and losses of the war, including its episode against the Eastern Indians, were estimated at “more than one hundred thousand pounds.”[1] Nearly one half of this charge fell upon the Bay Colony. The loss of Plymouth Colony was said to exceed the whole valuation of its personal property. But the English exchequer was not drawn upon. Such was the state of things in the earlier colonial times. In the later period, covering the whole century previous to the war of the Revolution, Great Britain came in as a party, with a stake of her own at hazard, amid steadily increasing risks, demanding mightier efforts and heavier charges, till at the settlemont the cost proved to be enormous. This of course was during the struggle between France and England for the dominion of this continent, the colonies coming in for attention either as allies or as needing protection. Whenever mutterings of war or open hostilities manifested themselves abroad between the two nations, their colonists on this side of the water, willingly or unwillingly, were compelled to imitate the doings of their respective principals. As we have said, the cost to England of extinguishing French dominion here was enormous. But a heavier penalty and sacrifice than that was to be visited upon her as a direct consequence, — even this of the loss of her colonies. At the close of the French and Indian War her prime minister called together the resident agents of the colonies then in London, laid the bill before them, with the amount of the debt incurred “for their defence,” and suggested that they should contribute to her revenue by a tax, for the relief of the suffering and protecting mother. The loyalists, in our days of rebellion, thought it was but fair that we should be thus taxed. The patriot party raised a question whether England came in upon a strife, which the colonies had long maintained at their own charges, for the motherly purpose of protecting them, or for securing aggrandizement in land and
- ↑ Records of the Commissioners of the United Colonies, iii. 508.
