The Canadian French retaliated immediately for their loss, by attacking the English frontiers and taking several outposts, but no great damage was done. This success revived the favourite scheme of the conquest of Canada, and England, as well as the colonies, began active preparations for carrying it out. In Pennsylvania, where hitherto peace principles had been very carefully maintained, an active military spirit, excited by Benjamin Franklin, who now, after twenty years of industry, had acquired a handsome property, prevailed. “He was the originator,” says Logan, “of two lotteries, that raised above £6,000 to pay for the charge of the batteries on the river, and he found out a way to put the country on raising above 120 companies of militia, of which Philadelphia raised ten, or about 100 men each. The women, too, were so zealous that they furnished ten pair of silk colours, wrought with various mottoes.” Logan, himself a Quaker, though not a strict one, was highly satisfied, as he says, with “Benjamin Franklin for contriving the militia,” and he adds, that, “Franklin, when elected to the command of a regiment, declined the distinction, and carried a musket among the common soldiers.” The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, however, put an end to all these ambitious schemes of conquest, and the mutual restoration of all places taken during the war being one of its conditions, Cape Breton and Louisburg, to the grief and mortification of the northern colonies, were returned to France. The only thing which consoled Massachusetts for this loss was, that the British indemnified her for the expenses of this last enterprise, to the amount of £183,000, a very welcome boon, when her finances were suffering the most serious embarrassment, owing to her extensive issues of paper money and the depreciation of the currency. It was proposed by Thomas Hutchinson, grandson of the celebrated Anne Hutchinson, and now a wealthy merchant of Boston, and speaker of the House of Representatives, that the money thus granted should be imported in silver, and applied to redeem, at its current value, all the outstanding paper. This was done, and for a quarter of a century, says Hildreth, Massachusetts enjoyed the blessing of a sound currency.