at the expense of diminishing their esteem for some of her own most ancient and characteristic institutions. Generally trained to useful labor, and habituated to regard it as almost the sole, and certainly the worthiest and most accessible, path to distinction, the colonists entertained a jealousy of every system and principle that encroached on the respect or diminished the reward due to industrious pursuits. They regarded feudal titles as arrogant assumptions, under which the pride of favorite vassals aped the grandeur of their prince and cloaked the humiliation of their servitude. Some of the noblemen, whom the parent state deputed to administer royal prerogative or to exercise other conspicuous functions in America, were persons of worth and honor; but none of them justified his titular pretension to superiority over the rest of mankind by his personal achievements; and the majority excited the aversion and contempt of the colonists. The insolent pretensions and the sordid or insignificant characters of the inheritors of proprietary rights in America, together with the abortive attempt of the proprietaries of Carolina to introduce a subordinate species of titular nobility into this province, combined to give a keener edge to the general dislike of a hereditary tenure of honor and authority. There had, indeed, been always some individuals, and now there was a party, among the colonists, certainly not considerable in numbers, who longed for such an assimilation of the colonial institutions to those of the parent state, as might enable themselves to indulge the pride and partake the splendor and enrichment of the titles, trappings, and pensions of Europe, even at the expense of exalting the royal prerogative in America, and proportionally restricting and depressing the liberties of their countrymen. This party, which, doubtless, included among its members some dexterous and unprincipled knaves, contained, perhaps, a larger admixture of men in whom a blind but honest zeal for British and monarchical power was combined with a sincere devotion to their own private interests, in various, and, to human eyes, inscrutable proportions. Jealous of popular rights, and exclaiming against the dangerous aim and tendency of popular sentiment in America, this party easily gained the ear and at least the partial con

1 Franklin's Memoirs and Correspondence. Holmes. Belknap.

fidence of the royal court; and probably conceived, as well as conveyed, an exaggerated idea of its own influence, from the occasional support which it received from wealthy colonists, who, though warmly attached to liberty and their country, overvalued the superior riches of Britain, dreaded change and hazard, and believed, because they desired, the infallible efficacy of temperate and submissive demeanour in preserving the relations of friendship and the blessings of peace. The zealots of monarchical and republican principles - the one relying on British support, the other on their own superior numbers in America were more disposed both by word and action to hurry their controversy to an extremity. The conduct of both was influenced at the present crisis by the state of public affairs, and the demeanour of the moderate party, which at once excited the ardor of the partisans of prerogative and dictated caution to the advocates of liberty. However disposed the British court or any portion of it might have been, at this period, to second the wishes of a party devoted to the interests of the crown, it was no easy matter to alter the long prevailing usages and established constitutions of the American provinces ; in opposition, especially, to that strong current of republican sentiment and opinion by which all these provinces were pervaded, and of which, even at a crisis like the present, the most unfavorable for its manifestation, there broke forth many unequivocal symptoms.

The present contest between the French and English in America was signalized, from time to time, by various predatory inroads of the Indian allies of France upon the frontiers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In this, as in the previous war, the provincial annalists confess the forbearance and tenderness generally demonstrated by the savages for their captives, but no longer hesitate to determine whether such altered treatment was the offspring of policy or humanity. For it was found that the Indians were engaged to deliver all their prisoners alive into the hands of the French, who indemnified themselves for the subsidies which they paid to their savage allies, by the ransoms they exacted from the families and kinsmen of the captives.1

Belknap. "Vendere cum possis captivum, occidere noli." Horace.

CHAPTER VI.

1

- Death of George the Second.

Progress of Hostilities in America-Entire Conquest of Canada. - War with the Cherokees.Affairs of Massachusetts. - Conclusion of the Cherokee War. Affairs of South Carolina.- Discontents in Massachusetts - and in North Carolina.- Peace of Paris. Affairs of Virginia - Patrick Henry. - Indian War. — Affairs of Pennsylvania.

THE inhabitants of North America had eagerly indulged the hope that the reduction of Quebec not only betokened, but actually imported, the entire conquest of Canada; but they were speedily undeceived; and, aroused by the spirited and nearly successful attempt of the French to retrieve this loss, they consented the more willingly to a renewed exertion of their resources for the purpose of securing and improving the victorious posture of their affairs. The New England levies this year [1760] were as numerous as they had ever been during the war; the Virginian levies (augmented by the emergency of a war with the Cherokees) amounted to two thousand

men.

