The only authority which could and would hold the balance even between the races was the Imperial Government; and in the hands of that Government, represented for the purpose in the middle of the eighteenth century by a man of rare ability and unrivalled experience, Sir William Johnson, the superintendence of native affairs was placed. But this duty, and the attempt to carry it out justly and faithfully, involved friction with the more turbulent and the less scrupulous of the colonists. Colonization is a tide which is always coming in; and, unless restrictions are imposed upon the colonists by some superior authority, the native owners are gradually expropriated. ‘Your people,’ said the representatives of the Six Nations to Sir William Johnson in 1755, ‘when they buy a small piece of land of us, by stealing they make it large;’[32] and Johnson amply corroborated this view. In October, 1762, he wrote: ‘The Indians are greatly disgusted at the great thirst which we all seem to show for their lands.’[33] [Sidenote: Sir William Johnson.] A word must be said of Sir William Johnson, for he was one of the men who, in the long course of British colonial history, have rendered memorable service to their country by special aptitude for dealing with native races. In this quality the French in North America, as a rule, far excelled the English, and at the particular place and time, Johnson’s character and influence were an invaluable asset on the British side. An Irishman by birth, and nephew of Sir Peter Warren, he had come out to America in 1738 to manage his uncle’s estates on the confines of the Six Nation Indians, and some eleven years later he was made Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern division. He lived on the Mohawk river, as much Indian as white man, his second wife being Molly Brant, sister of the subsequently celebrated Mohawk leader, and among the Iroquois his influence was unrivalled. In the wars with France he did notable work, especially at the battle of Lake George in 1755, and at the taking of Fort Niagara in 1759; and, when he died in July, 1774, on the eve of the War of Independence, his death left a gap which could not be filled, for no one among his contemporaries could so persuade and so control the fiercest native fighters in North America. [Sidenote: The Fort Stanwix line.]