diminish the estates upon which they are charged, what avails it to any people by which of them they are impoverished?" And they deprecated the loss of their rights as likely "to shake the power and independence of Great Britain."

The people of Rhode Island, headed by Stephen Hopkins, the governor of their own choice, would not admit any just authority in parliament to enact even the laws of trade. Imitating Massachusetts, they elected Hopkins, Daniel Jenckes, and Nicholas Brown their committee of correspondence. These, in their circular of the twelfth of October, expressed their wish "that some method could be hit upon for collecting the sentiments of each colony, and for uniting and forming the substance of them all into one common defence of the whole."

1764.

Oct.

The proposition of Rhode Island was received with joy by the assembly of Pennsylvania. That opulent and prosperous colony had failed to make liberal grants for the public service, only because its proprietaries had interposed their negative, unless their own estates should be wholly or partially exempted from taxation. They were, moreover, the landlords of all the inhabitants; and yet to the judges, who were of their own appointment, and were to decide all questions between them and their tenants, they gave no other tenure of office than their own good pleasure. The government, having no support in the affections of the people, was so weak that during the previous winter it had suffered the murder of twenty Indians to pass unpunished, and could not restrain armed mobs who went about threatening the lives of more. To escape from the perpetual intervention of private interest in public affairs, Franklin, with the great body of the Quakers, as well as royalists, desired that the province should become a royal government. The pure-minded and ingenuous John Dickinson, though ever the opponent of the scandalous selfishness of the proprietaries, had in May spoken earnestly against the proposal; for he saw that "the province must stake on the event liberties that ought to be immortal; and desired to see an olive-leaf, at least, brought to them before they

should quit their ark. On the other side, Joseph Galloway all royalist at heart, urged with vigor the just complaints against the proprietaries.

A petition for the change was adopted by a large majority; but, when in summer the policy of Grenville with regard to the American stamp act was better understood, a new debate arose, in which Franklin took the lead. It was argued that, during the war, the people of Pennsylvania had granted more than their proportion, and were ever ready to grant sums suitable to their abilities and zeal for the service; that, therefore, the proposition of taxing them in parliament was both cruel and unjust; that, by the constitution of the colonies, their business was with the king, and never, in any way, with the chancellor of the exchequer; that they could not make any proposition to Grenville about taxing their constituents by parliament, since parliament had no right to tax them at all; that the notice which they had received bore no marks of being the king's order, or made with his knowledge; that the king had always accompanied his requisition with good words, but that the financier, instead of making a decent demand, had sent a menace that they should certainly be taxed, and had only left them the choice of the manner; and they accordingly "resolved, that as they always had, so they always should think it their duty to grant aid to the crown, according to their abilities, whenever required of them in the usual constitutional manner.”

At the elections in autumn, the proprietary party, representing that "the king's little finger would be found heavier than the proprietaries' whole loins," succeeded, by a majority of about twenty votes among near four thousand, in defeating_Franklin's return as the representative of Philadelphia. But the new assembly proceeded to an act, which in its consequences was to influence the world. On the twenty-sixth day of October, they elected Benjamin Franklin their agent; and, in spite of the bitter protest of his opponents, he sailed for England, with the liberties of his country in his charge.

1764.

Oct.

At that time, Pennsylvania was employing her men and

Bradstreet had visited

her treasure to defend the west. Lake Erie and Detroit; to secure a firm peace with the Indians on the Ohio, it was desirable to show a strong force in the midst of their settlements. The regular army could furnish scarcely five hundred men, most of them Highlanders. Pennsylvania, at her own charge, added a thousand, and Virginia contributed a corps of volunteers. These took up the march, under Bouquet, for the heart of Ohio. Virginia volunteers formed the advance-guard, the axe-men followed to clear three paths. On each flank, the soldiers marched in single file; in the centre, two deep, followed by the convoy of well-laden pack-horses and droves of sheep and oxen; a party of light horsemen came next; again, Virginia volunteers brought up the rear. Many who had lost children or friends went with the army to search for them.

1764.

Oct.

