of Massachusetts Bay as they are all, in the southern parts, whalers and fishermen. After the troops are landed near Quebec numbers will be wanted, such as are used to carrying heavy lumber and timber, etc. through the woods. None can be so well adapted as the inhabitants of New Hampshire and the county of York in the province of Massachusetts Bay.

Defining the suitability of various colonists for special employment the report goes on to say that the best woodsmen for use as scouts before Quebec would be obtained from the counties of Hampshire, Worcester, and York in Massachusetts, and it mentions the writer's cherished idea of a fort on the Penobscot.

In so far as this despatch alludes to the importance of the Great Lakes and operations on them to menace the French right it is a reaffirmation of what its author had written in his report from Albany at the beginning of the war. But since then further study had shewn him that the western attack, important as it was, must be subordinated to the use of the St. Lawrence by the fleet and army combined. This had been previously advocated on many occasions. So early as 1711, it had been actually attempted by Harley, who then despatched an expedition intended for Quebec, but it was led by incompetent men, for whom the navigation was too much. The fleet was broken up in a gale and no real effort was made.

If we compare the method of operations proposed in this document with what was actually done at Quebec six months later, we find that to the Isle of Orleans, here pointed out as a base, Wolfe went direct. He landed his men there and thence established lodgements at the Falls of Montmorency, seven miles below Quebec on the north bank of the river, and also at Point Levy opposite the city which he bombarded across the river from that position. It was near La Loubiniere, mentioned in Pownall's report of 1756 to the Duke of Cumberland, that those British ships which during the siege had made their way up-stream past Quebec found anchorage. Thence they sent their boats down-stream with the troops who climbed the cliffs to form for battle on the Heights of Abraham and win Canada. When Wolfe sailed from Spithead some vessels were despatched to New York to pick up colonial troops for the services, 1 Half Century of Conflict, Parkman, 1901, i. p. 163.

as rangers, boatmen, and lumbermen, which had been thought out and described in this paper. As it proposed, two secondary expeditions in support of that up the St. Lawrence were organised, one by Lake Champlain, the other by Lake Ontario. With them we shall have to deal in the next chapter; it is sufficient to say here that they played exactly the parts assigned to them in this document, to which it so happens that attention is drawn just 150 years after it was written and immediately after the tercentenary of Quebec, in which Wolfe's campaign was so great a feature.

In his letter of December 8, which covered this important despatch, Pownall suggested that if, when he had finished raising the provisional troops required from Massachusetts for 1759, he were wanted in England, he was ready to proceed there. He thought he might be useful either in negotiations for peace or in revising the position of the colonies. Peace was still some years distant; ; as to the relations between the colonies and the mother country, Mr. Pitt was too much occupied with the war to spare time to attend to that question, which had to be left for his successors to deal with.

While he had been busy levying and equipping men for the attack on the French, Pownall had not lost sight of the fact that they might make a counter attack on him in the form of a raid on his head-quarters, the port and city of Boston. That was safe enough when a British fleet was off the coast. In the Governor's opinion, as expressed in his letter to Mr. Pitt of November 1, it was just as well that the colonies should realise that they owed the safety of that coast to the sea power of England, and not only to their own forts and garrisons. But, if the fleet were absent elsewhere, the port lay open to an attempt by the French for which four or five ships would suffice. The only protection against that was Castle William, which stood on an island in the harbour. With the letter last mentioned was enclosed to Mr. Pitt a plan of this work, to which Governor Shirley had made some additions and his successor was now making more. Four hundred and sixty men had been warned to be ready for garrison duty there on an alarm being given, but it was possible that before they could respond to such a summons the few men regularly on duty might be overpowered. If French ships

lying off the place sent up even a few boatloads of men they might seize the fort before its full complement of defenders appeared, and hold it till the ships themselves came up to shell the town. Alive to this danger, the Governor reported that he was trying to persuade his Assembly to increase the permanent garrison, and to put that under his own orders. He inquired of Mr. Pitt whether, if the Assembly were unwilling to do this, he might hope for a company or two of regulars being allowed for this purpose.

