The opportunity of uniting together the colonies was lost when the government of England, under William and Mary, condoned the rebellion in Massachusetts, and allowed Connecticut and Rhode Island to resume their charters. From that time onward, union under the royal authority was impossible, even in the face of the pressing dangers of the French and Indian wars, to which for over sixty years the colonies were almost continuously exposed. Futile attempts were made, but in face of such a triumph of individualism nothing could be accomplished. When the conference at Albany, in 1754, put forth a plan of federation, drawn up by Benjamin Franklin and studiously moderate in its provisions, it was rejected with indignation by the colonies, as tending to servitude, and by the authorities in England, as incurably democratic.[152] Yet the attempt that had been made had, at least, one result: it had created what we may call an imperial party, the members of which were devotedly attached to the connection with Great Britain, and opposed to that narrow spirit so prevalent in the colonies, which esteemed nothing as of value in comparison with their local customs and local privileges. This party grew strong in New York, where the extravagances of Leisler’s insurrection had called for stern chastisement, and was also well represented in New England. The new charter of Massachusetts, which gave it a governor appointed by the crown, while preserving its Assembly and its town organizations, had tended to encourage and develop, even in that fierce democracy, those elements of a conservative party which had been called into existence some years before by the disloyalty and tyranny of the ecclesiastical oligarchy. Thus, side by side with a group of men who were constantly regretting their lost autonomy, and looking with suspicion and prejudice at every action of the royal authorities, there arose this other group of those who constantly dwelt upon, and frequently exaggerated, the advantages they derived from their connection with the mother country. In Connecticut there was a strong minority that had opposed the re-assumption of the charter after the overthrow of Andros; and in all the royal provinces an official class was gradually growing up, that was naturally imperial rather than local in its sympathies. The Church of England, also, had at last waked up to a sense of the spiritual needs of its children beyond the seas, and by means of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was sending devoted and self-sacrificing missionaries to labor among the people of the colonies.[153] The influence of this tended inevitably to maintain and strengthen the feeling of national unity in those of the colonists who came under the ministrations of the missionaries. In the colony of Connecticut, especial strength was given to this movement by an unexpected religious revolution, in which several of the prominent ministers of the ruling