habitants, and the violation of the right of local government was everywhere felt. But in various ways, directly or indirectly, the purposes of Andros were thwarted. When the English revolution of 1688 came, his power fell without a blow, and he found himself in the hands of the rebellious men of Boston. The day had passed by when English events could be merely ignored, and so every colony proclaimed with joy the accession of William and Mary. Such men as Jacob Leisler, in New York, Robert Treat, in Connecticut, and the venerable Simon Bradstreet-then eighty-seven years old-in Massachusetts, were at once recognized as the leaders of the people. There was some temporary disorder, joined with high hope, but the colonies never really regained what they had lost, and henceforth held, more or less distinctly, the character of provinces, until they took their destiny, long after, into their own hands. It needed almost a century to prepare them for that event, not only by their increasing sense of grievance, but by learning to stretch out their hands to one another.

With the fall of the colonial charters fell the New England confederacy that had existed from 1643. There were other plans of union: William Penn formed a very elaborate one in 1698; others labored afterwards in pamphlets to modify his plan or to suggest their own. On nine different occasions, between 1684 and 1751, three or more colonies met in council, represented by their governors or by their commissioners, to consult on internal affairs, usually with reference to the Indians; but they apparently never had a thought of disloyalty, and certainly never proclaimed independence; nor did their meetings for a long time suggest any alarm in the minds of the British ministry. The new jealousies that arose related rather to commercial restrictions than to the form of government.

It is necessary to remember that even in colonial days, while it was of the greatest importance that the British law-makers should know all about the colonies, there was on their part even

a denser ignorance as to American affairs than that which now impresses the travelling American in England. When he is asked if he came from America by land, it is only a matter for amusement; but when, as James Otis tells us-writing in 1764 -it was not uncommon for official papers to come from an English Secretary of State addressed to "the Governor of the island of New England," it

was a more serious matter. Under such circumstances the home government was liable at any minute to be swept away from all just policy by some angry tale told by Randolph or Andros. The prevalent British feeling towards the colonies was one of indifference, broken only by outbursts of anger, and spasmsof commercial selfishness.

The event which startled

the British ministry from this indifference was the

JAMES OTIS.

taking of Louisburg in 1745, as described in a previous chapter. This success may have been, as has been asserted, only a lucky accident; no matter, it startled not only America, but Europe. That a fortress deemed impregnable by French engineers, and amply garrisoned by French soldiers, should have been captured by a mob of farmers and fishermen-this gave subject for reflection. "Every one knows the importance of Louisburg," wrote James Otis, proudly, "in the consultations of Aix-la-Chapelle." Voltaire, in writing the history of Louis the Fifteenth, heads the chapter of the calamities of France with this event. He declares that the mere undertaking of such an

enterprise showed of what a community was capable when it united the spirit of trade and of war. The siege of Louisburg, he says, was not due to the cabinet at London, but solely to the daring of the New England traders ("ce fut le fruit de la hardiesse des marchands de la Nouvelle Angleterre"). But while the feeling inspired on the European continent was one of respect, that created in England was mingled with dread. Was, then, the child learning to do without the parent? And certainly the effect on the minds of the Americans looked like anything but the development of humility. Already the colonies, from Massachusetts to Virginia, were eagerly planning the conquest of Canada, they to furnish the whole land-force, and Great Britain the fleet-a project which failed through the fears of the British ministry. The Duke of Bedford, then at the head of the naval service, frankly objected to it because of "the independence it might create in these provinces, when they shall see within themselves so great an army possessed by so great a country by right of conquest." And the Swedish traveller, Peter Kalm, writing three years later from New York, put the whole matter yet more clearly, thus: "There is reason for doubting whether the King, if he had the power, would wish to drive the French from their possessions in Canada.... The English government has therefore reason to regard the French in North America as the chief power that urges their colonies to submission." Any such impressions were naturally confirmed when, in 1748, the indignant American colonists saw Louisburg go back to the French under the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

The trouble was that the British government wished the colonies to unite sufficiently to check the French designs, but not enough to assert their own power. Thus the ministry positively encouraged the convention of delegates from the New England colonies and from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, which met at Albany on June 19, 1754. It was in this convention that Franklin began a course of national influence which

was long continued, and brought forward his famous representation of the snake dismembered, with the motto "Unite or Die." He showed also his great organizing power by carrying through the convention a plan for a council of forty-eight members distributed among the different colonies, and having for its head a royal presiding officer with veto power. All the delegates, except those from Connecticut, sustained the plan; it was only when it went to the several colonies and the British ministry that it failed. Its ill-success in these two directions came from diametrically opposite reasons; the colonies thought that it them too little power, and the King's Council found in it just the reverse fault. It failed, but its failure left on the public mind an increased sense of divergence between England and America. Merely to have conceived such a plan was a great step towards the American Union that came afterwards; but still there was no conscious shrinking from the British yoke.

gave

The ten colonies which had a separate existence in 1700 had half a century later grown to thirteen. Delaware, after having been merged in Pennsylvania, was again separated from it in 1703; North and South Carolina were permanently divided in 1729; Georgia was settled in 1733. No colony had a nobler foundation; it was planned by its founder-a British general and a member of Parliament-expressly as a refuge for poor debtors and other unfortunates; the colony was named Georgia in honor of the King, but it was given to the proprietors "in trust for the poor," and its seal had a family of silkworms, with the motto "Not for yourselves" (Sic vos non vobis). Oglethorpe always kept friendship with the Indians; he refused to admit either slavery or ardent spirits into the colony. But his successors did not adhere to his principles, and the colony was small and weak up to the time of the coming separation from England. Yet the growth of the colonies as a whole was strong and steady. Bancroft estimates their numbers in 1754 at 1,185,000 whites and 260,500 colored, making

in all nearly a million and a half. Counting the whites. only, Massachusetts took the lead in population; counting both races, Virginia. "Some few towns excepted," wrote Dickinson soon after, "we are all tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are a people of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory, communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, united by

the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws without dreading their power, because they are equitable."

But if the colonies had all been composed of peaceful agriculturists, the British yoke would have been easy. It was on the commercial settlements that the exactions of the home government bore most severely, and hence it was that the Eastern colonies, which had suffered most in the Indian wars, were again to endure most oppression. An English political economist of 1690, in a tract included in the "Harleian Miscellany," pointed out that there were two classes of colonies in America; that England need have no jealousy of those which raised only sugar and tobacco, and thus gave her a market; but she must keep anxious watch on those which competed with England in fishing and trade, and "threatened in time a total independence therefrom." "When America shall be so well peopled, civilized, and divided into kingdoms," wrote Sir Thomas Browne about the same time, "they are like to have so little regard of their originals as to acknowledge no subjection unto them." All the long series of arbitrary measures which followed were