possessed on the first of January, 1749; England obtained in that region the undoubted sway.

In Europe, where Frederic was left to take care of himself, each power received back its own; Minorca, therefore, reverted to Great Britain.

England, said the king, never signed such a peace before, nor, I believe, any other power in Europe. The country never, said the dying Granville, saw so glorious a war, or so honorable a peace. It maintains, thought Thomas Hollis, no flatterer of kings, the maritime power, the interests, the security, the tranquillity, and the honor of England. The judgment of mankind, out of England, then and ever chap. XX.} 1762. since, has pronounced on it similar decisions. For once, to the surprise of every body, Bute spoke well, rising in its defence in the House of Lords. I wish, said he, no better inscription on my tomb than that I was its author.

On the morning of the ninth of December, the very day on which the preliminaries were to be discussed in parliament, Charles Townshend resigned his place as secretary at war. The opposition, on his resigning, had great hopes of his joining with them. But, always preserving intimate relations with George the Third, he still aspired to the management of the plantations as third secretary of state; and when Pitt spoke against the peace for three hours and twenty minutes,—for the first hour admirably, then with flagging strength, though even in his scrawls showing the masterly hand of a Raphael, and an indisputable superiority to all others,—Charles Townshend, in a speech of but twenty-five minutes, made an answer with great judgment, wit, and strength of argument, on the side of humanity.

See Powlett to Horatio Gates, 4 January, 1763.

On the division the opponents of the treaty were but sixty-five against three hundred and nineteen. Now, said the princess dowager, on hearing the great majority, my son is indeed king of England. Yet Townshend, who had so much contributed to swell the vote, in the progress of his own ambition, had for a rival Halifax, his old superior at the Board of Trade, who was equally desirous of the department of the colonies, with the rank of a secretary of state.

In the first days of January, 1763, it was publicly avowed what had long been resolved on, that a stand- chap. XX.} 1763. ing army of twenty battalions was to be kept up in America after the peace;

A. Oldham to H. Gates, 6 January, 1763. Bernard, in 1765, says the new measure had been long determined on.

and, as the ministry were all the while promising great things in point of economy, it was designed that the expense should be defrayed by the colonists themselves.

On the tenth day of February, 1763, the treaty was ratified; and five days afterwards, at the hunting-castle of Hubertsburg, a definitive treaty closed the war of the empress queen and the Elector of Saxony against the great Frederic. The year of 1761 had ended for Frederic in gloom. Hardly sixty thousand men remained to him to resist the whole circle of his enemies. He has himself described the extremity of his distress, and has proudly bid the world learn from his example, that, in great affairs, perseverance lifts statesmen above perils.

Frederic: $CEuvres Posthunmes, i. 273. Hist. de la Guerre de Sept Ans.

To the firm man the moment of deliverance assuredly comes. Deserted most unexpectedly by George the Third, the changes in Russia had been equally marvellous. That empire from an enemy had become an ally, desirable from its strength, yet dangerous from the indiscretions of its sovereign. But when the arbitrary seizure of the domains of the Russian clergy by Peter the Third, and the introduction into the army of an unwonted system, had provoked the clergy and the army to effect a revolution by his dethronement and murder, his wife, Catharine,—a German princess who had adopted the religion and carefully studied the language, the customs and institutions of Russia; a woman of such endowments, that she was held to be the ablest person in its court;—was chap. XX.} 1763 advanced, over the ruin of her husband, of which she was not guilty, to the imperial throne of the Czars. More wise than her predecessor, she abandoned his projects of war and revenge, and in the midsummer of 1762, recalling the Russian army, she gave to the world the instructive lesson of moderation and neutrality. The territories of Prussia, which France had evacuated, Bute left, as he said, to be scrambled for; but there was no one to win them from Frederic; and after seven years of unequalled effort against the aristocracies and despotisms of continental Europe, the hero of Prussia won a triumph for freedom by the glorious treaty of Hubertsburg, which gave security of existence to his state without the cession of a hand's breadth of his dominions.

Thus was arrested the course of carnage and misery; of sorrows in private life infinite and unfathomable; of wretchedness heaped on wretchedness; of public poverty and calamity; of forced enlistments and extorted contributions; and all the unbridled tyranny of military power in the day of danger. France was exhausted of one half of her specie; in many parts of Germany there remained not enough of men or of cattle to renew cultivation. The number of the dead in arms is computed at eight hundred and eighty-six thousand on the battle-fields of Europe, or on the way to them. And all this devastation and waste of life and of resources produced for those who planned it no gain whatever, nothing but weakness and losses. Not an inch of land was torn from the dominions of Frederic; not a limit to the boundaries of any state was contracted or advanced. Europe, in chap. XX.} 1763. its territorial divisions, remained exactly as before. But in Asia and America how was the world changed!

