executions, would have inclined the savages to submission; but they rejected his terms of accommoda tion, and maintained an attitude of defiance. He therefore marched forward through the Dismal Swamp, where progress was toilsome and dangerous, and arrived within five miles of Etchoe, the central town and settlement of the Cherokees. He was now at the entrance of a deep valley, shadowed with thickets, and crossed by a muddy river, flowing between steep banks of clay. Some rangers were sent forward to scour the ground between the bushes; but immediately on entering the obscure valley, they fell into an ambush, and were galled by a heavy fire from concealed parties of Indians. Their comrades advanced to

their assistance, and were similarly encountered. It was necessary to bring the whole force into action to dislodge the lurking savages, whose numbers were so great, and whose position was so difficult of access, that the task of dispersing them was a work of time and hazard. At length, however, they retired, but in good order, and only to take up in succession other positions of strength. Montgomery himself was among the wounded in this affair, and thought it prudent, on defeating the enemy, to retire to Fort Prince George. Shortly afterwards he withdrew his regiment from the Carolinas, and the people were left to make the best provision they could for their own defence.

their baggage, and were to be conducted on their way by trusty guides. The Indians professed to desire a lasting peace and a fairly-regulated trade with the white men; but they were secretly planning an act of treachery. When the troops were about fifteen miles from the evacuated fort, they were deserted by their guides, and attacked by a large number of Indians, who fired on them from all sides, killed twenty-five of the soldiers and all the officers but one, and made the rest prisoners. The captives, after passing a miserable time in the towns and villages of the red men, were redeemed by the province of South Carolina. Several small forts were subsequently besieged by the Cherokees;

The Cherokees now assembled a considerable force, and laid siege to Fort Loudoun, situated in the north-eastern part of the present State of Tennessee, but on ground which was at that time included in North Carolina. The fort had been built three years before, and was not a place of any great strength. It was occupied by two hundred and fifty men; but the garrison were ill-supplied with provisions, and the remoteness of the situation precluded the hope of succour. The besieged held out for a long while, supporting themselves on horseflesh, until the failure of every species of food compelled a surrender. By the terms of capitulation, the garrison were to retire unmolested with

but, on the conquest of the whole of Canada, Amherst sent another force against these marauders, and, with the help of provincial troops and Indian allies, succeeded in bringing them to submis sion, in the summer of 1761, after another obstinate battle on the scene of Montgomery's misad

venture.

Before this final success had been achieved, the rebellious Indians in the eastern parts of New Eng land, who had for a long while sided with France, confessed their error, and, seeing the hopelessness of the French cause, and the extraordinary triumphs of the English arms, sought to make the best terms they could for themselves. In the course of 1760, the Penobscots sent deputies to Boston, and concluded a treaty of peace, by which they acknowledged themselves, without restriction or limitation, the subjects of Great Britain. By this treaty they undertook to dwell near a strong fort erected in their country by Pownall, the Governor of Massachusetts, and to deliver up all future offenders of their tribe to be judged by the authorities and laws of the province. The Penobscots were now greatly reduced in number, owing to the long continuance of war, and were glad to obtain the protection and favour of the Power they had defied. Shortly afterwards, Governor Pownall was removed to the richer Presidency of South Carolina, and was succeeded at Boston by Francis

Bernard, formerly a proctor in the ecclesiastical courts of England, and more recently Governor of New Jersey. Pownall had been a very popular official. He had favoured the principles of the party most inclined to support colonial privileges, and was of course held in high esteem by all its members.

But there was also a party in favour of the Royal prerogative; and although the holders of that view were a minority, they were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently influential to vex even the jovial spirit of Governor Pownall. It is said that he was not sorry to quit a position where he had been dragged into so many contentions. When he embarked for England (for he never actually tock possession of office in South Carolina), both Houses of the Massachusetts Legislature attended him in a body to his barge. In England, he was elected to the House of Commons, and, both by word of mouth and by his pen, warmly supported the cause of the colonists in their struggle with the mother country.

Bernard was a man of very different views. He allied himself with the prerogative party, the chief leaders of which were Hutchinson and Olivernative Americans, whose views were in favour of the Court.

