CHAPTER II.

THE ROYAL GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK APPEALS TO THE PARAMOUNT POWER OF GREAT BRITAIN. PELHAM'S AD

MINISTRATION CONTINUED.

1748.

1748-1749.

THE sun of July, 1748, shed its radiance on the July. banks of the Hudson. No fortress in the Highlands kept watch over the infrequent bark that spread its sails to the froward summer breeze. The dense forests, which came down the hillsides to the edges of the river, 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 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 both Newcastle and 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 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 the western bank to receive on board Cadwallader Colden, the oldest member of the royal council. How often had the governor and his advisers joined in deploring "the levelling principles 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 offi

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cers," 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 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." 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 consideration 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."

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 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 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 formally 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 them; and used their favor only as steps to his own promotion. Though well educated, and of uncommon endowments, and famed at college as of great promise, he became a trader in his native town, and, like others, smuggled goods, which he sold at retail. Failing of profits, he withdrew from mercantile pursuits; but to gain property remained the most ardent desire of his soul, so that his avarice was the great incentive to his ambition. He had been in England as agent of Massachusetts at the time when taxing America by parliament first began to be talked of, and had thus 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 would easily bend him to become the instrument of oppression. At the same time he excelled in dissimulation, and knew how to veil his selfishness under the appearance of public spirit.

The congress at Albany was thronged beyond example by the many chiefs of the Six Nations and their allies. 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 Pennsylvania. Returning peace was hailed as the happy moment for bringing the Miamis and their neighbors within the covenant chain of the English, and thus extending British jurisdiction 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; 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 application to the king, that 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. The two governors, as

1748. Aug.

they forwarded the paper to the board of trade, subjoined: "We agree with the memorialists."

The haste or the negligence of the British plenipotentiaries at Aix-la-Chapelle had determined their boundary in America along its whole line, 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 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 peace, declared that Acadia included only the peninsula; before the restoration of Cape Breton, an officer from Canada occupied the isthmus between Bay Verte and the Bay of Fundy; a small colony kept possession of the mouth of the St. John's River; and the claim as far west as the Kennebec had never been abandoned.

At the west, also, France had uniformly and frankly claimed the whole basin of the St. Lawrence and of the Mississippi; and, in proof of its rightful 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 Galissonière, the governor-general of Canada, treated them as the allies of the French no less than of the English; and, still further to secure their affections, the self-devoted Abbé Francis Picquet occupied by a mission Oswegatchie, now Ogdensburg, at the head of the Rapids, on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence. 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 Ohio, by force; or, if his strength was insufficient, to summon the intruder to depart, under highest perils for disobedience.

Plausible reasons, therefore, existed for the memorial of Hutchinson and Oliver; but the more cherished purpose of those who directed this congress at Albany was the secure