No sooner had the English fleet retired from the St. Lawrence, than Levi, who succeeded to Montcalm's command, resolved to attempt the recovery of Quebec. The land forces he possessed were more numerous than the army of Wolfe, by which the conquest of the place had been achieved, and he enjoyed the coöperation of some frigates, which afforded him the entire command of the river, as the English had imprudently withdrawn every one of their vessels, on the supposition that they could not be useful in winter. He had hoped that a sudden attack might enable him to take Quebec by surprise, during the winter; but, after some preparatory approaches which were repulsed, and a survey which convinced him that the outposts were better secured and the governor more active and alert than he had expected, he was induced to post

pone his enterprise till the arrival of the spring. In the month of April, when the St. Lawrence afforded a navigation freed from ice, the artillery, military stores, and heavy baggage of the French were embarked at Montreal, and carried down the river under the protection of six frigates; and Levi himself, after a march of ten days, arrived with his army at Point-auTremble, within a few miles of Quebec. General Murray, to whom the preservation of the English conquest was intrusted, took prompt and skilful measures for its security; but his troops had suffered so much from the extreme cold of the winter and the want of vegetables and fresh provisions, that instead of five thousand, the original number of his garrison, he could now count on the services of no more than three

thousand men. Impelled by overboiling courage, rather than Same guided by sound judgment, and relying more, perhaps, on the remark reputation than the strength of his army, he determined, with applicable this once victorious and still valiant, though diminished force, t to meet the enemy in the field, although their numbers amounted to more than twelve thousand; and, accordingly, marching out to the Heights of Abraham, he attempted to render this scene once more tributary to the glory of Britain, by an impetuous assault on the neighbouring position of the French at Sillery. [April 28, 1760.] But his attack was firmly sustained by the enemy, and, after a sharp encounter, finding himself outflanked, and in danger of being surrounded by superior numbers, he withdrew his troops from the action and retired into the city. In this conflict the British lost the greater part of their artillery and nearly a thousand men. The French, though their loss in killed and wounded was more than double that number, had nevertheless gained the victory, which their general lost no time in improving. On the evening of the day on which the battle took place, Levi opened trenches against the town; yet, in spite of all his efforts, it was not till the 11th of May that his batteries were so far advanced as to commence an effectual fire upon the garrison. But Murray had now, by indefatigable exertion, in which he was assisted with alacrity by his soldiers, completed some outworks, and planted so powerful an artillery on the ramparts, that his fire was far superior to that of the besiegers, and nearly silenced their bat

teries. Quebec, notwithstanding, would most probably have reverted to its former masters, if an armament which was despatched from France had not been outsailed by a British squadron, which succeeded in first gaining the entrance and the command of the St. Lawrence. The French frigates, which had descended from Montreal, were now attacked by the British ships, and, part of them having been destroyed, the rest betook themselves to a hasty retreat up the river. Levi instantly raised the siege, and, retiring with a precipitation that obliged him to abandon the greater part of his baggage and artillery, reconducted his forces (with the exception of a party of Canadians and Indians who became disheartened and deserted him by the way) to Montreal. Here the Marquis de Vaudreuil, governor-general of Canada, had fixed his headquarters, and determined to make his last stand in defence of the French colonial empire, thus reduced, from the attitude of preponderance and conquest which it presented two years before, to the necessity of a defensive and desperate effort for its own preservation. For this purpose Vaudreuil called in all his detachments and collected around him the whole force of the colony. Though little chance of success remained to him, he preserved an intrepid countenance, and in all his dispositions displayed the firmness and foresight of an accomplished commander. To support the drooping courage of the Canadians and their Indian allies, he had even recourse to the artifice of circulating among them feigned intelligence of the successes of France in other quarters of the world, and of her approaching succour.

Amherst, in the mean time, was diligently engaged in concerting and prosecuting measures for the entire conquest of Canada. During the winter, he had made arrangements for bringing all the British forces from Quebec, Lake Champlain, and Lake Ontario, to join in a combined attack upon Montreal. Colonel Haviland, by his direction, sailing with a detachment from Crown Point, took possession of Isle-auxNoix, which he found abandoned by the enemy, and thence proceeded towards Montreal; while Amherst, with his own division, consisting of about ten thousand regulars and provincials, left the frontiers of New York, and advanced to Oswego,