funds for its
support. A plan for this purpose on the largest scale was drawn up by
Benjamin Franklin, who, from a printer's boy, had risen to supreme
influence in Pennsylvania; but in the way of such a union stood the
jealousies which each state entertained of its neighbour, the
disinclination of the colonists to be drawn into an expensive struggle,
and, above all, suspicion of the motives of Halifax and his colleagues.
The delay in furnishing any force for defence, the impossibility of
bringing the colonies to any agreement, and the perpetual squabbles of
their legislatures with the governors appointed by the Crown, may have
been the motives which induced Halifax to introduce a Bill which would
have made orders by the king in spite of the colonial charters law in
America. The Bill was dropped in deference to the constitutional
objections of wiser men; but the governors fed the fear in England of
the "levelling principles" of the colonists, and every official in
America wrote home to demand that Parliament should do what the colonial
legislatures seemed unable to do, and establish a common fund for
defence by a general taxation. Already plans were mooted for deriving a
revenue from the colonies. But the prudence of Pelham clung to the
policy of Walpole, and nothing was done; while the nearer approach of a
struggle in Europe gave fresh vigour to the efforts of France. The
Marquis of Montcalm, who was now governor of Canada, carried out with
even greater zeal than his predecessor the plans of annexation; and the
three forts of Duquesne on the Ohio, of Niagara on the St. Lawrence, and
of Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, were linked together by a chain of
lesser forts, which cut off the English colonists from all access to the
west. Montcalm was gifted with singular powers of administration; he
had succeeded in attaching the bulk of the Indian tribes from Canada as
far as the Mississippi to the cause of France; and the value of their
aid was shown in 1755, when General Braddock led a force of English
soldiers and American militia to a fresh attack upon fort Duquesne. The
force was utterly routed and Braddock slain.

[Sidenote: State of Europe.]

The defeat woke England to its danger; for it was certain that war in
America would soon be followed by war in Europe itself. Newcastle and
his fellow-ministers were still true in the main to Walpole's policy.
They looked on a league with Prussia as indispensable to the formation
o