English more correctly called them, the Provincials. It was only in deference to representations from the British Government that New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the four colonies of New England met in congress to concert for joint action in securing the unstable affections of the Indians. A project for colonial union broached by Benjamin Franklin at this same congress was wrecked by the jealousy of Crown and Colonies as to mutual concession of power. [Sidenote: September.] In such circumstances the only hope lay in assistance from the mother country; and Dinwiddie accordingly sent repeated entreaties to England for stores, ammunition, and two regiments of regular infantry. The Ministry at home was not of a kind to cope with a great crisis. Henry Pelham was dead; and the ridiculous Newcastle as Prime Minister had succeeded in finding a fool still greater than himself, Sir T. Robinson, to be Secretary of State in charge of the colonies. Nevertheless, in July ten thousand pounds in specie and two thousand stand of arms were shipped for the service of the colonies,[252] and on the 30th of September orders were issued for the Forty-fourth and Forty-eighth regiments, both of them on the Irish Establishment, to be embarked at Cork. Each of these regiments was appointed to consist of three hundred and forty men only, and to take with it seven hundred stand of arms, so as to make up its numbers with American recruits.[253] But the nucleus of British soldiers was presently increased to five hundred men, the augmentation being effected, as usual, by drafts from other regiments; not, however, without difficulty, for the service was unpopular, and there was consequently much desertion. The next step was to appoint a commander; and the choice fell upon General Edward Braddock, sometime of the Coldstream Guards. He was a man of the same stamp as Hawley, and therefore after the Duke of Cumberland's own heart,--an officer of forty-five years' service, rough, brutal,[254] and insolent, a martinet of the narrowest type, but wanting neither spirit nor ability, and brave as a lion. His instructions were sufficiently wide, comprehending operations against the French in four different quarters. The French were to be driven from the Ohio, and a garrison was to be left to hold the country when captured; the like was to be done at Niagara, at Crown Point, and at Fort Beauséjour, a work erected by the French on the isthmus that joins Nova Scotia to the Continent. This plan had been suggested by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts; and in furtherance thereof the British Government had ordered two regiments, each one thousand strong, to be raised in America under the colonelcy of the veterans Shirley and Pepperrell, and to be taken into the pay of Great Britain.[255] There might well be doubt whether the means provided would suffice for the execution of the scheme. [Sidenote: 1755.] [Sidenote: April.]