In this, as in all else within his jurisdiction, he was intent on making the colony secure. That had first been provided with a powerful defensive, on which, as a basis, the offensive had been built up so far as the resources of the province would permit; those resources had been but a small addition to the forces Mr. Pitt despatched from England. But for the British troops and fleet events would have taken a different turn. The French, with their superior organisation, with the command of the country and the control of the Indians, would have driven the English colonists into the sea or reduced them to subjection. England did loyally, though at first without success, support her colonies through those years when they were struggling against absorption by France. If it had not been that England, when her hands were very full in Europe and in India, spared no effort to help the colonies, they would have become French possessions. As such they would have shared-like Hayti, which has never recovered from it-in the horror of the French Revolution, committees of public safety, denunciation of individuals, the guillotine, and the rest of it.

There are some people in America now who still harbour against England an old grudge,' studiously kept alive in their school primers of history, from the time of the subsequent War of Independence. May it be suggested to them that but for England's action during the Seven Years' War there would have been no War of Independence to leave so regrettable a legacy of ill-will. If the English had stood aside, or been half-hearted, while the French swept the land on the methods they followed at Fort William Henry, New England would no doubt have fought to the bitter end, but it would have gone

1 Strongly expressed in a letter cabled from New York to the Times of November 2, 1907.

under. Any independence it might have afterwards tried to assert would have been against France, not against England; and after such an experience as that of a French revolution in their midst, the United States could never have become what they are now. If they owe nothing to George III. they owe a great deal to Lord Chatham. Is it fair to remember the one and to forget the other, to preserve the memories of the War of Independence, and to ignore those of the Seven Years' War which led up to it? There was less than twenty years between them, many colonists fought in both, what they endured in the second was nothing to what they would have had to endure if the result of the first had been different. Surely, after all these years, the two can be looked at dispassionately in conjunction, and on the balance of account it may be seen that the Americans at that period were much indebted to England.

Never had the French been so near success as at the end of 1757. The year following it, which this chapter has dealt with, was the most critical in the history of New England up to that time. But it had seen the turning of the tide. After the long series of reverses in preceding campaigns, the repulse of Washington from the Ohio in 1754, the destruction of Braddock in 1755, the loss of Oswego in 1756, that of Fort William Henry in 1757, the English had at last something to shew. Louisburg on the extreme east, and Fort du Quesne on the extreme west, of the line on which the contending nations faced each other had both been won by English regulars. In the centre of that line the colonists had contributed their share in the heavy blow they had dealt under Colonel Bradstreet to the French at Ontario.

When the Assembly met on December 30, the Governor was able to allude to the occupation of Fort du Quesne as a recent additional success. But he told his audience that

all is not yet effected which seems absolutely necessary to be done that His Majesty's colonies may be in a state of peace and security. We must expect to be engaged in, and cannot too soon be prepared for, the service of another year which, if the vigorous efforts of the colonies be equal to the promising circumstances in which things now are, bids fair, according to the course of human affairs to be decisive.

CHAPTER VI

THIRD YEAR AS GOVERNOR

1759

MUCH as the military situation had improved in the last twelve months, the financial strain on Massachusetts became more intense as the war continued. On January 6 the Assembly, after acknowledging the Governor's last address and saying they agreed with him as to the necessity of further efforts, explained their position thus :—

Burdened and oppressed as we are with taxes we shall be still ready to aid and assist in promoting His Majesty's service to the utmost of our abilities. And we have full confidence in His Majesty's paternal regard to his Colonies that he will graciously be pleased to afford us all necessary relief from time to time as our circumstances may require. And from the experience we have had of your Excellency's administration in the year past shall be induced with the greater cheerfulness to engage under the same direction in such measures as shall be found necessary for the service in the year to come.1

The letter to Mr. Pitt which covered this told him that the Assembly was quite prepared to act as soon as they heard from England what the plan of the campaign was to be. The Governor was able to announce that in order to do honour to the memory of Lord Howe, who had fallen at Ticonderoga the previous summer, a vote for a monument to him had been passed by the Assembly. This Pownall regarded as

attended with every good consequence that mutual good offices must produce between the provinces and the army. As it shews the

1 R.O., Colonial Governors' Papers, vol. lxxii. Enclosure with letter of January 19, 1759, from Governor Pownall to Rt. Hon. W. Pitt.

2 This is in the Belfry Tower-the north-west corner of the nave-in Westminster Abbey.