d be
arranged; the Seven Years' War began, and to open it with becoming eclat
Braddock debarked, a gorgeous spectacle in red and gold. Yet still there
had as yet been in Europe no declaration of hostilities between England
and France; on the contrary, the government of the former country was
giving very fair words to that of the latter; and in America the British
professed only to intend "to repel encroachments."[6]

[Note 6: Bancroft, _Hist. U. S._ iv. 182.]

Franklin had to take his share of the disasters attendant upon the fatal
campaign of Braddock. According to his notion that foolish officer and
his two ill-behaved regiments should never, by good rights, have been
sent to the provinces at all; for the colonists, being able and willing
to do their own fighting, should have been allowed to undertake it. But
eleven years before this time the Duke of Bedford had declared it a
dangerous policy to enroll an army of 20,000 provincials to serve
against Canada, "on account of the independence it might create in those
provinces, when they should see within themselves so great an army,
possessed of so great a country by right of conquest." This anxiety had
been steadily gaining ground. The home government did not choose "to
permit the union of the colonies, as proposed at Albany, and to trust
that union with their defense, lest they should thereby grow too
military and feel their own strength, suspicions and jealousies being at
this time entertained of them." So it was because the shadow of the
Revolutionary War already darkened the visions of English statesmen that
the gallant array of soldiery, with the long train of American
attendants, had to make that terrible march to failure and death.

The Assembly of the Quaker province was sadly perturbed lest this
arbitrary warrior, encamped hard by in Virginia, should "conceive
violent prejudices against them, as averse to the service." In their
alarm they had recourse to Franklin's shrewd wit and ready tongue.
Accordingly, he visited Braddock under pretense of arranging for the
transmission of mails during the campaign, stayed with him several days,
and dined with him daily. There were some kinds of men, perhaps, whom
Braddock appreciated better than he did Indians; nor is it a slight
proof of Franklin's extraordinary capacity for getting on well with
every variety of human being that he could make himself so welcome to
this testy, opinionated military martinet, who in every p