in the New World those features of the mother country which he loved or admired or respected most. In the period which elapsed between the Treaty of Utrecht and the declaration of war in 1745, both the Colonies and Canada prospered, but the increase of the former was to that of the latter as the increase of grain compared with that of moss. The people of Massachusetts, led by their colonial chief, Pepperell, with contingents from Rhode Island, Vermont, and Connecticut, were joined by the British fleet under Warren, and set out on them darling project of reducing Louisburg, the great French arsenal and station at Cape Breton. On the 17th of August, 1746, after a siege of two months, the place surrendered with all its stores to the victorious Colonists. It was with difficulty that France could communicate with her menaced dependency, for the sea was nearly controlled by the British fleets, but her pride was aroused, and great armaments were prepared and dispatched to Canada. _Afflavit Deus et hostes dissipantur._ Two expeditions were nigh lost altogether on the waves. A third was destroyed by the fleet under Warren and Anson. The Peace of Rochelle put an end to the passionate efforts of France to retrieve her disasters, but the rivalries and excesses of the British and French fur-traders continued the strife between the Colonies and New France. The latter claiming the whole course of the Ohio, as it appears with some reason, forbade our traders to resort there. Forts were built to enable the French to exercise their jurisdiction and authority on ground which was regarded by the British Colonists as their own, and it is a remarkable fact, that George Washington’s first military service was in command of an expedition of Virginians to capture the works erected by the French, and that he was compelled to lay down his arms by De Villiers, after a brief and inglorious--not to say very badly-managed campaign. Although Great Britain made considerable efforts to aid the colonists in their wars, she could not very well continue to do so when she was at peace with France, if her distant subjects chose to carry on hostilities on their own account. The King’s Government gave advice to the Colonies to unite for self-defence, which led in 1754 to the assemblage of a convention at Albany, at which Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York were represented. The delegates drew up a plan for what was in effect a Federal Union, but the plan fell to the ground. The Home Government refused to adopt it, because of certain encroachments which it contained on the prerogatives of the Crown; and the colonial assemblies, which had already exhibited a sturdy self-reliance and independence worthy of attention at home, were equally dissatisfied with the proposal. But the seed had been sown--the idea of Federal Union, of self-taxation, of levying troops and regulating trade, was busy in men’s minds. In the