s give up this fee without
affronting the Board of Trade and the Council here who established it."
His thoughts were not all of this harassing nature, and he ends his
letter with the following petition: "Now, sir, as His Majesty is pleased
to make me a military officer, please send for Scott, my tailor, to make
me a proper suit of regimentals, to be here by His Majesty's birthday. I
do not much like gayety in dress, but I conceive this necessary. I do
not much care for lace on the coat, but a neat embroidered button-hole;
though you do not deal that way, I know you have a good taste, that I
may show my friend's fancy in that suit of clothes; a good laced hat and
two pair stockings, one silk, the other fine thread."[144]

[Footnote 142: _Speech of Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie to the Council
and Burgesses 14 Feb., 1754._]

[Footnote 143: See the bill in Hening, _Statutes of Virginia_, VI. 417.]

[Footnote 144: _Dinwiddie to Hanbury, 12 March, 1754; Ibid., 10 May,
1754._]

If the Governor and his English sometimes provoke a smile, he deserves
admiration for the energy with which he opposed the public enemy, under
circumstances the most discouraging. He invited the Indians to meet him
in council at Winchester, and, as bait to attract them, coupled the
message with a promise of gifts. He sent circulars from the King to the
neighboring governors, calling for supplies, and wrote letter upon
letter to rouse them to effort. He wrote also to the more distant
governors, Delancey of New York, and Shirley of Massachusetts, begging
them to make what he called a "faint" against Canada, to prevent the
French from sending so large a force to the Ohio. It was to the nearer
colonies, from New Jersey to South Carolina, that he looked for direct
aid; and their several governors were all more or less active to procure
it; but as most of them had some standing dispute with their assemblies,
they could get nothing except on terms with which they would not, and
sometimes could not, comply. As the lands invaded by the French belonged
to one of the two rival claimants, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the other
colonies had no mind to vote money to defend them. Pennsylvania herself
refused to move. Hamilton, her governor, could do nothing against the
placid obstinacy of the Quaker non-combatants and the stolid obstinacy
of the German farmers who chiefly made up his Assembly. North Carolina
alone answered the appeal, and gave money enough to raise t