NEW ENGLAND UNITES.

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They had felt the necessity of union as long ago as 1637, when, as we have seen, the league of the New England settlements had been proposed, but not carried out, in consequence of a difference between Connecticut and Massachusetts as to their relative importance in such a federation. From that day to this, there has been the same controversy about the relative rights of members of the federation, and the amount of power reserved by each member for independent action. There has always been a discussion of the centralization of power and of State rights. Connecticut gave way to Massachusetts, and in 1643, that State found itself at the head of a confederacy called "The United Colonies of New England." Rhode Island was left out of the league; there was strife between the members themselves, and they showed that they were "united," principally when there were acts of violence to be done or resisted. The league expired after a feeble life of a half century. The last meeting was held at Hartford, September 5, 1684. Still there was a meagre union in the Postoffice department, established by the home government in 1710. Letters were taken from Portsmouth to Philadelphia regularly, but towns to the inland, and those off this line of travel, were very solitary. They had to depend upon chance opportunities for correspondence, and as there were no wheeled vehicles in use away from the seaboard before the Revolution, travel was effected on horseback, and produce was carried on sleds in winter and on oxcarts in summer.

Danger led to the first American Congress. It was called by Massachusetts in 1690, at the time. when the people were breathing more freely after the

imprisonment of Andros, and just after the destruction of Schenectady had warned the Colonies of the danger to be expected from the French and their Indian allies. It was this Congress which planned the conquest of Canada. All the Colonies from Maine to Maryland were invited to send delegates. The practical results were not great, but the Colonies had taken another step towards self-govern

ment.

The next indication of progress in this direction is shown by the proposition made to the London Board of Trade, by William Penn, in 1697, that there should be an annual Congress of twenty members chosen by the Colonial Legislatures (with a president appointed by the king), to regulate commerce; but it had no results until it had been vitalized by Benjamin Franklin, in 1754, though in 1722 Daniel Coxe of New Jersey had broached a similar plan. Here, again, it was fear of the Indians which drove the colonists to take measures for self protection. The French and their Indian allies were menacing the West. They had in April, 1754, established themselves at Fort Du Quesne, and on the twenty-fifth of that month, had occurred the battle* in which Washington made his name known, and, as Bancroft says, by his "word of command kindled the world into a flame." He had been for the first time in action; had been successful, and in the excitement of his youthful ardor had written that there was something charming in the whistling of the bullets as they flew about him. He was not so greatly enamored with military life, however, as to be hindered from retiring to Mount Vernon and the agri* At Great Meadows, on the Youghiogheny.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

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cultural pursuits of peace, at the end of the year, though he was immediately recalled by his native State to take part in the campaign of 1755.

Benjamin Franklin, who has been well called "the incarnated common sense" of the period, was son of parents who had sought in Boston, freedom from the disabilities. which encompassed

non-conformists in England, and in that town he was born, January 17, 1706, the youngest son in a family of seventeen. He had been in England, had made the best of the advantage for getting wisdom from men, and books that had sparingly fallen to his lot, had written and printed much, and had proved himself a valuable public counsellor. He had founded the University of Pennsylvania, and the American Philosophical Society, had invented the stove which still bears his name, had begun his investigations in electricity, and invented the lightning rod, and had occupied the office of deputy Postmaster-general for America. Both Yale and Harvard Colleges had honored themselves by giving him the degree of Master of Arts.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S BIRTHPLACE.

After the defeat of Braddock, against whose disastrous expedition he had remonstrated, Franklin took

the field as commander of the Volunteer Militia which he had been the means of organizing, and would have been appointed to more important commands, had he not distrusted his military capacity, and returned to his scientific pursuits. In 1757, however, he was sent by the people of Pennsylvania to petition the Crown for redress from the measures of the proprietors. His mission was successful. He returned home in 1762, having received the highest academic degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge, on account of his scientific labors, and having been equally honored by the Government for his statemanship. In 1764 he was again called to perform a diplomatic service, this time being commissioned to ask that the State be permitted to take its affairs into its own hands. He did not return until the spring of 1775, having spent the most critical years which intervened in the performance of duties invaluable to his countrymen.

The next step towards the present union was taken in 1751, and by an officer of the Crown, Archibald Kennedy, Receiver-General of New York, who suggested through the press, an annual meeting of commissioners from all the Colonies, at New York or Albany; proposing that the system should be authorized and enforced by an act of Parliament. In March, 1752, an anonymous letter appeared in a Philadelphia paper, attributed by Bancroft to Franklin, in which the writer avers that a voluntary union would be preferable to one imposed by the British Government, and says that it would be strange if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and able to carry it out,

ENGLAND FAVORS AMERICAN UNION.

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and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous.'

In 1754, when war was opening between England. and France, a feeling grew up in England that the American Colonies should do something for themselves in a united way. It was the year before the final struggle between the French and English for supremacy on the American Continent. After the peace of 1748, the Ohio Company had begun its settlements (1749), and these had been assailed by the French and Indians. The Governor of South Carolina suggested a meeting of all the governors, to decide how many men each Colony should contribute for the campaign on the Ohio; but the Governor of Virginia retorted that the assembly of his dominion would be guided only by its free determinations. The Colonies were, in fact, all reluctant to grant funds for the protection of the English settlers from the assaults of the French and the Indians, though all began to demand some sort of a union. Accordingly a convention was held at Albany, June 19, 1754, at which New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Maryland were represented. The object was to take measures for mutual defence, and to treat with the Six Nations and the Indians allied to them. It was the most venerable assembly that America had yet seen, and every voice was for union. After peace had been effected with the representatives of the Six Nations, on the tenth of July, Franklin offered his plan for a Perpetual Uniona compromise between prerogative and popular power which was read article