great points of preventing the French power from being immoveably established at their back, and over the whole vast interior; of securing the Atlantic provinces not only from this evil, but from their cruel Scourge the Indians; of opening the fruitful and beautiful countries beyond the Appalachian mountains to English cultivation and empire, were all postponed to views, of which it is difficult to say whether they were more selfish or short sighted. The plan of a colony on the Ohio, for salutary and noble purposes, was conceived in America in the middle of the last century, submitted fruitlessly to the British government in 1768, and offered anew by Dr. Franklin, in 1770, with the engagement on the part of the projectors, to be at the whole expense of establishing and maintaining the civil administration of the country to be settled. A few extracts from the two Reports* of the Board of Trade and Plantations, on the subject, to the Lords of the privy council, will explain the favourite system in relation to the plantations.

"And first with regard to the policy, we take leave to remind your lordships of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and approved and confirmed by his majesty, immediately after the treaty of Paris, viz. the confining the western extent of settlements to such a distance from the sea coast, as that those settlements should lie within the reach of the trade and commerce of this kingdom, upon which the strength and riches of it depend ; and also of the exercise of that authority and jurisdiction, which was conceived to be necessary for the preservation of the colonies, in a due subordination to, and dependence upon, the mother country; and these we apprehend to have been two capital objects of his majesty's proclamation of the 7th of October, 1763, by which his majesty declares it to be his royal will and pleasure, to under his sovereignty, protection, and dominion, for the use of the Indians, all the lands not included within the three new governments, the limits of which are described therein, as also all the lands and territories lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers which shall fall into the sea from the west and north-west, and by which all persons are forbid to make any purchases or settlements whatever, or to take possession of any of the lands above reserved, without special license for that purpose.'

reserve,

"The same principles of policy, in reference to settlements at so great a distance from the sea coast as to be out of the reach of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom, continne to exist in their full force and spirit; and though various propositions for erecting new colonies in the interior parts of America have been, in consequence of this extension of the boundary line, submitted to the consideration of government, (particularly in that part of the country wherein are situated the lands now prayed for, with a view to that object,) yet the dangers and disadvantages of complying with such proposals have been so obvious, as to defeat every attempt made for carrying them into execution.'

"The commander in chief of his majesty's forces in North America, wrote in 1769, to Lord Hillsborough, who presided over the colonial department ;—

"As to increasing the settlements to respectable provinces, and to colonization in general terms in the remote countries, I conceive it altogether incon

*Fourth vol Franklin's Works, article Ohio Settlement.

sistent with sound policy. I do not apprehend the inhabitants could have any commodities to barter for manufactures, except skins and furs, which will naturally decrease as the country increases in people, and the deserts are cultivated; so that in the course of a few years, necessity would force them to provide manufactures of some kind for themselves; and when all connexion upheld by commerce with the mother country shall cease, it may be expected that an independency in her government will soon follow. The laying open new tracts of fertile country in moderate climates might lessen the present supply of the commodities of America, for it is the passion of every man to be a landholder, and the people have a natural disposition to rove in search of good land, however distant."

"The Royal governor of Georgia, is quoted with great deference by the Lords of Trade, as having written to them thus:

"This matter, my lords, of granting large bodies of land in the back parts of any of his majesty's northern colonies, appears to me in a very serious and alarming light; and I humbly conceive, may be attended with the greatest and worst of consequences; for, my lords, if a vast territory be granted to any set of gentlemen, who really mean to people it, and actually do so, it must draw and carry out a great number of people from Great Britain; and I apprehend, they will soon become a kind of separate and independent people, who will set up for themselves; that they will soon have manufactures of their own, &c. in process of time, they will become formidable enough to oppose his majesty's authority, &c."

6

"Mr. Mills, in his "History of British India," uses this emphatic language. If it were possible for the English government to learn wisdom by experience, which governments rarely do, it might at last see, with regret, some of the effects of that illiberal, cowardly, and short-sighted policy, under which it has taken the most solicitous precautions to prevent the settlement of Englishmen ; trembling, forsooth, lest Englishmen, if allowed to settle in India, should detest and cast off its yoke !

