It was natural that at such a crisis the mother country should look to the united efforts of the colonies, and Halifax pressed for a joint arrangement which should provide a standing force and funds for its support. A plan for this purpose on the largest scale was drawn up by Benjamin Franklin, who, from a printer's boy, had risen to supreme influence in Pennsylvania; but in the way of such a union stood the jealousies which each state entertained of its neighbour, the disinclination of the colonists to be drawn into an expensive struggle, and, above all, suspicion of the motives of Halifax and his colleagues. The delay in furnishing any force for defence, the impossibility of bringing the colonies to any agreement, and the perpetual squabbles of their legislatures with the governors appointed by the Crown, may have been the motives which induced Halifax to introduce a Bill which would have made orders by the king in spite of the colonial charters law in America. The Bill was dropped in deference to the constitutional objections of wiser men; but the governors fed the fear in England of the "levelling principles" of the colonists, and every official in America wrote home to demand that Parliament should do what the colonial legislatures seemed unable to do, and establish a common fund for defence by a general taxation. Already plans were mooted for deriving a revenue from the colonies. But the prudence of Pelham clung to the policy of Walpole, and nothing was done; while the nearer approach of a struggle in Europe gave fresh vigour to the efforts of France. The Marquis of Montcalm, who was now governor of Canada, carried out with even greater zeal than his predecessor the plans of annexation; and the three forts of Duquesne on the Ohio, of Niagara on the St. Lawrence, and of Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, were linked together by a chain of lesser forts, which cut off the English colonists from all access to the west. Montcalm was gifted with singular powers of administration; he had succeeded in attaching the bulk of the Indian tribes from Canada as far as the Mississippi to the cause of France; and the value of their aid was shown in 1755, when General Braddock led a force of English soldiers and American militia to a fresh attack upon fort Duquesne. The force was utterly routed and Braddock slain. [Sidenote: State of Europe.]