the ministry to the presence of a British commodore, and no pains were spared to perpetuate the misrepresentation. In 1748 more than eight thousand men were raised by the colonies for another invasion of Canada, projected by the British ministry and subsequently abandoned. The Americans were left to defray the expenses of the levy. In the famous expedition of Braddock, the same enterprise in the colonists, the same ignorance and incapacity in the royal officers are displayed. This officer had, (says Mr. Walsh:)

'Too just a sense of the superiority of the European race of men and soldiers, not to despise the Provincials. Accordingly, he, neglected, disobliged, and threw aside the Virginians, and treated the Indians with the utmost contempt.'* 'He showed,' says Entick, such contempt towards the Provinical forces, be'cause they could not go through their exercise with the same dexterity and regularity as a regiment of guards in Hyde Park. "In conversation with general Braddock one day," says Franklin, (in his Memoirs,) "he was giving me some account of his intended progress. After taking Fort Du Quesne,' said he, I am to proceed to Niagara, and having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time, and I suppose it will; for Du Quesne can hardly detain me above three or four days; and then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.". "Having before revolved in my mind the long line his army must make in their march by a very narrow road, to be cut for them through the woods and bushes; and also what I had heard of a former defeat of fifteen hundred French, who invaded the Illinois country, I had conceived some doubts and some fears for the event of the campaign. He smiled at my ignorance, and replied,' These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king's regular disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression."""

'The humble auxiliaries of Braddock pointed out the dangers to which he was exposed, remonstrated against the confidence of his march, and in so doing, heightened his magnanimous disdain. The horrible catastrophe is still fresh, in verse and prose, at almost every fireside in the interior of our country. Six hundred of his regulars either killed or disabled, by an enemy not two-thirds of their number, and partly armed with bows and arrows-himself mortally wounded-the middle colonies laid bare to the tomahawk and scalping knife-their frontiers devastated and drenched in blood-consternation spread throughout British America:such were the consequences of the national and personal pride of the British general. The moral of the affair is made doubly striking by the following accurate relation of the English Universal History: It is remarkable, that the Virginians and other Provin

*Universal History, vol. xl. p. 203. † Vol. i. p. 143.

cial troops who were in this action, and whom Braddock, by way of contempt, had placed in the rear, far from being affected with the panic which disordered the regulars, offered to advance against the enemy, till the others could form and bring up the artillery; but the regulars could not be brought again to the charge, where, as they said, they were butchered without seeing the enemy. Notwithstanding this, the Provincials actually formed, and behaved so well, that they brought off the remaining regulars; and the retreat of the whole was so unintermitting, that the fugitives never stopped, till they met the rear division, which was advancing under colonel Dunbar.'*

'I may add, from the Memoirs of Franklin, who wrote as an eye witness, a passage which throws additional light on the heroic character of the "king's regular disciplined troops." "In their first march, from the landing till they got beyond the settlements, they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, totally ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, and confining the people if they remonstrated. This was enough to put us out of conceit of such defenders, if we had really wanted any?'

The remaining events prior to the peace of 1763, equally creditable to the enterprise and bravery of the colonists are perhaps sufficiently familiar to our readers.

The generous loyalty of their American subjects, awakened no feeling of gratitude in the British government.

'It will seem scarcely credible, that the politicians of England earnestly debated, during the negotiations for the peace of 1763, and while parliament was yet complimenting the colonies for their loyal sacrifices, whether Canada should not be restored to the French, and the Island of Guadaloupe retained in preference. The odium of this controversy, which, in its general purport, put out of question every claim and security of their American brethren, and admitted of no calculation but one of mere commercial profit and loss, was greatly aggravated by the principal grounds of argument with some of the most eminent writers of the day, who embraced the affirmative-" that the colonies were already large and numerous enough, and that the French ought to be left in North America to prevent their increase, lest they should become not only useless, but dangerous to Great Britain." "It was insinuated," says Russel,* "by some of our keen-sighted politicians, that the security provided by the retention of Canada, for the English settlements in North America, as well as for their extension in the cession of Florida by Spain, would prove a source of new evils. It would embolden our old colonies to shake off the control of the mother country, since they no longer stood in need of her protection, and erect themselves into independent states." Franklin, who,

* Vol. xl. p. 204.

VOL. XIV.

Modern Europe, part ii. letter xxxv.
62

at this period, as agent of some of the provinces at the court of London, watched paternally over the interests of the whole, found himself under the necessity of combating these doctrines in an elaborate tract, which I have already noticed. The very existence of the "Canada-Pamphlet" is an eternal reproach to Great Britain; and there is an increase of shame, from its being an appeal, not to her generosity or her justice, but to her separate interests. Upon these, the sagacious author, deeming every higher consideration idle and misplaced, laid all stress; and the same thing may be said of the British cabinet, on a reference to the tenor of the discussions respecting the peace both in and out of parliament. Amid the violent discontents which the improvident treaty of Paris excited, consolation was found, not, as some of her writers have gratuitously alledged, in the exemption of the colonies from the annoyance of a European enemy, and their increased ability to overawe the savages, but in "the wide scope for projects of political ambition, and the boundless field for speculations of commercial avidity, which the undivided sovereignty of the vast continent of America, with the exclusive enjoyment of its trade, seemed to open to the British nation."* We may judge how the colonies would have fared with the " tory counsels," to whose influence the demerits of the peace were attributed, had not the retention of Canada fallen within their selfish and corrupt views, when we advert to the fact, that the execrable suggestion above mentioned came from the whigs. To display it in its true light, as well as to illustrate the temper of mind with which the great champion of the colonies had to contend, I cannot do better than quote his bold language on the point.'

