Not long afterwards another man with a mission ventured on a different project in the little colony. James Franklin, who had found it prudent to leave Massachusetts, when he told the august assembly that they did not do all they might to catch pirates, came to this nest of free-booters, and started a newspaper, the _Rhode Island Gazette_, the first in the colony, and saw it fail within a year. When the Spanish war was coming on, in 1739, the plucky little colony put herself on a war footing. She built the “Tartar,” a war-sloop of 115 tons;[283] her merchants, the Wantons, the Malbones, and others, ran five privateers out to sea; and even her quakers found ways to help. Seven watch-towers were built along the coast, Fort George was garrisoned, and a battery frowned on Block Island.[284] [Illustration: WILLIAM SHIRLEY. This follows an engraving, “T. Hudson, pinxt.; J. McArdell, fecit,” reproduced in J. C. Smith’s _Brit. Mezzotint Portraits_, p. 896. Cf. _Catal. Cab. Mass. Hist. Soc._, p. 26; _Mem. Hist. Boston_, ii., frontispiece.] In Connecticut, on Saltonstall’s death in 1724, Joseph Talcott succeeded and held office during the rest of Belcher’s time. [Illustration: BOSTON HARBOR, 1732. From Popple’s _British Empire in America_ (1732).] The rule by which good ends sanctified base means came to its limit. Belcher, who had not been without high support,[285] was removed on the 6th of May, 1741; when he had sufficiently indoctrinated his opponents in his own wily ways, and they had not hesitated to use them. William Shirley, the governor who succeeded on the same day, was an English barrister, who had come to Boston some time before (about 1733-35) to seek his fortune. He looked about for offices in the gift of the home government, and began soliciting them one after another. When the Spanish war came on, he busied himself in prompting enlistment, and took care that the authorities in England should know it; and Mrs. Shirley, then in that country, had, to her husband’s advantage as it turned out, the ear of the Duke of Newcastle. Shirley was in Rhode Island acting upon the boundary question, which was then raised between Massachusetts and her neighbor, when his commission arrived, and he hastened to Boston to take the oath.