r he loved the country and the people. He returned home
to be swept into the hurly-burly of military affairs. War appropriations
came hard from the legislature of the Quaker province; but the occasion
was now at hand when come they must. In the autumn of 1755 L60,000 were
voted, chiefly for defense, and Franklin was one of the committee in
charge of the expenditure. The border was already unsafe, and formal
hostilities on a large scale were close at hand. France and England must
fight it out for the possession of the new continent, which, boundless
as it then seemed, was yet not big enough to admit of their both
dwelling in it. France had been steadily pressing upon the northern and
western frontiers of the British colonies, and she now held Crown Point,
Niagara, the fort on the present site of Pittsburg, and the whole valley
of the Ohio River. It seemed that she would confine the English to the
strip along the coast which they already occupied. It is true that she
offered to relinquish the Ohio valley to the savages, to be a neutral
belt between the European nations on either side of it. But the proposal
could not be accepted; the French were much too clever in managing the
Indians. Moreover, it was felt that they would never permanently desist
from advancing. Then, too, the gallant Braddock was on his way across
seas, with a little army of English regulars. Finally, the disproportion
between the English and French in the New World was too great for the
former to rest satisfied with a compromise. There were about 1,165,000
whites in the British provinces, and only about 80,000 French in Canada.
The resources, also, of the former were in every respect vastly greater.
These iron facts must tell; were already telling. Throughout this last
deadly grapple, now at hand, the French were in desperate earnest.
History records few struggles wherein the strength of a combatant was
more utterly spent, with more entire devotion, than was the case with
these Canadian-French provinces. Every man gave himself to the fight, so
literally that no one was left to till the fields, and erelong famine
began its hideous work among the scanty forces. The English and
Americans, on the other hand, were far from conducting the struggle with
the like temper as the French; yet with such enormous advantages as they
possessed, if they could not conquer a satisfactory peace in course of
time, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. So no composition coul