w England colonies, by whom the enterprise
against that powerful and troublesome fortress had first been devised
and undertaken. By the treaty between France and England, the boundaries
of their possessions in America were left undefined, and were to be
settled by Commissioners appointed by the two countries. But the
Commissioners, when they met at Paris, could not agree; the questions of
these boundaries remained unsettled; and the French in Canada, with the
Indians, nearly all of whom were in alliance with them, were constantly
making aggressions and committing cruel outrages upon the English
colonists in the back parts of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and
Virginia, who felt that their only security for life, property, and
liberty was the extinction of French power in America, and the
subjection of the Indians by conquest or conciliation. The six years
which followed the peace of 1748 witnessed frequent and bloody
collisions between the English colonists and their French and Indian
Canadian neighbours, until, in 1756, England formally declared war
against France--a war which continued seven years, and terminated in the
extinction of French power in Canada, and in the enlargement of the
British possessions from Labrador to Florida and Louisiana, and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. This war, in its origin and many scenes of its
conflicts and conquests, was an American-Colonial war, and the American
colonies were the gainers by its results, for which British blood and
treasure had been lavishly expended. In this protracted and eventful
conflict, the British Government were first prompted and committed, and
then nobly seconded by the colonies, Massachusetts acting the most
prominent part.

The last act of the British Government, pursuant to the treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, was to restore to the French Government Louisburg,
in return for the strongly fortified fort of Madras, which had been
wrested from the French by the colonists, assisted by Admiral Warren
with a few English ships in 1745; and the first act of the French
Government, after the restoration to them of Louisburg, was to prepare
for wresting from Great Britain all her American colonies.[223] They
dispatched soldiers and all kinds of military stores; encroached upon
and built fortresses in the British province of Nova Scotia, and in the
provinces of Pennsylvania and Virginia,[224] and erected a chain of
forts, and planted garrisons along the lin