at great danger was impending; that without wise and just
treatment of the tribes, the French would gain them all, build forts
along the back of the British colonies, and, by means of ships and
troops from France, master them one by one, unless they would combine
for mutual defence. The necessity of some form of union had at length
begun to force itself upon the colonial mind. A rough woodcut had lately
appeared in the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, figuring the provinces under the
not very flattering image of a snake cut to pieces, with the motto,
"Join, or die." A writer of the day held up the Five Nations for
emulation, observing that if ignorant savages could confederate, British
colonists might do as much.[178] Franklin, the leading spirit of the
congress, now laid before it his famous project of union, which has been
too often described to need much notice here. Its fate is well known.
The Crown rejected it because it gave too much power to the colonies;
the colonies, because it gave too much power to the Crown, and because
it required each of them to transfer some of its functions of
self-government to a central council. Another plan was afterwards
devised by the friends of prerogative, perfectly agreeable to the King,
since it placed all power in the hands of a council of governors, and
since it involved compulsory taxation of the colonists, who, for the
same reasons, would have doggedly resisted it, had an attempt been made
to carry it into effect.[179]

[Footnote 178: Kennedy, _Importance of gaining and preserving the
Friendship of the Indians_.]

[Footnote 179: On the Albany plan of union, _Franklin's Works_, I. 177.
Shirley thought it "a great strain upon the prerogative of the Crown,"
and was for requiring the colonies to raise money and men "without
farther consulting them upon any points whatever." _Shirley to Robinson,
24 Dec. 1754_.]

Even if some plan of union had been agreed upon, long delay must have
followed before its machinery could be set in motion; and meantime there
was need of immediate action. War-parties of Indians from Canada, set
on, it was thought, by the Governor, were already burning and murdering
among the border settlements of New York and New Hampshire. In the south
Dinwiddie grew more and more alarmed, "for the French are like so many
locusts; they are collected in bodies in a most surprising manner; their
number now on the Ohio is from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred." He
writes to L