The new Governor gave a very injudicious and unfortunate indication of his political bias in a phrase occurring in a message to the Legislature on the recent successes in Canada. He desired the two Houses to bear in mind the blessings they derived from their "subjection" to Great Britain, without which, he observed, they could not have been a free people. It was no doubt perfectly true that France had been humbled more by the Imperial power of England than by the efforts of the colonists themselves; for, however valuable the aid which the latter had rendered, and however gallant the conduct of the provincial troops, it is inconceivable that America, at that stage of her develop ment, could have coped with the military resources of France so successfully as to strike down her banner from every stronghold in her Canadian possessions. But "subjection" was an ugly word, carrying with it many dangerous meanings, and it is not surprising that the Massachusetts Legislature repudiated it. The Council, in replying to Bernard's message, acknowledged that they owed their freedom to their "relation" to Great Britain; and the House of Representatives reminded the Governor that the obligation had been mutual, for that if the people of Massachusetts, for more than a century past, had not waded in blood, and burdened them selves with expenses, in repelling the common enemy, England would probably at that day have had no colonies to defend. The neglect of her

colonies by England in previous times had perhaps done more towards the creation of a sense of independence than the injudicious interference of later days had operated to provoke a desire for it. At any rate, both feelings were now very prevalent, and very strongly developed. Burnaby, an English writer who travelled through North America in 1759-60, declared that he heard sentiments of independence expressed in almost every province that he visited.* These sentiments, however, were by no means novel as far as Massachusetts was concerned. They had existed from the very commencement of the colony, and in recent times had only been thinly disguised by rather hypocritical expressions of loyalty.

The provinces were now on the eve of their great struggle, and an event which happened in the autumn of 1760 may be said to have drawn the line between the old and the new state-between colonial history and the history of an independent Power. On the 25th of October, George II. diel suddenly, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and was succeeded by his grandson, then a young man of two-and-twenty. That this event was really the first of what may be called the later steps towards the War of Independence, cannot be doubted. George III. had from an early age conceived very high ideas of the Royal prerogative. He was surrounded by advisers who encouraged those ideas to the utmost, and it was not long after his accession to the throne that he called to his councils the very Ministers whose policy with regard to America led to such disastrous results. The new King was not a man of commanding abilities or of large acquirements. His intellect was narrow; the range of his studies slight. Yet he was not the mere fool which it has sometimes been the fashion to represent him. On some subjects he had a good deal of plain sense, though unfortunately his prejudices were strong, and his resolutions, when once formed, were carried out, or at least pursued, with an obstinate pertinacity which was often productive of great mischief. He was undoubtedly honest and sincere in all his convictions and all his acts; he was certainly courageous; he was virtuous after the sober fashion that English people love. His religious feelings, though of a conventional order, were thoroughly unaffected; and the purity of his court, though unduly formal, and leading to an excess of formalism in the whole body of English society, had a good influence in correcting the brutal coarseness and immorality of previous reigns. George III. understood, up

* Grahame's History of the United States, Book X., chap. &

to a certain point, the people whom he ruled, and he was in harmony with some of the most distinctive qualities of the nation to which it was his boast to belong. Through a large part of his reign, he was one of the most popular monarchs who ever sat on the English throne. Yet all this did not make him a good politician; still less did it fit him for dealing with the difficult problems of colonial government. As we have before indicated, he was bent on breaking down the ascendency of the Whig aristocracy. To some extent he was right in his object; but he could not see that the world had advanced too far for a return to the political principles of Henry VII. On the next morning but one after his accession, the King made Lord Bute a Privy Councillor; and to Bute were he most of the early political ideas of George III. The Scotch peer was bent on making the King absolute; the King was only too well inclined to abet the project; and the colonies were to be among the first subjects of the doubtful and perilous experiment.

Pitt, who had gained the confidence of the late monarch since his accession to power, though he had previously been cordially disliked by the Second George, soon found that he should not have a supporter in the Third. The new sovereign was opposed to the war which Pitt had conducted with such brilliant success; he thought the Secretary too independent and too powerful; he preferred the more courtly ways of Newcastle; and he saw the Duke before any other member of the Administration, and before holding a Council. When the Privy Council met, the King's speech to that body

was

9

was read. It had been drawn up by Bute, and it spoke of the war as bloody and expensive-which wars are apt to be. The declaration was entered on the Council-books without any previous concert with Pitt; and when that Minister read it, he much hurt at what he regarded as an implied condemnation of his policy. He insisted that the address shonld be altered as it stood on the books; and, after a long and angry dispute with the northern favourite, he obtained the King's consent to substitute for the objectionable passage the words:" As I mount the throne in the midst of an expensive, but just and necessary, war, I shall endeavour to prosecute it in a manner most likely to bring on an honourable and lasting peace, in concert with my allies." This was on the very day of the King's accession to the throne, and therefore before the summoning of Lord Bute to the Privy Council. George III. was extremely angry at the change in his speech which had been forced upon him, and he determined to look still more to the Duke of Newcastle and the Scotch Earl as the chief agents in the enforcement of his political ideas. A witty lady of that day said it had now become a question what sort of coal the King should burn in his chamber—whether Scotch coal, Newcastle coal, or Pitt coal. In truth, the last of the three alternatives was very nearly excluded. Pitt retained power for nearly a year more; but he was no longer in that position of undisputed ascendency which he had enjoyed ever since his accession to the Government. Other times had brought other men, and America was shortly to experience the nature of the change.

