orts and garrisons, keeping up scouting-parties, and building,
equipping, and manning a ship of twenty guns for the service of the
King. In the first two months of the present year, 1758, she made a
further military outlay of L172,239. Of all these sums she has received
from Parliament a reimbursement of only L70,117, and hence she is deep
in debt; yet, in addition, she has this year raised, paid, maintained,
and clothed seven thousand soldiers placed under the command of General
Abercromby, besides above twenty-five hundred more serving the King by
land or sea; amounting in all to about one in four of her able-bodied
men.

[Footnote 597: _Pitt to the Colonial Governors, 30 Dec. 1757._]

[Footnote 598: Bury, _Exodus of the Western Nations_, II, 250, 251.]

Massachusetts was extremely poor by the standards of the present day,
living by fishing, farming, and a trade sorely hampered by the British
navigation laws. Her contributions of money and men were not ordained by
an absolute king, but made by the voluntary act of a free people.
Pownall goes on to say that her present war-debt, due within three
years, is 366,698 pounds sterling, and that to meet it she has imposed
on her self taxes amounting, in the town of Boston, to thirteen
shillings and twopence to every pound of income from real and personal
estate; that her people are in distress, that she is anxious to continue
her efforts in the public cause, but that without some further
reimbursement she is exhausted and helpless.[599] Yet in the next year
she incurred a new and heavy debt. In 1760 Parliament repaid her
L59,575.[600] Far from being fully reimbursed, the end of the war found
her on the brink of bankruptcy. Connecticut made equal sacrifices in the
common cause,--highly to her honor, for she was little exposed to
danger, being covered by the neighboring provinces; while impoverished
New Hampshire put one in three of her able-bodied men into the
field.[601]

[Footnote 599: _Pownall to Pitt, 30 Sept. 1758_ (Public Record Office,
_America and West Indies_, LXXI.) "The province of Massachusetts Bay has
exerted itself with great zeal and at vast expense for the public
service." _Registers of Privy Council, 26 July, 1757._]

[Footnote 600: _Bollan, Agent of Massachusetts, to Speaker of Assembly,
20 March, 1760._ It was her share of L200,000 granted to all the
colonies in the proportion of their respective efforts.]

[Footnote 601: _Address to His Majesty from t