ed as a proper seat for the federal
government.

The end of our story will show the wonderful foresightedness of
Franklin's scheme. If the Revolution had never occurred, we might very
likely have sooner or later come to live under a constitution resembling
the Albany Plan. On the other hand, if the Albany Plan had been put into
operation, it might perhaps have so adjusted the relations of the
colonies to the British government that the Revolution would not have
occurred. Perhaps, however, it would only have reproduced, on a larger
scale, the irrepressible conflict between royal governor and popular
assembly. The scheme failed for want of support. The Congress
recommended it to the colonial legislatures, but not one of them voted
to adopt it. The difficulty was the same in 1754 that it was thirty
years later,--only much stronger. The people of one colony saw but
little of the people in another, had but few dealings with them, and
cared not much about them. They knew and trusted their own local
assemblies which sat and voted almost under their eyes; they were not
inclined to grant strange powers of taxation to a new assembly distant
by a week's journey. This was a point to which people could never have
been brought except as the alternative to something confessedly worse.

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

The failure of the Albany Plan left the question of providing for
military defence just where it was before, and the great Seven Years'
War came on while governors and assemblies were wrangling to no purpose.
In 1755 Braddock's army was unable to get support except from the
steadfast personal exertions of Franklin, who used his great influence
with the farmers of Pennsylvania to obtain horses, wagons, and
provisions, pledging his own property for their payment. Nevertheless,
as the war went on and the people of the colonies became fully alive to
its importance, they did contribute liberally both in men and in money,
and at last it appeared that in proportion to their wealth and
population they had done even more than the regular army and the royal
exchequer toward overthrowing the common enemy.

[Sidenote: Overthrow of the French power in America.]

When the war came to an end in 1763 the whole face of things in America
was changed. Seldom, if ever, had the world seen so complete a victory.
France no longer possessed so much as an acre of ground in all North
America. The unknown regions beyond the Mississippi river