In Asia, the victories of Clive at Plassy, of Coote at the Wanderwash, and of Watson and Pococke on the Indian seas, had given England the undoubted ascendency in the East Indies, opening to her suddenly the promise of untold treasures and territorial acquisitions without end.

In America, the Teutonic race, with its strong tendency to individuality and freedom, was become the master from the Gulf of Mexico to the poles; and the English tongue, which, but a century and a half before, had for its entire world a part only of two narrow islands on the outer verge of Europe, was now to spread more widely than any that had ever given expression to human thought.

Go forth, then, language of Milton and Hampden, language of my country, take possession of the North American continent! Gladden the waste places with every tone that has been rightly struck on the English lyre, with every English word that has been spoken well for liberty and for man! Give an echo to the now silent and solitary mountains; gush out with the fountains that as yet sing their anthems all day long without response; fill the valleys with the voices of love in its purity, the pledges of friendship in its faithfulness; and as the morning sun drinks the dewdrops from the flowers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to the Peaceful Ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early industry of freemen! Utter boldly and spread widely through the world the thoughts of the coming apostles of the people's chap. XX.} 1763. liberty, till the sound that cheers the desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and the lips of the messenger of the people's power, as he stands in beauty upon the mountains, shall proclaim the renovating tidings of equal freedom for the race!

England exulted in its conquests; enjoying the glory of extended dominion in the confident expectation of a boundless increase of wealth. But its success was due to its haying taken the lead in the good old struggle for liberty; and was destined to bring fruits, not so much to itself, as to the cause of freedom and mankind.

France, of all the states on the continent of Europe, the most powerful by territorial unity, wealth, numbers, industry and culture, seemed also by its place, marked out for maritime ascendency. Set between many seas, it rested upon the Mediterranean, possessed harbors on the German ocean, and embraced within its wide shores and jutting headlands, the bays and open waters of the Atlantic; its people, infolding at one extreme the offspring of colonists from Greece, and at the other, the hardy children of the Northmen, were called, as it were, to the inheritance of life upon the sea. The nation, too, readily conceived or appropriated great ideas, and delighted in bold resolves. Its travellers had penetrated farthest into the fearful interior of unknown lands; its missionaries won most familiarly the confidence of the aboriginal hordes; its writers described with keener and wiser observation the forms of nature in her wildness, and the habits and languages of savage man; its soldiers, and every lay Frenchman in America owed military service, uniting beyond all others celerity with courage, knew chap. XX.} 1763. best how to endure the hardships of forest life and to triumph in forest warfare. Its ocean chivalry had given a name and a colony to Carolina, and its merchants a people to Acadia. The French discovered the basin of the St. Lawrence; were the first to explore and possess the banks of the Mississippi, and planned an American empire that should unite the widest valleys and most copious inland waters of the world.

But New France was governed exclusively by the monarchy of its metropolis; and was shut against the intellectual daring of its philosophy, the liberality of its political economists, the movements of its industrial genius, its legal skill, and its infusion of protestant freedom. Nothing representing the new activity of thought in Modern France, went to America. Nothing had leave to go there, but what was old and worn out. The government thought only to transmit to its American empire, the exhausted polity of the Middle Ages; the castes of feudal Europe; its monarchy, its hierarchy, its nobility, and its dependent peasantry; while commerce was enfeebled by protection, stifled under the weight of inconvenient regulations, and fettered by exclusive grants. The land was parcelled out in seignories; and though quitrents were moderate, transfers and sales of leases were burdened with restrictions and heavy fines. The men who held the plough were tenants and vassals, of whom few could either write or read. No village school was open for their instruction; nor was there one printing press in either Canada

General Murray to the Earl of Egremont, Quebec, 5 June, 1762: The former government would never suffer a printing press in the country. And again Gen. Murray to Secretary Shelburne, 30 August, 1766: They are very ignorant, and it was the policy of the French government to keep them so; few or none can read; printing was never permitted in Canada, till we got possession of it.

or Louisiana. The central will of the administration, though checked chap XX.} 1763. by concessions of monopolies, was neither guided by local legislatures, nor restrained by parliaments or courts of law. But France was reserved for a nobler influence in the New World, than that of propagating institutions, which in the Old World were giving up the ghost; nor had Providence set apart America for the reconstruction of the decaying framework of feudal tyranny.

Gayarre Histoire de la Louisiane, II. 121.

