ng driven by the
French into the sea, was urged." The representation of the imminent
danger to the colonies from the French encroachments probably
accelerated the measures in England which brought on the war with
France.[228]

Mr. Bancroft endeavours again and again to convey the impression that
this seven years' war between England and France was a European war, and
that the American colonies were called upon, controlled, and attempted
to be taxed to aid Great Britain in the contest; yet he himself, in one
place, admits the very reverse, and that Great Britain became involved
in the war in defence of the American Colonies, as the facts above
stated show, and as will appear more fully hereafter. Mr. Bancroft
states the whole character and objects of the war, in both America and
Europe, in the following words:

"The contest, which had now (1757) spread into both hemispheres, _began
in America. The English Colonies, dragging England into their strife_,
claimed to advance their frontier, and to include the great central
valley of the continent in their system. The _American_ question
therefore was, shall the continued colonization of North America be made
under the auspices of English Protestantism and popular liberty, or
shall the tottering legitimacy of France, in its connection with Roman
Catholic Christianity, win for itself a new empire in that hemisphere?
The question of the _European_ continent was, shall a Protestant
revolutionary kingdom, like Prussia, be permitted to rise up and grow
strong within its heart? Considered in its unity as interesting
_mankind_, the question was, shall the Reformation, developed to the
fulness of Free Inquiry, succeed in its protest against the Middle Age?

"The war that closed in 1748 had been a mere scramble for advantages,
and was sterile of results; the present conflict, which was to prove a
seven years' war, was against the unreformed; and this was so profoundly
true, that all the predictions or personal antipathies of Sovereign and
Ministers could not prevent the alliances, collisions, and results
necessary to make it so."[229]

The object and character of such a war for Protestantism and liberty, as
forcibly stated by Mr. Bancroft himself, was as honourable to England,
as the results of it have been beneficial to posterity and to the
civilization of mankind; yet Mr. Bancroft's sympathies throughout his
brilliant but often inconsistent pages are clearly with France against