CHAPTER VII. AT THE ANCIENT PLACE OF TREATIES. THE OLD FRENCH WAR, or the War of the Austrian Succession, was foolishly begun in Germany, and foolishly ended in Europe, Asia, and America. The peace which came without honour settled nothing as regarded the questions at issue in America. In reality this treaty guaranteed another American war. Louisburg was again handed over to the French in exchange for Madras. All prisoners in the three continents were to be released without ransom, and a return of all conquered territory and property was agreed to. The balance of power now rested level on its fulcrum, ready for some fly’s weight to tilt it and cause the scale-pans to bounce. In what part of the world first? With unspeakable disgust the raw troops and scarred veterans, and the people generally of the colonies, received the news. Not a few thought it was time to think of not only fighting their own battles, but of making their own treaties. The continental or American spirit, already a spark, was fanned almost to a flame. Meanwhile, in home politics, New York was steadily advancing in the pathway that was to merge into the highway of national independence. To a New England writer, accustomed to the unbridled laudation of his own State and ancestry as those who led the Teutonic-American colonies in the struggle for liberty, the doings in the New York Assembly may seem “teapot-tempest politics.” To those less prejudiced, it is a noble chapter in the story of freedom, when they see an ultra-Tory British governor fast relegated to a position of impotence, though backed by the able Tory, Cadwallader Colden, while the people’s will is manifested in persistent limitation of the royal prerogative. This was the state of affairs in May, 1750, when, on the death of Philip Livingston, Col. William Johnson was appointed to a seat in the governor’s Executive Council. The Livingstones were sturdy men of Scottish descent, descended from a Presbyterian minister who had been banished for non-conformity. Like so many of the founders of America, the Pilgrim Fathers and most of the chief settlers of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, he reinforced his democratic ideas by some years’ residence in the Dutch Republic, living gladly under the red, white, and blue flag of the United States of Holland. The Livingstones in America married into families of Dutch descent, and thereby were still further imbued with Republican ideas. Robert and Philip had been secretaries of Indian affairs, and had thus gained great favour and influence over the Iroquois. Of their descendants, one was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and others were officers in the Revolutionary army, while others are even yet adorning the annals of freedom, progress, and order.