as more or less in sympathy with
them. Both he and they were strenuous against the French, and they had
mutually helped each other to reap laurels in the last war. Shirley was
cautious of giving umbrage to his Assembly, and rarely quarrelled with
it, except when the amount of his salary was in question. He was not
averse to a war with France; for though bred a lawyer, and now past
middle life, he flattered himself with hopes of a high military command.
On the present occasion, making use of a rumor that the French were
seizing the carrying-place between the Chaudiere and the Kennebec, he
drew from the Assembly a large grant of money, and induced them to call
upon him to march in person to the scene of danger. He accordingly
repaired to Falmouth (now Portland); and, though the rumor proved false,
sent eight hundred men under Captain John Winslow to build two forts on
the Kennebec as a measure of precaution.[173]

[Footnote 171: _Address of the Assembly to Lieutenant-Governor Delancey,
23 April, 1754. Lords of Trade to Delancey, 5 July, 1754_.]

[Footnote 172: _Delancey to Lords of Trade, 8 Oct. 1754_.]

[Footnote 173: _Massachusetts Archives, 1754_. Hutchinson, III. 26.
_Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated. Journals of the Board
of Trade, 1754_.]

While to these northern provinces Canada was an old and pestilent enemy,
those towards the south scarcely knew her by name; and the idea of
French aggression on their borders was so novel and strange that they
admitted it with difficulty. Mind and heart were engrossed in strife
with their governors: the universal struggle for virtual self-rule. But
the war was often waged with a passionate stupidity. The colonist was
not then an American; he was simply a provincial, and a narrow one. The
time was yet distant when these dissevered and jealous communities
should weld themselves into one broad nationality, capable, at need, of
the mightiest efforts to purge itself of disaffection and vindicate its
commanding unity.

In the interest of that practical independence which they had so much at
heart, two conditions were essential to the colonists. The one was a
field for expansion, and the other was mutual help. Their first
necessity was to rid themselves of the French, who, by shutting them
between the Alleghanies and the sea, would cramp them into perpetual
littleness. With France on their backs, growing while they had no room
to grow, they must remain in helpless war