"It is wonderful to see how the English government, every now and then, voluntarily places itself in the station of a government existing in opposition to the people, a government which hates, because it dreads the people, and is hated by them in its turn. Its deportment with regard to the residence of the Englishmen in India, speaks these unfavourable sentiments with a force which language could not easily possess.'

6

"I am myself unable devise a juster, or stronger commentary upon the policy towards the North American colonies, than is furnished in the following general observation of the Edinburgh critics, in allusion to the case of India. We cannot conceive any thing more discreditable to a government, than to place itself in opposition to a measure, conducive, and almost essential to the prosperity of a great empire, merely because it would be attended with a chance, at some distant period, of a curtailment of the extent of its dominions.'

"We ought not to forget the eloquent condemnation of the pretension of 1814, pronounced by Sir James Mackintosh, in the House

of Commons, a condemnation equally due to his majesty's proclamation of the 7th October, 1763, and to the system of the Lords of Trade. The western frontier of North American cultivation is the part of the globe in which civilization is making the most rapid and extensive conquests on the wilderness. It is the point where the race of man is the most progressive. To forbid the purchase of land from the savages, is to arrest the progress of mankind.-More barbarous than the Norman tyrants, who afforested great tracts of arable land for their sport, ministers attempted to stipulate that a territory quite as great as the British Islands, should be doomed to an eternal desert. They laboured to prevent millions of freemen and Christians from coming into existence. To perpetuate the English authority in two provinces, a large part of North America was for ever to be a wilderness. The American negociators, by their resistance to so insolent and extravagant a demand, maintaintained the common cause of civilized men.'*

Emigration to the colonies proved, from the outset, a subject of alarm for the mother country. Her apprehension from it was twofold; of her own depopulation, and the translation and decline of her manufactures.

"Precautions were taken against two great an efflux from the kingdom to America, even in the time of James I, and were renewed on several occasions in that of his successsor. The circumstance is noticed by Hume in the following terms :-'The Puritans, restrained in England, shipped themselves off for America, and laid there the foundations of a government, which possessed all the liberty, both civil and religious, of which they found themselves deprived in their native country. But their enemies unwilling that they should any where enjoy ease and contentment, and dreading, perhaps, the dangerous consequences of so disaffected a colony, prevailed with the king to issue a proclamation, debarring these deyotees access even into those inhospitable deserets.'

"In 1637, a proclamation was issued by Charles I, 'to restrain the disorderly transporting of his majesty's subjects to the colonies without leave; and in 1638, another, commanding owners and masters of vessels, that they do not fit out any with passengers and provisions to New-England, without license from the Commissioners of Plantations. One incident of the operation of this interdict has attracted the notice of all the historians, and is thus strikingly told by Robertson.

666

The number of the emigrants to America drew the attention of government, and appeared so formidable, that a proclamation was issued, prohibiting masters of ships from carrying passengers to New-England, without special permission. On many occasions this injunction was eluded or disregarded. Fatally for the king, it operated with full effect in one instance. Sir Arthur Haslerig, John Hampden, Oliver Cromwell, and some other persons, whose principles and views coincided with theirs, impatient to enjoy those civil and

* Speech on the Treaty with America-April, 1815.

religious liberties, wpich they struggled in vain to obtain in Great Britain, hired some ships to carry them and their attendants to New-England. By order of council, an embrago was laid on these when on the point of sailing; and Charles, far from suspecting that the future revolutions in his kingdoms were to be excited and directed by persons in such an humble sphere of life, forcibly detained the men destined to overturn his throne, and to terminate his days by a violent death.'

