FAILURE OF FRENCH EXPEDITION

39 the great source of former dread and discomfort. For his conduct in this affair, Pepperell was knighted. Fired with resentment at their loss, the French prepared a great expedition, to recover their former posessions; whilst the colonists, elated with success, contemplated nothing less than a conquest of all the French dominions in America. But owing to various delays, the troops were not ready till the end of summer, when it was judged too late for an attempt on Canada, and it was resolved to proceed against Crown Point.

Intelligence was soon afterwards received of the arrival, at Nova Scotia, of a large fleet from France, under the command of Duke D'Anville. It consisted of about forty ships of war, besides transports; and brought over nearly four thousand veteran troops, with their officers, and all kinds of military stores in abundance. The object of this great armament was to retake and dismantle Louisbourg, to take and garrison Annapolis, to destroy Boston, and distress the British sugar islands. Preparations were made for resistance; but the arm of Providence saved the colonists. Storms and shipwrecks were followed by pestilence; and the death first of one commander of the expedition, who was suspected of poisoning himself, and afterwards the actual suicide of another, determined the remaining officers to return to France. A more remarkable instance of preservation seldom occurs.

In the summer of 1747, another unsuccessful attack was made on Nova Scotia by the French. In November, a great tumult was raised in the town of Boston by an attempt on the part of Commodore Knowles to impress several of the citizens into the British naval service. Much of the Boston spirit was shown on the occasion; the people were released, and the fleet sailed, to the great joy of the inhabitants.

A treaty of peace, between England and France, was signed at Aix la Chapelle, on the 7th of October, 1748. By the articles of this treaty, Cape Breton was given up to the French, in a compromise for restoring the French conquests in the Low Countries to the empress queen of Hungary and the States General, and for a general restitution of places,

40

COMMERCE OF NEW ENGLAND.

captured by the other belligerent powers. After some unimportant disturbances, a treaty was signed with the Indian tribes, in June, and another at Casco Bay, in September. Although the colonists were hurt at the conduct of the English ministers, in giving up Cape Breton, which they very justly termed "their own conquest," to the French, yet they were not again disturbed with Indian hostilities, until the French war of 1756--1763, which brought all Canada to the subjection of the British crown.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the annual imports into these provinces from England were estimated by Neal at £100,000. The exports, says Grahame, by the English merchants consisted of a hundred thousand quintals (the quintal weighing 112 lbs.) of dried codfish, which were sold in Europe for £80,000, and of three thousand tons of naval stores. To the other American plantations, and to the West Indies, New England sent lumber, fish and other provisions, valued at £50,000 annually. An extensive manufacture of linen cloth was now established in New England; an advantage for which this country was indebted to the migration of many thousands of Irish Presbyterians to her shores about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Ship-building was, from an early period, carried on to a considerable extent at Boston and other sea-port towns. It was the practice of some merchants to freight their vessels, as they built them, with cargoes of colonial produce, and to sell the vessels in the same ports in which the cargoes were disposed of. The manufacture of tar was promoted for some time in New Hampshire by a law enacted in the assembly of this province in the beginning of the eighteenth century, which allowed the inhabitants to pay taxes in tar, rated at twenty shillings per barrel. A great part of the trade of the other American colonies was conducted by the shipping of New England.

COLONIZATION OF NEW YORK.

DEW YORK is distinguished from the other American colonies whose history we have considered, both by the race of Europeans who first settled it, and by the mode of its annexation to the dominions of Britain. In all the other provinces, Delaware and Pennsylvania excepted, the first colonists were Englishmen; and all the permanent settlements resulted from the enterprise of English subjects, impelled by the spirit of commercial adventure or religious zeal. But the territory

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EXPEDITION OF HUDSON.

of New York was originally colonized from Holland; and its incorporation with the rest of the British dominions in America was accomplished by conquest and the forces of the state, not by settlement and individual enterprise. It is a singular fact, that this military conquest proved the means of establishing a colony of Quakers in America; and the sword of Charles II., in conquering an appanage for his bigot brother, prepared a tranquil establishment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the votaries of peace, toleration, and philanthropy.

The prior but unacknowledged right of England to all the lands discovered by Cabot, had, as yet, produced no other permanent occupation than a feeble settlement on James river, when Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch East India Company, set sail from the Texel, in search of a north-west passage to India. After a fruitless search, he steered for Cape Cod, and entered Chesapeake Bay, where he remarked the infant settlement of the English. He afterwards. anchored off the Delaware, and thence proceeding to Long Island, sailed up the Manhattan river, on whose banks the chief fruits of his enterprise were to be gathered.

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The Dutch, conceiving that they had acquired sufficient title to the adjacent territory from Hudson's expedition, named it Nova Belgia, or New Netherlands; and gave to the river on whose shores their new dominions lay, the name of its discoverer. The favourable reports of the country, as given by Hudson, being confirmed by subsequent voyagers, an association of Dutch merchants determined to establish a tradingsettlement within its limits; and the states general promoted the enterprise by granting to its projectors the exclusive trade of the river.

Encouraged by this act of favour, the adventurers sent out a colony the same year (1614), erected a fort on the western bank of the river, near Albany, and intrusted the government to Henry Christaens. This feeble settlement was scarcely established, when Captain Argal, with a Virginian squadron, on his return from the useless conquest of the French posses

NEW NETHERLANDS SETTLED.

43

sions in Acadie, invaded the place, and obliged the governor to surrender his command, and to stipulate alliance to England, and subordination and tribute to the government of Virginia. The States of Holland, fearing to offend a new and powerful ally, whose friendship they could not well dispense with, forbore to notice Argal's hostile encroachments. But the year after, a new governor, Jacob Elkin, being sent out with a reinforcement of settlers, the claims of the English to the stipulated dependence was defied; and the payment of tribute successfully resisted. For the better security of their resumed independence, the Dutch colonists now erected a second fort on the south-west point of Long Island, and afterwards built two others, the one at Good Hope (now Hartford), on Connecticut river, the other at Nassau, on the east side of Delaware Bay. They continued for a series of years, in unmolested tranquillity, to mature their settlement, increase their numbers, and by the exertion of their peculiar national virtues of patience and industry, to subdue the difficulties incident to an infant colony.

In 1620, the States of Holland established the West India Company, and in pursuance of their favourite policy of colonizing by means of exclusive companies, they determined to commit to it the administration of New Netherlands. This determination was carried into effect the following year; and, under the management of the company, the new settlement was soon both consolidated and extended. Their capital city was built on Manhattan Island, and received the name of New Amsterdam. The precise extent of territory as claimed by the Dutch, has been differently represented by their own writers-some of whom explicitly declared that it extended from Virginia to Connecticut. Whatever might have been its titular extent, the planters hastened to enlarge their occupation far beyond their immediate use; and by their intrusions into the Delaware and Connecticut territories, laid the foundation of their future disputes with the colonists of these parts. Their first settlement had been made without any equitable remuneration to the Indian proprietors of the land; but when