But the people of the colonies in 1754 were not yet ripe for so efficient a scheme of government, or so close a union. They needed not only some twenty years' more experience of the evils of dependence on a foreign power, to prepare them fully for independence, but, in addition thereto, the still further experience of the weakness and perils of a loose and inefficient confederation of states, to prepare them for actual union and a real government, endowed with sufficient powers either to insure internal order and tranquillity, or to provide for their common defence against external aggression, or enable them to develop, in peace and security, the resources of the country.

The result was that the plan, upon being submitted to the several colonial Assemblies, was rejected, chiefly on the alleged grounds that it conceded too much to the royal prerogative, and would endanger the liberties of the colonies; while the British board of trade, the channel through which it was to be presented to the king in council, were so jealous of its republican principles, and of the powers it conferred upon the colonies, that they did not even lay it before his majesty. Governor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, when he communicated it to the Assembly of that province, did indeed express himself in favor of the plan, as being “drawn up with great clearness and strength of judgment." The Assembly, however, through the management of a member, whose name is not given, but who was no friend to Franklin, very unfairly took up the plan in the absence of the latter, and rejected it without examination.

In referring to this matter long after, Franklin himself remarks that the opposite reasons for rejecting his plan of union led him to consider it as having hit just about the true medium: and as nobody at that time entertained any design of separation, but simply and in

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good faith sought the most effectual and least burdensome means of protecting the colonies and promoting their best interests, in connection with those of the mothercountry, he always adhered to the opinion that it would have proved happy for both parties if his plan had been adopted; for by such a union, the colonies being enabled to defend themselves, no troops from England would have been needed, and the pretext for taxing the colonies by act of parliament, with its consequences would have been avoided.

In the autumn of 1754, Franklin made a visit of several weeks to the east. During his stay in Boston he had various private conferences with Shirley, then governor of Massachusetts, relative not only to the Albany plan of union, but to another one contemplated by the British cabinet, though not yet publicly broached, under which the colonial governors, attended respectively by one or more members of their executive councils, were to meet, from time to time, to take general measures for the defence of the colonies and the protection of their trade; with authority to erect such forts and raise such troops as they should judge requisite, the expense of which was to be paid, in the first instance, from the imperial treasury, but to be subsequently reimbursed by taxes levied upon the colonies by act of parliament. In those conferences, the feasibility of some scheme for the representation of the colonies in parliament was also considered. Franklin, at the request of Governor Shirley, put his views on these subjects in writing, in the form of letters to the governor. In those letters, the consequences of the ministerial projects for the taxation and government of the colonies are pointed out with prophetic sagacity as well as eminent ability; and the great principles which ultimately led to American independence are distinctly and boldly asserted.

At the period now spoken of, France, it will be recollected, held the Canadas and Louisiana, and was aiming to connect those two great colonies by means of settlements and military posts on the great lakes and principal rivers beyond the Allegany mountains. She thus designed to acquire the control of the western Indian tribes, monopolize the trade with them, prevent the extension of British settlements in that direction, and command the entire frontier, as well as the two great routes of the future internal commerce of America by the waters of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. The success of that policy would have been most injurious, not to say fatal, to the English colonies and the whole circle of British interests in America.

No man understood all this better than Franklin, or exhibited a wiser foresight in pointing out the means of protecting the colonies and placing their interests, and with them the true interests of the mother-country in America, on the most secure and permanent basis. As one of the most effectual of such means, he drew up a plan for the settlement of two new colonies west of the Alleganies, to occupy the extensive and fertile regions on both sides of the Ohio, and between that river, the great lakes, and the Mississippi. Franklin's views on this subject, though the paper containing them is not dated, must have been put into the form now mentioned not long after the separation of the Albany convention, and, as it is supposed, at the request of Thomas Pownall, better known at a later day as Governor Pownall, who was in Albany during the sitting of the convention, and who in 1757 succeeded Shirley as governor of Massachusetts. In 1756, Pownall, having returned to England, prepared a memorial on the same subject, which, together with the plan drawn up by Franklin and sustained by the weightiest reasons, he presented to a mem

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ber of the royal family, to be submitted to his majesty in council. The war with France, commonly referred to in this country, since the Revolution, as "the old French war," had, however, commenced the year before, and it was then no time to begin the foundation of new settlements in one of the most exposed regions of America; but if, by the conquest of the Canadas, as the richest fruit of that war, some of the reasons for the proposed new colonies were rendered less urgent, yet others remained in full force, and were quite sufficient to commend the scheme to early adoption on the return of peace. The scheme did, indeed, ultimately receive the sanction of the British cabinet; but it was at so late a period, that the disputes between the colonies and the mother-country, then deeply agitating the public mind on both sides of the Atlantic, hindered any attempt to execute a project which was finally rendered alike needless and impossible by the result of our revolutionary The broad territories proposed thus to be occupied and brought under British jurisdiction, have since furnished room for seven free, independent, and flourishing states of this Union; and their history has more than justified Franklin's high estimate of the value of that whole region, and of the importance, even at that early day, of bringing it under the actual occupation of British settlers, and establishing among the native tribes the ascendency of British influence.

war.

During Franklin's absence on his visit to Boston, as already mentioned, in the latter part of 1754, Pennsylvania received a new governor, Robert Hunter Morris, in place of James Hamilton, who, wearied by perpetual controversy with the Assembly, had resigned his office. Franklin, on his way eastward, had met Mr. Morris in New York, where he had just arrived from England with his commission. Having been previously well acquaint

ed with each other, Morris, in the course of conversation, asked if he was to expect as quarrelsome and uncomfortable an administration as Hamilton's had been. "No," said Franklin, "you may have a very comfortable one, if you will only take care not to enter into any dispute with the Assembly." Morris, with the good humor that belonged to his character, replied that he loved disputing, but that, to show his regard for Franklin's monition, he would avoid controversy if possible.

When Franklin returned, however, and again took his seat in the Assembly, he found that body and the governor warmly engaged in controversy; and so it continued throughout the administration. Franklin held so prominent a position in the house as well as in the community at large, that he was not only on every committee appointed to answer the speeches and messages of the governor, but was uniformly designated by the committees to draft the answers on the part of the Assembly. “Our answers, as well as his speeches," says Franklin, often tart, and sometimes indecently abusive; and as he knew I wrote for the Assembly, one might have imagined that when we met, we could hardly avoid cutting throats. But he was so good-natured a man, that no personal difference between him and me was occasioned by the contest, and we often dined together."

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Pennsylvania, it should be remembered, was what was called a proprietary province, William Penn being not only the founder and original Proprietary, but the real governor, with power to appoint a deputy to reside in the province and exercise the functions, pursuant to the instructions, of his principal. Upon the death of William, his sons John, Thomas, and Richard, became as well the successors to his political authority as the heirs of his private estates in the province; John, as the eldest of the three, receiving, under the will of their fa