The colonists from England brought over the forms of the government of the mother country, and the purpose of giving them a better development and a fairer career in the Western World. The French emigrants took with them only what belonged to the past, and nothing that represented modern freedom. The English emigrants retained what they called English privileges, but left behind in the parent country, English inequalities, the monarch, and nobility. and prelacy. French America was closed against even a gleam of intellectual independence; nor did it contain so much as one dissenter from the Roman Church; English America had English liberties in greater purity and with far more of the power of the people than England. Its inhabitants were self organized bodies of freeholders, pressing upon the receding forests, winning their way farther and farther forward every year, and never going back. They had schools, so that in several of the colonies there was no one to be found beyond childhood, who could not read and write; they had the printing-press, scattering among them books, and pamphlets, and many newspapers: chap. XX.} 1763. they had a ministry chiefly composed of men of their own election. In private life they were accustomed to take care of themselves; in public affairs they had local legislatures, and municipal self-direction. And now this continent from the Gulf of Mexico to where civilized life is stayed by barriers of frost, was become their dwelling-place and their heritage.

Reasoning men in New York, as early as 1748, foresaw and announced that the conquest of Canada, by relieving the Northern Colonies from danger, would hasten their emancipation. An attentive Swedish traveller in that year heard the opinion, and published it to Sweden and to Europe; the early dreams of John Adams made the removal of the turbulent Gallics a prelude to the approaching greatness of his country. During the negotiations for peace, the kinsman and bosom friend of Edmund Burke, employed the British press to unfold the danger to England from retaining Canada; and the French minister for foreign affairs frankly warned the British envoy, that the cession of Canada would lead to the independence of North America.

Hans Stanley to William Pitt, 1760, printed in Thackeray's Chatham.

Unintimidated by the prophecy, and obeying a higher and wiser instinct, England happily persisted. We have caught them at last,

From oral communications to me by the late Albert Gallatin, confirmed by papers in my possession, relating to periods a little earlier and a litt'e later.

said Choiseul to those around him on the definitive surrender of New France; and at once giving up Louisiana to Spain, his eager hopes anticipated the speedy struggle of America for separate existence. So soon as the sagacious and experienced Vergennes, the French ambassador at chap. XX.} 1768. Constantinople, a grave, laborious man, remarkable for a calm temper and moderation of character, heard the conditions of the peace, he also said to his friends, and even openly to a British traveller,

Lind's three letters to Price. 137.

the consequences of the entire cession of Canada are obvious. I am persuaded, and afterwards he himself recalled his prediction to the notice of the British ministry,

Lord Stormont, British Ambassador at Paris, to Lord Rochford, Secretary of State. No. 19. Separate. 31 October, 1775.

— England will ere long repent of having removed the only check that could keep her colonies in awe. They stand no longer in need of her protection; she will call on them to contribute towards supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her; and they will answer by striking off all dependence. Lord Mansfield, also, used often to declare that he too, ever since the peace of Paris, always thought the Northern Colonies were meditating a state of independency on Great Britain.

Lord Mansfield in the House of Lords, 20 Dec. 1775, in Almon. v. 167. Force, VI. 233.

The colonial system, being founded on injustice, was at war with itself. The principle which confined the commerce of each colony to its own metropolis, was not only introduced by England into its domestic legislation, but was accepted as the law of nations in its treaties with other powers; so that while it wantonly restrained its colonists, it was jealously, and on its own theory rightfully excluded from the rich possessions of France and Spain. Those regions could be thrown open to British traders, only by the general abrogation of the mercantile monopoly, which would extend the benefit to universal commerce, or by British conquest, which would close them once more chap. XX.} 1763. against all the world but the victors; even against the nations which had discovered and planted them. Leaving the nobler policy of liberty to find its defenders where it could, and wilfully, and as it were fatally blind to what would follow, England chose the policy of conquest and exclusion; and had already acquired much of the empire of Spain in America, and nearly the whole of that of France in both hemispheres.

The balance of the colonial system was destroyed for ever; there existed no longer the community of interest for its support on the part of the great maritime powers of Europe. The Seven Years War which doubled the debt of England, increasing it to seven hundred millions of dollars, had been begun by her for the possession of the Ohio Valley. She achieved that conquest, but not for herself. Driven out from its share in the great colonial system, France was swayed by its own commercial and political interests, by its wounded pride, and by that enthusiasm which the support of a good cause enkindles, to take up the defence of the freedom of the seas, and heartily to desire the enfranchisement of the English plantations. This policy was well devised; and we shall see that England became not so much the possessor of the Valley of the West, as the transient trustee, commissioned to transfer it from the France of the Middle Ages to the free people, who were making for humanity a new existence in America.

end of volume IV.