A little below the mouth of Sandy Creek, chiefs and warriors of the Senecas, the Delawares, and the Shawnees, lighted the council-fire, smoked the calumet, and entreated for peace. At the close of the speech, the Delaware chiefs delivered up eighteen white prisoners, and eighty-three small sticks as pledges for the return of so many more. To insure the performance of their promises, Bouquet marched farther into their country; and at the junction of the White Woman and the Tuscarawas, in the centre of the Indian villages, he made an encampment that had the appearance of an English town.

There the Shawnees, the most violent and warlike of all the tribes, accepting the terms of peace with dejected sullenness, promised by their orator, Red Hawk, to collect all captives from the lower towns, and restore them in the spring; and there the nearer villages delivered up their white prisoners. Mothers recognised their once lost babes; sisters and brothers, scarcely able to recover the accent of their native tongue, learned to know that they were children of the same parents. Whom the Indians spared they loved. They had not taken the little ones and the captives into their wigwams without receiving them into their hearts, and adopting them into their tribes and fami

lies. At parting with them, the red men shed torrents of tears, and entreated the white men to show kindness to those whom they restored. From day to day they visited them in the camp; they gave them corn and skins. As the English returned to Pittsburg, they followed to hunt for them and bring them provisions. A young Mingo would not be torn from a young woman of Virginia, whom he had taken as his wife. Some of the children had learned to love their savage friends, and wept at leaving them. Some of the captives would not return of themselves, and were not brought away but in bonds. Some, who were not permitted to remain, clung to their dusky lovers at parting; others, more faithful still, invented means to escape to the wigwams of their chosen warriors.

1764. Oct.

With the wilderness pacified, with the French removed, an unbounded career of happiness and tranquillity seemed opening upon the British empire. Never was there a moment when the affections of the colonists struggled more strongly toward England, or when it would have been easier for the mother country to have secured to herself all the benefits of their trade, as well as their good-will. Virginia, appealing to the king, to the house of lords, and to the house of commons, declared the taxation of America by the British parliament to be "subversive of the fundamental principles of the constitution," and dangerous in its example to the empire at home. But, if the people could enjoy their undoubted rights," "their connection with Britain, the seat of liberty, would be their greatest happiness."

The people of North Carolina, in an address of the assembly, claimed the inherent right and exclusive privilege of imposing their own taxes; but they went no further than to appoint a committee to express their concurrence with Massachusetts.

The assembly of that province, in the vain hope of being heard by the house of commons, yielded to the persuasions of Hutchinson, and consented to plead for the liberties and privileges long enjoyed, without making the claim of right; and it invited England to be content with the advantages

of confining their trade. Connecticut, in a methodical statement, with divisions and subdivisions, and a just enumeration of its services in the war, demonstrated that "charging stamp duties, or other internal duties, by authority of parliament, would be such an infringement of the rights, privileges, and authorities of the colonies, that it might be humbly and firmly trusted, and even relied upon, that the supreme guardians of the liberties of the subject would not suffer the same to be done."

In the midst of the strife about taxation, Colden planned the prostration of the influence of the lawyers and great landholders by insisting that in all cases, even in the common law courts, and without a writ of error, there lay the right to appeal from the verdict of a jury to the king. To the Earl of Halifax, he signalized the lawyer John Morin Scott as an incendiary; and entreated the removal of Justice Robert R. Livingston, who refused appeals from the verdict of juries. In this way the liberal party in New York could not but acquire strength. The merchants opposed the government from hostility to restrictions on trade; the lawyers, from respect to the due course of justice; the large landholders, from fear of the diminution of their estates by the arbitrary exertion of the prerogative. In Massachusetts, Bernard urged that the proper time was come for the "new arrangement of New Nov. England" by the king in parliament. The two "republics" of Connecticut and Rhode Island were to be dissolved; the government of New York was to be extended as far as Connecticut River; Massachusetts to embrace the country from the Connecticut to the Piscataqua. Another colony, with Falmouth now Portland as its capital, might extend to the Penobscot, and yet another to the St. John's. "Massachusetts," he continued, "would then afford a fine opportunity for trying the experiment of the most perfect form of government for a mature American province." A modification of its charter, a certain civil list, an order of nobility for life, and places of profit with sure emoluments, would place the king's authority "upon a rock."

1764.