tions of infinite wisdom are, not only our duty and interest, but also our greatest comfort. Though storms and tempests rage without, it has been, and it shall be my study to keep all within calm and serene. Happy beyond expression are they who, when laboring under national or private calamities, can say with David's trust and confidence: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble; therefore will we not fear though the earth he removed, and the mountains he cast into the midst of the sea.
As to the controversy of the two crowns about limits, that perhaps has not so much alarmed us as it has many on your side of the Atlantic. It is true the balance is held by the Almighty, and he may elevate or depress which scale he pleases; but, were the race always to the swift, and the battle to the strong, our colonies would have little to apprehend from the exertion of all the power which France, especially in a general war, could spare to annoy us here on this continent. Her American strength, compared with ours, is quite contemptible in all respects but one, and that is, the wisdom and prudence with which it is directed. Canada is a very unfriendly clime; her soil in general unfruitful. Her inhabitants, in the year 1748, I am informed by persons who pretend to know, amounted to little more than forty thousand, and for that number the lands have never yet produced a sufficiency of bread. Slaves have never yet been found as industrious as the sons of liberty.
The British plantations, on the contrary, are both fertile and populous; so fertile, that even here in Virginia, where our main force is applied to the production of tobacco, the labor of one man in a tolerable year will feed eight, besides a competent number of hogs, sheep, horses, and cattle; and so
