12 



so odious in New England. I know of nothing more disgraceful to them, 

 either as rulers or as private gentlemen, than their dealings with Sir 

 William Alexander, their own original grantee of Nova Scotia, with 

 the claimants under him, and with their subjects in America, who bled, 

 reign after reign, and throughout their reigns, to rid themselves of the 

 calamities entailed upon them by the treaty of St. Germains, and who, 

 in the adjustment of European questions, were defrauded of the fruits 

 of their exertions and sacrifices by the stipulations in the treaties of 

 Breda of London, and Ryswick. 



The conquest of one French colony achieved, the ministry, yielding 

 to importunities from America, projected an enterprise for the reduc- 

 tion of Canada also — in which, as usual, the colonists were to bear a 

 large share of the actual burdens. After unnecessary, even inexcusa- 

 ble, delays on the part of those intrusted with the management of the 

 affair in England, a fleet and a land force finally departed from Boston 

 for the St. Lawrence. A more miserable termination to a military ope- 

 ration of moment can hardly be found in history. " The whole de- 

 sign," wrote the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke, "was formed by me ;" 

 and he added, " I have a sort of paternal concern for the success of 

 it." But how could he have thought "success" possible ? 



The general appointed to command the troops was known among 

 his bottle-companions as ^'■honest Jack Hill,^^ and was pronounced by 

 the Duke of Marlborough to be "good for nothing." The admiral was 

 so ignorant — so inefficient generally — as to imagine that " the ice in 

 the river at Quebec, freezing to the bottom, would bilge his vessels," 

 and that, to avert so fearful a disaster to her Majesty's ships, he "must 

 place them on dry ground, in frames and cradles, till the thaw !" 



He was spared the calamity of wintering in ice one hundred feet in 

 thickness ! On the passage up the St. Lawrence, eight of his ships 

 were wrecked, and eight hundred and eighty-four men drowned. But 

 for this, said he, " ten or twelve thousand men must have been left to 

 perish of cold and hunger : by the loss of a part. Providence saved all 

 the rest." Of course, an expedition consisting of fifteen ships-of-war 

 and forty transports, of troops fresh from the victoiies of Marlborough, 

 and of colonists trained to the severities of a northern climate, and 

 suflScient for the service, under such chiefs, accomplished nothing but a 

 hasty departure. 



Peace was concluded in 1713. Down to this period the French 

 fisheries had been more successful, probably, than those conducted by 

 the English or the American colonists. 



Their own account is, indeed, that, at the opening of the century, 

 their catch of codfish was equal to the supply of all continental or 

 Catholic Europe. By the treaty of Utrecht, in the year just men- 

 tioned, England obtained what she had so long contended lor, as her 

 statesmen imagined — namely, a supremacy in, or monopoly of, the 

 fisheries of our seas. 



On the coast of Nova Scotia, or Acadia, the French were utterly 

 prohibited from approaching within thirty leagues, beginning at the Isle 

 of Sable, and thence measuring southwesterly ; while the uncondi- 

 tional right of England to the whole of Newfoundland, and to the Bay 

 of Hudson and its borders, was formally acknowledged. 



