On this point Lecky writes: "It may not be uninteresting to observe that, among the few parts of the Peace of Utrecht which appear to have given unqualified satisfaction at home, was the Assiento contract, which made of England the great slave-trader of the world. _The last prelate who took a leading part in English_ politics affixed his signature to the treaty. A Te Deum, composed by Handel, was sung in thanksgiving in the churches. Theological passions had been recently more vehemently aroused; and theological controversies had for some years acquired a wider and more absorbing interest in England than in any period since the Commonwealth. But it does not yet appear to have occurred to any class that a national policy, which made it its main object to encourage the kidnapping of tens of thousands of negroes, and their consignment to the most miserable slavery, might be at least as inconsistent with the spirit of the Christian religion as either the establishment of Presbyterianism or the toleration of prelacy in Scotland." Is it not characteristic that, just as the Tories of Queen Anne's time were willing to prejudice the rights of a colony in return for the infamous profits of the slave-trade, so the Tory of 1862, Lord Robert Cecil, was among the chief Englishmen who sympathized with the slaveholders who were then attacking the American Union? It is equally characteristic that this first of the Primrose Dames, Abigail Masham, quarrelled with her cousin Harley about the share which this lady of High Church principles was to receive out of the profits of the infamous trade. Surely, the country that made so much profit out of the slave-trade is bound to compensate Newfoundland for the losses caused by its weakness in the French shore question rather than that France which in 1713 abandoned the infamous traffic to the British Tories. The next treaty between France and England, that of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, made no alteration in the Newfoundland question; but the government of England, in returning Louisbourg to the French, gave another of those proofs of the selfish indifference of the home government to the rights of the colonies which was one of the most potent causes that led the New Englanders, with the aid of France, to achieve their independence. At the south-eastern extremity of Cape Breton Island the strong fortress of Louisbourg, which it was once the fashion to call the Gibraltar of America, threatened the safety of the New England and Newfoundland fisheries alike. Governor Shirley of Massachusetts induced the legislature to undertake an expedition against this fortress, and intrusted its command to Colonel William Pepperell. The New England forces, raw troops, commanded by untrained officers, astonished the world by capturing a fortress which was deemed impregnable. This was the most brilliant and decisive achievement of nine years of otherwise useless bloodshed and treachery.