1136 MISCELLANEOUS. 



the contest. On the other hand, employing armed vessels of their 

 own, they were hardly restrained, in their zeal and success, from hang- 

 ing as common pirates some of the French officers who had been the 

 instruments of interrupting their pursuits in the forbidden waters. 



Nor was this all. 1 hey attempted the conquest of Nova Scotia, and 

 equipped a fleet at Boston. The enterprise failed. Promised ships 

 from England three years later, but disappointed, a second expedition 

 failed also. 



At last, in 1710, Nova Scotia became an English colony. Its reduc- 

 tion was a duty assumed by the ministry, while, in truth, it was accom- 

 plished principally by colonists and colonial resources. Of the force 

 assembled at Boston, six ships and a corps of marines were, indeed, 

 sent from England; but the remainder, thirty vessels and four regi- 

 ments, were furnished by the four northern colonies. Strange it was 

 that Anne, the last of her family who occupied the throne, should have 

 permanently annexed to the English crown the colony and the "noble 

 fishery" which all of her line had sported with so freely and so disas- 

 trously. 



I have barely glanced at events which occupy hundreds of pages of 

 documentary and written history. Whoever has examined the trans- 

 actions thus briefly noticed has ceased to wonder that the Stuarts were 

 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 

 operation of moment can hardly be found in history. "The whole 

 design," 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 



