The most striking feature to notice in the events of the year is the effect of distance, when not counteracted by steam and telegraphy. It will be noted how far removed in every sense was America from Europe in the middle of the {248} eighteenth century, and how far removed in every sense were the American colonies from one another. Here was fighting going on at all points on the border line of French and English America, and yet France and England were nominally at peace. New England was raising her levies with patriotism and spirit, meeting a common foe with common feeling, and, it may be added, with common sense. New York and Virginia could, on the other hand, scarcely be prevailed upon to move; while Pennsylvania was as indifferent as though the fighting had been on another continent. We may and must put down much to political causes, to social and religious prejudices; and Canada proved that, even in the eighteenth century, long distances did not necessarily preclude concerted action; but, where settlement had begun and continued for generations at widely different points on the American continent, and on absolutely separate and independent lines, war and peace were alike localized, and there was little or no cohesion between the colonies and the mother country, or between one colony and another. The history of the English North American colonies had been the history not of one but of many communities. No uniform system held them together, no sentiment of the distant past was strong enough to counteract geography. Only, as colonization spread in the long course of years, the dwellers in one province came into contact with the dwellers in another, and both the one and the other came face to face with the French advance. Then the pressure of common danger made for union, and the race instinct gathered strength. The mother country sent out soldiers; colonists were enlisted in royal regiments to supplement the provincial militias; and in clumsy, most imperfect fashion, the English in North America began to shape themselves into a nation. One keen English observer, at any rate--General Wolfe--saw at once the present defects of the English colonies in North America, and the great future which lay before them. {249} 'These colonies,' he wrote in 1758, 'are deeply tinged with the vices and bad qualities of the mother country.' But he added, 'This will, some time hence, be a vast empire, the seat of power and learning. Nature has refused them nothing, and there will grow a people out of our little spot, England, that will fill this vast space, and divide this great portion of the globe with the Spaniards, who are possessed of the other half.'[14] [Footnote 14: Wolfe to his mother, Louisbourg, Aug. 11, 1758 (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 454).] NOTE.--For the above see KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. iii, and PARKMAN'S _Montcalm and Wolfe_. The period dealt with in this and the two succeeding chapters is covered by