THOUGHTS OF INDEPENDENCE IN THE COLONIES. 313

in September, the provincial army, by direction of the duke of Newcastle, was disbanded. Men believed that England, from motives of policy, had not desired success. "There is reason enough for doubting whether the king, if he had the power, would wish to drive the French from their possessions in Canada." Such was public opinion at New York, in 1748, as preserved for us by the Swedish traveller Peter Kalm. "The English colonies in this part of the world," he continues, "have increased so much in wealth and population, that they will vie with European England. But to maintain the commerce and the power of the metropolis, they are forbid to establish new manufactures, which might compete with the English; they may dig for gold and silver only on condition of shipping them immediately to England; they have, with the exception of a few fixed places, no liberty to trade to any parts not belonging to the English dominions; and foreigners are not allowed the least commerce with these American colonies. And there are many similar restrictions. These oppressions have made the inhabitants of the English colonies less tender towards their mother land. This coldness is increased by the many foreigners who are settled among them; for Dutch, Germans, and French, are here blended with English, and have no special love for Old England. Besides, some people are always discontented, and love change; and exceeding freedom and prosperity nurse an untamable spirit. I have been told, not only by native Americans, but by English emigrants, publicly, that, within thirty or fifty years, the English colonies in North America may constitute a separate state, entirely independent of England. But, as this whole country is towards the sea unguarded, and on the frontier is kept uneasy by the French, these dangerous neighbors are the reason why the love of these colonies for their metropolis does not utterly decline. The English government has therefore reason to regard the French in North America as the chief power that urges their colonies to submission "

The Swede heard but the truth, though that truth lay concealed from British statesmen. Even during the war, the jealous spirit of resistance to tyranny was once kindled into a fury at Boston. Sir Charles Knowles, the British naval commander, whom Smollett is thought to have described justly as an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity," having been deserted by some of his crew, while lying_off Nantasket, early one morning, sent his boats up to Boston, and impressed seamen from vessels, mechanics and laborers from the wharves. "Such a surprise could not be borne here," wrote Hutchinson, who was present; and he assigns, as the reason of impatience, that "the people had not been used to it." "Men would not be contented with fair promises from the governor; "the seizure and restraint of the commanders and other officers who were in town, were insisted upon, as the only effectual method to procure the release of the inhabitants aboard the ships." And "the mob" executed what the governor declined. At last, after three days of rage and resentment, through the mediation of the house of representatives, order was restored. officers were liberated from their irregular imprisonment; and, in return, most, if not all, of the impressed citizens of Boston were dismissed from the English fleet.

The

The alliance of Austria with Russia hastened negotiations for the pacification of Europe; and a congress convened at Aix la Chapelle to restore tranquillity to the civilized world. As between England and Spain, and between France and England, after eight years of reciprocal annoyance, after an immense accumulation of national debt, the condition of peace was the state of possession before the war. Nothing was gained. Humanity had suffered, without a purpose, and without a result. In the colonial world, Madras was restored for Cape Breton; the boundaries between the British and the French provinces in America were left unsettled, neither party acknowledging the right of the other to

1748.]

TREATIES OF AIX LA CHAPELLE.

315

the basin of the Penobscot or of the Ohio; the frontier of Florida was not traced. Neither did Spain relinquish the right of searching English vessels suspected of smuggling; and, though it was agreed that the assiento treaty should continue for four years more, the right was soon abandoned, under a new convention, for an inconsiderable pecuniary indemnity. Of higher questions, in which the interests of civilization were involved, not one was adjusted. To the balance of power, sustained by standing armies of a million of men, the statesmen of that day intrusted the preservation of tranquillity, and, ignorant of the might of principles to mould the relations of states, saw in Austria the certain ally of England, in France the natural ally of Prussia.

Thus, after long years of strife, of repose, and of strife renewed, England and France solemnly agreed to be at peace. The treaties of Aix la Chapelle had been negotiated, by the ablest statesmen of Europe, in the splendid forms of monarchical diplomacy. They believed themselves the arbiters of mankind, the pacificators of the world, -reconstructing the colonial system on a basis which should endure for ages, confirming the peace of Europe by the nice adjustment of material forces. At the very time of the congress of Aix la Chapelle, the woods of Virginia sheltered the youthful George Washington. Born by the side of the Potomac, beneath the roof of a Westmoreland farmer, almost from infancy his lot had been the lot of an orphan. No academy had welcomed him to its shades, no college crowned him with its honors: to read, to write, to cipher-these had been his degrees in knowledge. And now, at sixteen years of age, in quest of an honest maintenance, encountering intolerable toil; cheered onward by being able to write to a schoolboy friend, "Dear Richard, a doubloon is my constant gain every day, and sometimes six pistoles; "himself his own cook, having no spit but a forked stick, no plate but a large chip;" roaming over spurs of the

Alleghanies, and along the banks of the Shenandoah ; alive to nature, and sometimes “ spending the best of the day in admiring the trees and richness of the land; among skin-clad savages, with their scalps and rattles, or uncouth emigrants, "that would never speak English;" rarely sleeping in a bed; holding a bearskin a splendid couch; glad of a resting-place for the night upon a little hay, straw, or fodder, and often camping in the forests, where the place nearest the fire was a happy luxury; this stripling surveyor in the woods, with no companion but his unlettered associates, and no implements of science but his compass and chain, contrasted strangely with the imperial magnificence of the congress of Aix la Chapelle. And yet God had selected, not Kaunitz, nor Newcastle, not a monarch of the house of Hapsburg, nor of Hanover, but the Virginia stripling, to give an impulse to human affairs, and, as far as events can depend on an individual, had placed the rights and the destinies of countless millions in the keeping of the widow's son.

END OF HISTORY OF COLONIZATION.