lands, and not even appropriating to himself permanently a cottage or a single lot of fifty acres, he resolved to assert the claims of England, and preserve his colony as the bulwark of English North America. "To me," said he to Charles Wesley, "death is nothing." "If separate spirits," he added, "regard our little concerns, they do it as men regard the follies of their childhood." The people at Frederica declared to him their readiness to die in defence of the place, grieving only at his exposure to danger without them. For that season, active hostilities were avoided by negotiation. The Spaniards did, indeed, claim peremptorily the whole country as far as St. Helena's Sound; but the English envoys at St. Augustine were set free; and, if the English post on St. George was abandoned, St. Andrew's, commanding the approach to the St. Mary's, was maintained. Hence the St. Mary's ultimately became the boundary of the colony of Oglethorpe. The friendship of the red men insured the safety of the July. English settlements. The Chickasaws, animated by 1736. their victory over the Illinois and D'Artaguette, came down to narrate how unexpectedly they had been attacked, how victoriously they had resisted, with what exultations they had consumed their prisoners by fire. Ever attached to the English, they now deputed thirty warriors, with their civil sachem and war-chief, to make an alliance with Oglethorpe, whose fame had reached the Mississippi. They brought for him an Indian chaplet, made from the spoils of their enemies, glittering with feathers of many hues, and enriched with the horns of buffaloes. The Creeks, Cherokees, and Chickasaws were his unwavering friends, and even the Choctaws covenanted with him to receive English traders. To hasten preparations for Nov. 23. the impending contest with Spain, Oglethorpe em Jan. 19. barked for England. He could report to the trustees 1737. "that the colony was doing well; that Indians from seven hundred miles' distance had confederated with him, and acknowledged the authority of his sovereign." CHAPTER XLIII. WAR BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND SPAIN. 1739-1748. 1737. Aug. RECEIVING a commission as brigadier-general, with a military command extending over South Carolina, Oglethorpe himself, in Great Britain, raised and disciplined a regiment; and, after an absence of more than a year and a half, he returned to Frederica. There, by the industry of his soldiers, the walls of the fortress were completed. Their ivy-mantled ruins are still standing. 1738. Sept. At Savannah, he was welcomed by salutes and bon- Oct. 20. fires. But he refused any alteration in the titles of land. The request for the allowance of slaves he rejected sternly, declaring that, if negroes should be introduced into Georgia, "he would have no further concern with the colony;" and he used his nearly arbitrary power as the civil and military head of the state, the founder and delegated legislator of Georgia, to interdict negro slavery. The trustees applauded this decision, and, notwithstanding "repeated applications," "persisted in denying the use of negroes; even though many of the planters, believing success impossible with "white servants," prepared to desert the colony. The openness and fidelity of Oglethorpe preserved the affection of the natives. Muskohgees and Chickasaws came round him once more, to renew their covenants of friendship. The former had, from the first, regarded him as their father; and, as he had made some progress in their language, they appealed to him directly in every emergency. Nor was this all. In the summer of 1739, the civil 1739. and war chiefs of the Muskohgees held a general council in Cowetas, and adjourned it to Cusitas on the Aug. Chattahoochee; and Oglethorpe, making his way through solitary paths, fearless of the suns of summer, the night dews, or the treachery of some hireling Indian, came into the large square of their council-place, to distribute presents to his red friends; to renew and explain their covenants; to address them in words of affection; and to smoke with their nations the pipe of peace. It was then agreed that the ancient love of the tribes to the British king should remain unimpaired; that the lands from the St. John's to the Savannah, between the sea and the mountains, belonged of ancient right to the Muskohgees. Their cession to the English of the land on the Savannah, as far as the Ogeechee, and along the coast to the St. John's as far into the interior as the tide flows, was, with a few reservations, confirmed; and the entrance to the rest of their domains was barred for ever against the Spaniards. The right of pre-emption was reserved for the trustees of Georgia alone; nor might they enlarge their possessions except with the consent of the ancient proprietaries of the soil. 1739. The news of this treaty could not have reached Oct. England before the negotiations with Spain were abruptly terminated. Walpole desired peace; he pleaded for it in the name of national honor, of justice, and of the true interests