[Footnote 200:  Shebbeare’s Tracts, Letter I. Dr. Shebbeare was a political pamphleteer, pilloried by one ministry, and rewarded by the next.  He certainly speaks of Hanbury, though he does not give his name.  Compare Sargent, 107, 162.]

[Footnote 201:  Gentleman’s Magazine, Aug. 1755.]

Not only were supplies scarce, but the people showed such unwillingness to furnish them, and such apathy in aiding the expedition, that even Washington was provoked to declare that “they ought to be chastised."[202] Many of them thought that the alarm about French encroachment was a device of designing politicians; and they did not awake to a full consciousness of the peril till it was forced upon them by a deluge of calamities, produced by the purblind folly of their own representatives, who, instead of frankly promoting the expedition, displayed a perverse and exasperating narrowness which chafed Braddock to fury.  He praises the New England colonies, and echoes Dinwiddie’s declaration that they have shown a “fine martial spirit,” and he commends Virginia as having done far better than her neighbors; but for Pennsylvania he finds no words to express his wrath.[203] He knew nothing of the intestine war between proprietaries and people, and hence could see no palliation for a conduct which threatened to ruin both the expedition and the colony.  Everything depended on speed, and speed was impossible; for stores and provisions were not ready, though notice to furnish them had been given months before.  The quartermaster-general, Sir John Sinclair, “stormed like a lion rampant,” but with small effect.[204] Contracts broken or disavowed, want of horses, want of wagons, want of forage, want of wholesome food, or sufficient food of any kind, caused such delay that the report of it reached England, and drew from Walpole the comment that Braddock was in no hurry to be scalped.  In reality he was maddened with impatience and vexation.

[Footnote 202:  Writings of Washington, II. 78.  He speaks of the people of Pennsylvania.]

[Footnote 203:  Braddock to Robinson, 18 March, 19 April, 5 June, 1755, etc.  On the attitude of Pennsylvania, Colonial Records of Pa., VI., passim.]

[Footnote 204:  Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 368.]

A powerful ally presently came to his aid in the shape of Benjamin Franklin, then postmaster-general of Pennsylvania.  That sagacious personage,—­the sublime of common-sense, about equal in his instincts and motives of character to the respectable average of the New England that produced him, but gifted with a versatile power of brain rarely matched on earth,—­was then divided between his strong desire to repel a danger of which he saw the imminence, and his equally strong antagonism to the selfish claims of the Penns, proprietaries of Pennsylvania.  This last motive had determined his attitude towards their representative, the Governor, and led him into an opposition as injurious