to America, one to aid Oglethorpe and the other to attack St. Augustine. Let the Spaniards remain on the island but three days longer, and they would be ruined. If the enemy did not make an immediate attack on Frederica, his forces would be captured to a man. Oglethorpe knew very well that the prisoner, instead of delivering this letter to the deserter, would give it to the Spanish commander, and that the Spanish commander could not possibly know whether the communication was the truth or a fiction. This letter was delivered, and the astonished Frenchman was arrested as a spy, but the Spaniards could not tell whether his denial was true or false. There was a council of war in the Spanish camp. Oglethorpe's stratagem was suspected, but could not be proved. Three ships had been seen at sea that day; perhaps these were the first vessels of the approaching British fleets. The Spaniards were utterly perplexed; but it was finally decided to take Oglethorpe's advice, and make the attack on Frederica.

The English general had foreseen that this course would be adopted. He had accordingly advanced his small force from the town to the place where the road passed between the swamp and the forest. Here an ambuscade was formed, and the soldiers lay in wait for the approaching Spaniards. On the 7th of July the enemy's vanguard reached the narrow pass, were fired on from the thicket and driven back in confusion. The main body of the Spanish forces pressed on into the dangerous position where superior numbers were of no advantage. The Highlanders of Oglethorpe's regiment fired with terrible effect from the oak woods by the roadside. The Spaniards stood firm for a while, but were presently driven back with a loss of two hundred men. Not without reason the name of Bloody Marsh was given to this battle-field. Within less than a week the whole Spanish force had re-embarked and sailed for Florida. On the way southward the fleet made a second attack on Fort William. But Captain Stuart, with a garrison of only fifty men, made a vigorous and successful defence. The English watched the retreating ships beyond the mouth of the St. John's; before the last of July the great invasion was at an end. The Spanish authorities of Cuba were greatly chagrined at the failure of the expedition. The commander of the squadron was arrested, tried by a court-martial and dismissed from the service.

The commonwealth of Georgia was now firmly established, and the settlements had peace. In 1743, Oglethorpe bade a final adieu to the colony to whose welfare he had given more than ten years of his life. He had never owned a house nor possessed an acre of ground within the limits of his own province. He now departed for England crowned with blessings, and leaving behind him an untarnished fame. James Ogle

thorpe lived to be nearly a hundred years old; benevolence, integrity and honor were the virtues of his declining years. But the new State which he had founded in the West was not always free from evils.

For the regulations which the councilors for Georgia had adopted were but poorly suited to the wants of the colony. The settlers had not been permitted to hold their lands in fee simple. Agriculture had not flourished. Commerce had not sprung up. The laws of property had been so arranged that estates could descend only to the oldest sons of families. The colonists were poor, and charged their poverty to the fact that slave-labor was forbidden in the province. This became the chief question which agitated the people. The proprietary laws grew more and more unpopular. The statute excluding slavery was not rigidly enforced, and, indeed, could not be enforced, when the people had determined to evade it. Whitefield himself pleaded for the abrogation of the law. Slaves began to be hired, first for short terms of service, then for longer periods, then for a hundred years, which was equivalent to an actual purchase for life. Finally, cargoes of slaves were brought directly from Africa, and the primitive free-labor system of Georgia was revolutionized. Plantations were laid out below the Savannah, and cultivated, as those of South Carolina.

Another and more important change was at hand. It became evident that there could be no progress so long as the original charter remained in force. However benevolent the impulse which had called Georgia into being, the scheme of government had proved a sham. The people were improvident, idle, inexperienced. More than six hundred thousand dollars in parliamentary grants, besides private contributions amounting to nearly ninety thousand dollars, had been fruitlessly expended on the lagging province. In 1752 there were only a few scattered plantations and three inconsiderable villages below the Savannah. The white population amounted, at this time, to seventeen hundred souls; and the blacks numbered about four hundred. The industry of Georgia was at a stand-still. The extravagant hopes which the colonial managers had entertained of wine, and silk, and indigo, found no realization in the facts. The annual exports of the colony amounted to less than four thousand dollars; and the prospect for the future was as discouraging as the present condition was gloomy.