of commerce. But the active English mind had become debauched by the hopes of sudden gains and soured by disappointment, and was resolved on illicit commerce, or on plunder and conquest. A war was desired, not because England insisted on cutting logwood in the Bay of Honduras, where Spain claimed a jurisdiction and had founded no settlements; nor because the South Sea company differed with the king of Spain as to the balances of their accounts; nor yet because the boundary between Carolina and Florida was still in dispute, — these differences could have been adjusted, but, as all agree, because English "merchants were not permitted to smuggle with impunity." A considerable part of the population of Jamaica was sustained by the profits of the contraband trade with Spanish ports; the annual ship to Porto Bello, which the assiento permitted, was followed at a distance by smaller vessels; and fresh bales of goods were nightly introduced in the place of those that had been discharged during the day. Not only did the slave-ships assist in violating the revenue laws of Spain; British smuggling vessels, pretending distress, would claim the right by treaty to enter the Spanish harbors on the Gulf of Mexico. In consequence, the colonial commerce of Spain was almost annihilated. In former days, the tonnage of the fleet of Cadiz had amounted to fifteen thousand tons; it was now reduced to two thousand tons, and had no office but to carry the royal revenues from America. The monarch of Spain, the victim of bigoted scruples, busy in celebrating auto-da-fés and burning heretics, and regarding as an affair of state the question who should be revered as the true patron saint of his kingdom, was at last roused to angry impatience. His complaints, when addressed to England, were turned aside; and when the Spanish officers showed vigor in maintaining the commercial system of their sovereign, the English merchants resented their interference as the ebullitions of pride and the wanton aggressions of tyranny. One Jenkins, who to the pursuits of smuggling had joined maraudings which might well have been treated as acts of piracy, was summoned to the bar of the house of commons to give evidence. The tale which he was disciplined to tell of the loss of one of his ears by Spanish cruelty, of dishonor offered to the British flag and the British crown, was received without distrust. "What were your feelings, when in the hands of such barbarians?" was asked by a member, as his mutilated ears were exhibited. "I commended my soul to my God," answered the impudent fabler, "and my cause to my country." "We have no need of allies to enable us to command justice; the story of Jenkins will raise volunteers: " such was the cry of Pulteney, resolved to find fault at any rate, and to embarrass and overthrow the administration of Walpole. The clamor of orators was seconded by the poets of that age: Pope, in his dying notes, sneered at the timidity which was willing to avoid offence, And own the Spaniard did a waggish thing, Who cropped our ears, and sent them to the king; and Samuel Johnson, in more earnest language, exclaims:— Has Heaven reserved, in pity to the poor, 1739. No pathless waste or undiscovered shore? No peaceful desert yet unclaimed by Spain? At last, a convention was signed. The mutual Jan. claims for damages sustained in commerce were balanced and liquidated; and while the king of Spain demanded of the South Sea company sixty-eight thousand pounds, as due to him for his share of their profits, he agreed to pay, as an indemnity to British merchants for losses sustained by unwarranted seizures, the sum of ninetyfive thousand pounds. On these questions, no dispute remained but the trivial one whether the British government should guarantee to Spain the acknowledged debt of the South Sea company. The question with regard to the boundaries of Florida was equally well settled; the actual possessions of each nation were to remain without change till commissioners could mark the boundary. In other words, England was to hold undisturbed jurisdiction over the country as far as the mouth of the St. Mary's. It is to the honor of Walpole that he dared to resist the clamor of the mercantile interest, and, opposing the imbecile Duke of Newcastle, advocated the acceptance of the convention. "It requires no great abilities in a minister," he said, "to pursue such measures as may make a war unavoidable. But how many ministers have known the art of avoiding war by making a safe and honorable peace?” "The convention," said William Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, — giving an augury, in his first speech on American affairs, that his political career might be marked by energy, but not by superiority to the selfish prejudices of nationality," the convention is insecure, unsatisfactory, and dishonorable: I think, from my soul, it is nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy. The complaints of your despairing merchants and the voice of England have condemned it. Be the guilt of it upon the head of the |