BUTE grew in favour every day, and he presently cherished the ambition of displacing Pitt. The desire of the young monarch to make peace as Soon as he decently could, was flattered by the Scotch Earl, as any other desire of the same exalted person would have been. Pitt was even more disposed than at first to prosecute the war

"He

with energy, so as to humble the Bourbon sovereign, and effectually break the power of France. is madder than ever," said Bute one day to Bubb Dodington, his intimate friend and political coadjutor. The Southern Secretary knew his power, and would not brook dictation: Bute and Dodington felt their inferiority, and did not venture to cope

with him openly. They endeavoured to work on public opinion by the issue of numerous pamphlets and handbills, sharply criticising the policy of the great War Minister. In the Cabinet, they had an active ally in the Duke of Newcastle. He had never forgiven Pitt for casting him into the shade, and he was delighted at the prospect of dethroning him. The question for the moment turned on whether the King of Prussia was to be supported in his Continental policy, or whether he should be abandoned, in the hope of patching up a sudden and not very glorious peace. George III. would have deserted Frederick, and have entered at once, and solely, into negotiations with France. Pitt, with the support of Parliament, made his own views prevail; but the coalition against him gathered strength. On the 21st of March, 1761, Parliament was dissolved, and on the same day the Gazette announced several changes in the Ministry. They were of such a nature as plainly to reveal the influence which the favourite was exercising over the counsels of the King. Legge had on a former occasion displeased Bute in some electoral matters: he was now removed from his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Adherents of Bute were promoted to higher offices; and on the 25th of March, Bute himself was Gazetted to the office of Northern Secretary, from which the Earl of Holderness was dismissed. The last-named had already expressed to the rising star his willingness to quarrel with his fellow-Ministers, and resign, so that Bute might come in, without seeming to displace anybody. By this crafty arrangement, Bute became a Minister of importance in the Cabinet-a fact of evil omen for both England and America.

In the day of his blossoming fortunes, Pitt had been flattered and caressed by Bute, who had told him that their views were in almost exact accord, and that he considered the great Minister the only man to save the wreck of Royal authority from total destruction. Now, when he found that Pitt would no more be the agent of the Tories than the underling of the Whigs, he plotted against his influence, with the countenance of the young King. The war was still popular; but those were days in which the popular sentiment had scarcely any way of expressing itself, except by rioting and turbulence. The House of Commons was to a great extent elected by corrupt means. In some places, members were returned at the dictation of the aristocracy, whose great landed estates gave them predominance; in others, the King possessed the Juling influence: only in a few large constituencies did the commonalty exercise freely their right of choosing representatives. The General Election of

1761 was managed chiefly in the interests of the sovereign, and it resulted in the return of a House of Commons devoted to the Royal prerogative. Venality was never carried to a more disgraceful pitch than in those spring months of 1761. The borough of Sudbury, which in more recent times held a conspicuous place in the annals of corrup tion, had the audacity to advertise publicly for a purchaser;* and many others, though not so impudently shameless, were well known to be open to the highest bidder. The King fully availed himself of this discreditable state of things; and yet, only a few days after his accession to the throne, he had acquired great popularity in certain circles by publishing a Proclamation "for the encouraging of piety and virtue, and for preventing and punishing of vice, profaneness, and immorality." But in the eighteenth century it was not supposed that morality had anything to do with politics.

war.

By these methods, George III. and his flatterer, the Earl of Bute, obtained an ascendency in the House of Commons. The King was heartily desirous of peace--as it would seem, from motives of humanity. France was disgusted with a contest which, for her, had been fruitful of reverses. The French Minister, the Duke de Choiseul, was beginning to insist that peace was a necessity, since his countrymen had lost the art of making Pitt clung tenaciously to his original ideas, and was for striking still fiercer blows against the staggering bulk of France. In England, the peace party found an open supporter in the Duke of Bedford-a more guarded advocate in the Earl of Bute. There were those who would have conceded a great deal to France, for the sake of attaining their objects; but Pitt was still powerful enough to hold his own. The French Ministry made proposals, on the 25th of March, for opening separate negotiations with England. Pitt agreed to the suggestion, but entered on the debate with the most haughty resolve to yield nothing. Choiseul proposed, as the basis of the treaty, that each of the two belligerent nations should (subject to exchanges and equivalents) retain what it had conquered from the other, and held in actual possession on the ensuing 1st of May as regarded Europe, on the 1st of July as regarded the West Indies and Africa, and on the 1st of September as regarded the East Indies. This arrangement was certainly advantageous to England, as the balance of successes was greatly in her favour; and Choiseul was willing that the dates of possession should be

Earl Stanhope's History of England, chap. 37.