"The reduction of the fortress of Louisbourg, in 1745, by the colonial troops, the twenty-five thousand soldiers whom the colonies furnished and maintained in the war of 1755, the four hundred privateers fitted out in their ports during the same period, to cruise against French property, the large sums which they advanced, beyond their fair proportion, to the military chest,-the considerable aids in men and provisions, which they sent to the West Indies,—the important, principal share which they had in the overthrow of the French power in North America, and in the consequent, unexampled glory and aggrandizement of England, these splendid efforts and services, extorted annual thanks from the British parliament, and encomiums from the ministry: But they awakened no real gratitude, and won no solid marks of favour. The old jealousy was irritated; and a keener cupidity excited, by such supposed evidences of power and wealth: The design so long formed of discharging upon the colonies a part of the load of taxation under which Britian groaned, and of fastening a military yoke upon their necks, was only confirmed and ripened, by their generous and excessive exertions for the triumph of the mother country over her great rival. This effect was quickly visible in the stamp-act of 1765; and the scheme of subjugation, though intermitted for a moment, was soon made evident by the revival of that act, and the train of desperate attempts upon the liberties and spirit of the colonies, which the Declaration of Independence has engraven on the memory of every American.

"The views and dispositions of the British ministry, from the year 1763, until the sword was drawn, and during the struggle, are so well known, as scarcely to call for illustration from history. It is alike notorious and confessed, that the majority of the British nation partook in them, and finally consented to the recognition of American independence, not from any change of feelings, but from momentary exhaustion and discouragement. As the determination of the colonies to resort to arms, became apparent, and after the rupture was complete, the jealousy of dominion and monopoly, and the dread of future rivalry, heightened into rage, and no longer restrained by immediate interest, were vented in every variety of passionate and resentful expression. I must maintain,' said a ministeria! leader in the House of Lords, in the debate of the 26th October, 1775, on the king's speech, 'that it would have been better that America had never been known, than that a great consolidated empire should exist independent of Great Britian. "*

* Walsh's Appeal, p. 4-24.

SECTION II.

EVENTS WHICH HAPPENED BETWEEN 1751 AND 1763, THE PERIOD

OF THE FRENCH WAR.

THOUGH not in strict chronological order we begin with

THE ALBANY PLAN OF UNION.

Of this Plan, often referred to, but little is generally known.-The following authentic account of it, is abridged from the Works of Dr. Franklin, who was its principal Author.

This Congress, for reasons which will appear in the sequel, was called by the crown, and may be considered as the germ of that larger congress, called by the freemen of our country, which twenty-five years after, declared thirteen united colonies, to be free, independent and United States. Had the Albany Plan been approved by the crown, we might still have been colonies to Great Britain.

ALBANY PAPERS.

Containing, I. Reasons and Motives on which the PLAN OF UNION for the COLONIES was formed;-11. Reasons against Partial Unions ;-III. The Plan of Union drawn by B. F. and unanimously agreed to by the Commissioners from New Hampshire, Massachusetts' Bay, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania,* met in Congress at Albany, in July, 1754, to consider of the best Means of defending the King's Dominions in America, &c. a war being then apprehended ;† with the Reasons or Motives for the Plan.

I. Reasons and Motives on which the Plan of Union was formed.

The commissioners from a number of the northern colonies being met at Albany, and considering the difficulties that have always attended the most necessary general measures for the common defence, or for the annoyance of the enemy, when they were to be carried through the several particular assemblies of all the colonies;

* This plan was intended for all the colonies; but, commissioners from some of them not attending, their consent to it was not, in this respect, universally expressed. Governor Pownall, however, says, That he had an opportunity of conversing with, and knowing the sentiments of the commissioners' appointed by their respective pro vinces, to attend this congress, to which they were called by the crown of learning from their experience and judgment, the actual state of the American business and interest; and of hearing amongst them, the grounds and reasons of that American Union, which they then had under deliberation, and transmitted the plan of to England;' and, he adds, in another place, that the sentiments of our colonies were collected in an authentic manner on this subject in the plan proposed by Dr. Franklin, and unanimously agreed to in congress.'

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† Dr. Franklin, Governor Hutchinson, and Governor Pownall were members of this Congress.