At last, however, the new order of things was acknowledged by the councilors of the province. They yielded to necessity. In June of 1752, just twenty years from the granting of the charter, the trustees made a formal surrender of their patent to the king. A royal

men.

government was established over the country south of the Savannah, and the people were granted the privileges and freedom of EnglishA constitution was drawn up by the British Board of Trade, and Captain John Reynolds was commissioned as royal governor. In October of 1754 he arrived at Savannah and began the work of reorganization. For two years and a half he labored assiduously to extricate the affairs of Georgia from the confusion into which they had fallen; and so successful was his work that at the end of this time the population had reached six thousand. The southern boundary of the province remained to be decided by the issue of the French and Indian War. During the progress of that conflict Georgia was saved from calamity by the prudent administration of Governor Ellis, who secured from the powerful Creek confederacy a new treaty of peace. A barrier was thus interposed between the colony and the hostile nations of the West and North. In the year 1758 the province was divided into eight parishes, and at the same time the Church of England was established by law. Still, for a while, the progress of the colony was not equal to the expectations of its founder. But before the beginning of the Revolution, Georgia, though the feeblest of all the Anglo-American provinces, had become a prosperous and growing State.

Such is the story of the planting by our fathers of the Old Thirteen republics-such the record of their growth and prospects. From the gloomy coast of Labrador, where, two hundred and fifty years before, John Cabot had set up the flag of England and arms of Henry VII., to the sunny waters where Ponce de Leon, looking shoreward, called his cavaliers to gaze on the Land of Flowers, the dominion of Great Britain had been established. Would that dominion last forever? Would the other nations of Europe ever rally and regain their lost ascendency on the Western continent? Would the ties of kinship, the affinity of language, the bond of a common ancestry, stretching from these sea-shore commonwealths across the Atlantic, bind them in perpetual union with the mother Islands? Would these isolated provinces in America-now so quick to take offence at each other's beliefs and actions, and so easily jealous of each other's power and fame-ever unite in a common cause? ever join to do battle for life and liberty? ever become a Nation? Such were the momentous questions, the problems of destiny, which hung above the colonies at

the middle of the eighteenth century-problems which the future could not be long in solving.

The history of these American colonies from their first feeble beginnings is full of interest and instruction. The people who laid the foundations of civilization in the New World were nearly all refugees, exiles, wanderers, pilgrims. They were urged across the ocean by a common impulse, and that impulse was the desire to escape from some form of oppression in the Old World. Sometimes it was the oppression of the Church, sometimes of the State, sometimes of society. In the wake of the emigrant ship there was always tyranny. Men loved freedom; to find it they braved the perils of the deep, traversed the solitary forests of Maine, built huts on the bleak shores of New England, entered the Hudson, explored the Jerseys, found shelter in the Chesapeake, met starvation and death on the banks of the James, were buffeted by storms around the capes of Carolina, built towns by the estuaries of the great rivers, made roads through the pine-woods, and carried the dwellings of men to the very margin of the fever-haunted swamps of the South. It is all one story-the story of the human race seeking for liberty.

THE

COLONIAL HISTORY.-CONTINUED.

FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.

1754

CHAPTER XXX.

CAUSES.

HE time came when the American colonies began to act together. From the beginning they had been kept apart by prejudice, suspicion and mutual jealousy. But the fathers were now dead, old antagonisms had passed away, a new generation had arisen with kindlier feelings and more charitable sentiments. But it was not so much the growth of a more liberal public opinion as it was the sense of a common danger that at last led the colonists to make a united effort. The final struggle between France and England for colonial supremacy in America was at hand. Necessity compelled the English colonies to join in a common cause against a common foe. This is the conflict known as THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR; with this great event the separate histories of the colonies are lost in the more general history of the nation. The contest began in 1754, but the causes of the war had existed for many years.

The first and greatest of these causes was the conflicting territorial claims of the two nations. England had colonized the sea-coast; France had colonized the interior of the continent. From Maine to Florida the Atlantic shore was spread with English colonies; but there were no inland settlements. The great towns were on the ocean's edge. But the claims of England reached far beyond her colonies. Based on the discoveries of the Cabots, and not limited by actual occupation, those claims extended westward to the Pacific. In making grants of territory the English kings had always proceeded upon the theory that the voyage of Sebastian Cabot had given to England a lawful right to the country from one ocean to the other. Far different, however, were the claims of France; the French had first colonized the valley of the St. Lawrence. Montreal, one