Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/114

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we must be at war with both France and the Indians, or else submit to be shut out of the fertile lands to the westward. He was almost the only Englishman of high rank whom we saw in Virginia. There were governors with their secretaries, and officers of the army, but, except my lord, all of them regarded the gentlemen of the colonies as inferior persons. This feeling was, I apprehend, due to the fact that we looked to England for everything, and were in many ways kept as dependent as children. He once said to me that we were like slow bullocks that did not know their power to resist. This was all strange to a young Virginian in those days. I have lived to see its wisdom, and now, as I think of it, am reminded that Mr. Hamilton once wrote to me, "a colony was always a colony, and never could be a country until it had altogether to stand on its own legs."

This was spoken of Canada, which unwisely refused to make common cause with us, and will now be for us at least a troublesome, if not a dangerous neighbour.

But to see her in the hands of France was not, as the matter presented itself, to be desired, for which reason I did not at