But what is the prudent policy inculcated to obtain this end -security of dominion over our colonies? It is, to leave the French in Canada to check their growth; for otherwise, our people may increase infinitely from all causes.' We have already seen in what manner the French and their Indians check the growth of our colonies. It is a modest word, this check, for massacreing men, women, and children.""

"But if Canada is restored on this principle, will not Britain be guilty of all the blood to be shed, all the murders to be committed, in order to check this dreaded growth of our own people? Will not this be telling the French in plain terms, that the horrid barbarities they perpetrated with Indians, on our colonists, are agreeable to us; and that they need not apprehend the resentment of a government with whose views they so happily concur? Will not the colonies view it in this light? Will they have reason to consider themselves any longer as subjects and children, when they find their cruel enemies hallooed upon them by the country from whence they sprung; the government that owes them pro

* Russel, ibid:

tection, as it requires their obedience? Is not this the most likely means of driving them into the arms of the French, who can invite them by an offer of security, their own government chooses not to offer them?""

"If it be, after all, thought necessary to check the growth of our colonies, give me leave to propose a method less cruel. The method I mean, is that which was dictated by the Egyptian policy, when the 'infinite increase,' of the children of Israel, was apprehended as dangerous to the state. Let an act of parliament then be made, enjoining the colony midwives to stifle in the birth. every third or fourth child. By this means you may keep the colonies to their present size.""

The celebrated stamp act followed soon afterwards. The avowed purpose of this act was to raise money for the support of ten thousand troops, who were to be quartered in America.

'I do not know,' says Mr. Walsh, of any moral phenomenon which history offers, more hateful-than that those who were entrusted in Great Britain with the supreme administration, should not only have proved utterly insensible to the services and distresses of the colonies, but have at once resolved to take advantage of the expulsion of her rival from the American continent, effected, in great part, through their vigorous assistance, and of the mighty increase and complete disengagement of the national strength, produced by the same generous co-operation-to enforce in all its rigour the whole digest of commercial subjection; to plunge them into what Mr. Burke so justly described as "a perfect uncompensated slavery, by joining together the restraints of an universal internal and external monopoly, with an universal internal and external taxation.””

'There seems to be now but one voice throughout the world, respecting the expedients employed to establish this cumulative despotism-the revenue-acts, stamp-acts, restraining and starving acts, Boston port acts, acts for disfranchising legislatures, for quartering soldiers in private houses, dragging men to England for trial, &c. English writers of every party-denomination, finding that the verdict of Europe was given unanimously and irreversibly, against this headlong career of injustice and folly, have concurred in passing upon it, themselves, the severest sentence of reprobation. They tell us without hesitation that a scheme of new modelling the colonial government, so as to increase the power and patronage of the crown, and enable ministers to enrich their relations and dependents, was the cause of the war, and of the loss of America. They adduce these as the prominent features of the hopeful scheme:'

First, to raise a revenue in America by act of parliament, to be applied to support an army there; to pay a large salary to the governors, another to the lieutenant governors, salaries to the judges of the law and admiralty; and thus to render the whole

government, executive and judicial, entirely independent of the people, and wholly dependent on the minister. Second, to make a new division of the colonies, to reduce the number of them by making the small ones more extensive, to make them all royal governments, with a peerage in each, &c.'

The extracts given by Mr. Walsh from the parliamentary debates of that period, display in a strong light the affection of our elder and more polished brethren towards us, and must prove highly edifying to those among us, who have been accustomed to regard the British parliament as the centre of pure principles and refined taste. Colonel Grant, who in the year 1758 had with a detachment of British troops been saved from utter ruin, by the devoted courage of a company of Virginians, pronounced in a debate in 1775, that'he knew the Americans well, was certain they would not fight; they would never dare to face an English army; and that they did not possess any of the qualifications necessary to make a good soldier; he repeated many of their common place expressions; ridiculed their enthusiasm in religion, and drew a disagreeable picture of their manners and way of living.' The 'noble lords,' of the upper house naturally enough joined in the cry against a nation so lamentably deficient in the Corinthian capital of society.' American courage, religion, understanding and honesty, afforded full scope for animadversion. 'Some of the lords,' says Dr. Franklin, thought that we were of a different species from the English of Britain.' Earl Talbot was of opinion that the Americans were not able to conquer their natural propensity to fraud and concealment.' The duke of Chandos remarked on 'the obstinacy, baseness and ingratitude of his majesty's rebellious subjects in America.' The earl of Sandwich related a pleasant story, told him by sir Peter Warren, proving' what egregious cowards the Americans were.' 'Believe me my lords,' added the head of the admiralty, the very sound of a cannon would carry them off, in sir Peter's words, as fast as their feet could carry them off. Our readers are probably satisfied with these specimens of transatlantic urbanity. We shall therefore content ourselves with but one more extract from this part of Mr. Walsh's work. It is impossible we think for an American to read it without feeling a warmer glow of patriotism at the contrast it exhibits, and with all their national sins towards us, we cannot help commiserating the feelings of the better part of the English, when such passages as these come before their eyes.

·

'There is still a sort of incredulity of the imagination when we reflect, how soon the parent state resorted to the expedient of annoyance the last which, in the order of penal visitation, would present itself to the fiercest hate against the most detestable object, or to the most just revenge for the deepest and bitterest injury. It will be at once understood that I mean the employment