advisers; God forbid that this committee should share the guilt by approving it." What judgment posterity would form of Pulteney was foreshadowed in the poetry of Akenside; but there was no need of awaiting the judgment of posterity, or listening to the indignation of contemporary patriotism: Pulteney and his associates stand self-condemned. The original documents demonstrate "the extreme injustice" of their opposition. "It was my fortune," said Edmund Burke, "to converse with those who principally excited that clamor. None of them, no, not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct." 1739. In an ill hour for herself, in a happy one for America, England, on the twenty-third of October, 1739, Oct. 23. declared war against Spain. If the rightfulness of the European colonial system be conceded, the declaration was a wanton invasion of it for immediate selfish purposes; but, in endeavoring to open the ports of Spanish America to the mercantile enterprise of her own people, she was beginning a war on colonial monopoly, which could not end till American colonies of her own, as well as of Spain, should obtain independence. 1744. To acquire possession of the richest portions of Spanish America, Anson was sent with a small squad- 1740 to ron into the Pacific; but disasters at sea compelled him to renounce the hope of conquest, and seek only booty. As he passed Cape Horn, the winds, of which the fury made an ordinary gale appear as a gentle breeze, scattered his ships; one after another of them was wrecked or disabled; and at last, with a single vessel, after circumnavigating the globe, he returned to England, laden with spoils, rich in adventures, having won a merited celebrity by his sufferings, his good judgment, and his cheerful perseverance; while the brilliant sketches of the Ladrones by the historian of his voyage made his name familiar to the lovers of romance throughout Europe. In November, 1739, Edward Vernon, with six 1739. men-of-war, appeared off Porto Bello. The attack on the feeble and ill-supplied garrison began on the twenty first; and, on the next day, Vernon, losing but seven men, was in possession of the town and the castles. A booty of ten thousand dollars, and the pleasure of demolishing the fortifications of the place, were the sole fruits of the enterprise; and, having acquired no rightful claim to glory, Vernon returned to Jamaica. Party spirit in free governments sometimes vitiates the contemporary verdict of opinion. Vernon belonged to the opposition; and the enemies of Walpole exalted his praises, till his heroism was made a proverb, his birthday signalized by lights and bonfires, and his head selected as the favorite ornament for signposts. Meantime, he took and demolished Fort Chagre on this side of the Isthmus of Darien, but without result, for want of the co-operation of Anson at Panama. 1740. England now prepared to send to the West Indies by far the largest fleet and army that had ever appeared in the Gulf of Mexico, and summoned the colonies north of Carolina to contribute four battalions to the armament. No one of them refused its quota; even Pennsylvania voted a contribution of money, and thus enabled its governor to enlist troops for the occasion. "It will not be amiss," wrote Sir Charles Wager to Admiral Vernon, "for both French and Spaniards to be a month or two in the West Indies before us, that they may be half-dead and half-roasted before our fleet arrives." So the expedition from England did not begin its voyage till October, and, after stopping for water at Dominica, where Lord Cathcart, the commander of the land forces, fell a victim to the climate, reached Ja1741. maica in the early part of the following year. He was succeeded by the inexperienced, irresolute Wentworth; the naval force was under Vernon, who was impatient of contradiction, and ill disposed to endure even an associate. The enterprise, instead of having one good leader, had two bad ones. Jan. 9. 1741. Wasting at Jamaica the time from the ninth of January, 1741, till near the end of the month, at last, with a fleet of twenty-nine ships of the line, beside about eighty smaller vessels, with fifteen thousand sailors, with twelve thousand land troops, equipped with all sorts of warlike instruments and every kind of convenience, Vernon weighed anchor, without any definite purpose. Havana lay within three days' sail; its conquest would have made England supreme in the Gulf of Mexico. But Vernon insisted on searching for the fleet of the French and Spaniards; and the French Lad already left the fatal climate. The council of war, yielding to the vehemence of Admiral Vernon, resolved to attack Carthagena, the strongest place in Spanish America. The fleet appeared before the town on the fourth of March, and lost five days by inactivity. Fifteen days were required to gain possession of the fortress that rose near the entrance to the harbor; the Spaniards themselves abandoned Castillo Grande. It remained to storm Fort San Lazaro, which commanded the town. The attack, devised without judgment, was made by twelve hundred men with intrepidity; but the assailants were repulsed with the loss of half their number, while the admiral gave no timely aid to the land forces, and discord aggravated defeat. Ere long, rains set in. The fever of the low country in the tropics began its rapid work; every hour swept away battalions; the dead were cast into the sea, sometimes without winding-sheet or sinkers; the hospital ships were crowded in the three days that elapsed between the descent and the re-embarkation; the effective land force dwindled from six thousand six hundred to three thousand two hundred. The English could only demolish the fortifications and retire. In July, an attack on Santiago in Cuba was meditated, and abandoned almost as soon as attempted. When, late in November, the expedition which was to have prepared the way for conquering Mexico and Peru returned to Jamaica, the total loss of lives was estimated at about twenty thousand, of whom few fell by the enemy. Of the recruits from the colonies, nine out of ten fell victims to the climate and the service. In March, 1742, Vernon and Wentworth planned an expedition against Panama; but, on reaching Porto Bello, the design was voted impracticable, and they returned. Mean time, the commerce of England with Spain was destroyed, the assiento was interrupted; even the contraband was impaired; while English ships became the plunder of privateers. England had made no acquisitions, and had inflicted on the Spanish West Indies far less evil than she herself had suffered. 1739. On receiving instructions from England of the approaching war with Spain, Oglethorpe, before the close of the year, extended the boundaries of Georgia once more to the St. John's, and in the first week of 1740 he entered Florida. Re-enforcements from South Carolina were delayed so long, that June had come before he could lead six hundred regular troops, four hundred militia from Caro June 2. lina, and two hundred Indian auxiliaries, to the walls 1740. of St. Augustine. The garrison, commanded by Monteano, a man of courage and energy, had already received supplies. For nearly five weeks, Oglethorpe endeavored, in defiance of his own weakness and the strength of the place, to devise measures for victory, but in vain. Threatened with desertion by his troops, he returned to Frederica without molestation. The few prisoners whom he made were kindly treated; not a field, nor a garden, nor a house near St. Augustine was injured, unless by the Indians whose cruelties he reproved and restrained. 1742. To make good its pretensions, the Spanish government resolved on invading Georgia. In 1742, it collected its forces from Cuba; and a large fleet, with an armament of which the force has been greatly exaggerated, sailed towards the mouth of the St. Mary's. Fort William, which Oglethorpe had constructed at the southern extremity of Cumberland Island, defended the entrance successfully, till, fighting his way through Spanish vessels, the general himself re-enforced it. Then returning to St. Simon's, with less than a thousand men, he prepared for defence. July 5. On the fifth of July, seven days after it first came to anchor off Simon's Bar, the Spanish fleet of thirtysix vessels, with the tide of flood and a brisk gale, entered St. Simon's harbor, and succeeded in passing the English July 7. batteries on the southern point of the island. The general Florida still lingered under the jurisdiction of Spain; but |