they must remain in helpless wardship, dependent on England, whose aid they would always need; but with the West open before them, their future was their own.  King and Parliament would respect perforce the will of a people spread from the ocean to the Mississippi, and united in action as in aims.  But in the middle of the last century the vision of the ordinary colonist rarely reached so far.  The immediate victory over a governor, however slight the point at issue, was more precious in his eyes than the remote though decisive advantage which he saw but dimly.

The governors, representing the central power, saw the situation from the national point of view.  Several of them, notably Dinwiddie and Shirley, were filled with wrath at the proceedings of the French; and the former was exasperated beyond measure at the supineness of the provinces.  He had spared no effort to rouse them, and had failed.  His instincts were on the side of authority; but, under the circumstances, it is hardly to be imputed to him as a very deep offence against human liberty that he advised the compelling of the colonies to raise men and money for their own defence, and proposed, in view of their “intolerable obstinacy and disobedience to his Majesty’s commands,” that Parliament should tax them half-a-crown a head.  The approaching war offered to the party of authority temptations from which the colonies might have saved it by opening their purse-strings without waiting to be told.

The Home Government, on its part, was but half-hearted in the wish that they should unite in opposition to the common enemy.  It was very willing that the several provinces should give money and men, but not that they should acquire military habits and a dangerous capacity of acting together.  There was one kind of union, however, so obviously necessary, and at the same time so little to be dreaded, that the British Cabinet, instructed by the governors, not only assented to it, but urged it.  This was joint action in making treaties with the Indians.  The practice of separate treaties, made by each province in its own interest, had bred endless disorders.  The adhesion of all the tribes had been so shaken, and the efforts of the French to alienate them were so vigorous and effective, that not a moment was to be lost.  Joncaire had gained over most of the Senecas, Piquet was drawing the Onondagas more and more to his mission, and the Dutch of Albany were alienating their best friends, the Mohawks, by encroaching on their lands.  Their chief, Hendrick, came to New York with a deputation of the tribe to complain of their wrongs; and finding no redress, went off in anger, declaring that the covenant chain was broken.[174] The authorities in alarm called William Johnson to their aid.  He succeeded in soothing the exasperated chief, and then proceeded to the confederate council at Onondaga, where he found the assembled sachems full of anxieties and doubts.  “We don’t know what you Christians, English and French, intend,”