nal conflicts, more absorbing than the great question on which hung
the fate of the continent. Only the four New England colonies were fully
earnest for the war, and one, even of these, was ready to use the crisis
as a means of extorting concessions from its Governor in return for
grants of money and men. When the lagging contingents came together at
last, under a commander whom none of them trusted, they were met by
strategical difficulties which would have perplexed older soldiers and
an abler general; for they were forced to act on the circumference of a
vast semicircle, in a labyrinth of forests, without roads, and choked
with every kind of obstruction.

Opposed to them was a trained army, well organized and commanded,
focused at Montreal, and moving for attack or defence on two radiating
lines,--one towards Lake Ontario, and the other towards Lake
Champlain,--supported by a martial peasantry, supplied from France with
money and material, dependent on no popular vote, having no will but
that of its chief, and ready on the instant to strike to right or left
as the need required. It was a compact military absolutism confronting a
heterogeneous group of industrial democracies, where the force of
numbers was neutralized by diffusion and incoherence. A long and dismal
apprenticeship waited them before they could hope for success; nor could
they ever put forth their full strength without a radical change of
political conditions and an awakened consciousness of common interests
and a common cause. It was the sense of powerlessness arising from the
want of union that, after the fall of Oswego, spread alarm through the
northern and middle colonies, and drew these desponding words from
William Livingston, of New Jersey: "The colonies are nearly exhausted,
and their funds already anticipated by expensive unexecuted projects.
Jealous are they of each other; some ill-constituted, others shaken with
intestine divisions, and, if I may be allowed the expression,
parsimonious even to prodigality. Our assemblies are diffident of their
governors, governors despise their assemblies; and both mutually
misrepresent each other to the Court of Great Britain." Military
measures, he proceeds, demand secrecy and despatch; but when so many
divided provinces must agree to join in them, secrecy and despatch are
impossible. In conclusion he exclaims: "Canada must be demolished,
--_Delenda est Carthago_,--or we are undone."[435] But Loudon
was not