127. Effect of the French Wars (1700-1750).
War with French and Indians.
The aggressions of the French and their policy of inciting the northern and western Indians to murderous attacks on the slowly advancing English frontier, kept the colonies which abutted on New France in an almost constant state of excitement. Those provinces which had no Indian frontier, such as Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, and the Carolinas,—which latter had, however, several desperate local Indian uprisings to quell,—experienced but little alarm over the common danger, viewed schemes of union with indifference, and contributed but grudgingly to the funds and expeditions for general defence. Pennsylvania was open to attack along an extended border; the Germans and Quakers being opposed to making war on Indians, her frontier suffered greatly from frequent raids of the enemy. New York, being on the highway between the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes and Canada, was the scene of many bloody encounters. No other province was so greatly exposed, and on none did the cost of the prolonged and desperate contest between the French and English in America so heavily fall. In 1706, during Queen Anne's war (1702-1713), the French made an unavailing attack on Charleston, South Carolina. In the capture of Port Royal (1710), New England men chiefly participated, and they were otherwise prominent throughout the war. In King George's War (1744-1748), New Englanders alone took part, although New York and a few other colonies contributed to the army chest. Louisburg was captured in 1745 by New England troops, who were highly elated at their brilliant conquest. England, too busy with her own affairs, could not well send protection the following year, when a French fleet threatened New England; a curious chapter of marine disasters alone saved the Americans from being severely punished in retaliation. This doubtless unavoidable neglect on the part of the mother-country, and the final surrender of Louisburg to the French by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), tended still further to strain the relations between England and her colonies on the American continent.
Vernon's expedition to the West Indies.
Admiral Vernon's expedition against the French in the West Indies in 1740 was participated in by men from nearly all the English colonies, island and continental. A campaign against the Spanish settlements in Florida was undertaken by Oglethorpe during the same year (page [262]). The Carolinas gave somewhat tardy aid to Georgia in this daring enterprise.
128. Economic Conditions.
Paper money and finance.
Massachusetts was the first of the colonies to issue paper money. This was in 1690, to aid in fitting out an expedition against Canada. The other provinces followed at intervals. Affairs had come to such a pass by 1748 that the price in paper of £100 in coin ranged all the way from £1100 in New England to £180 in Pennsylvania. The royal governors in all the colonies, acting under instructions from home, were generally persistent opponents of this financial expedient. Governor Belcher of Massachusetts, in a proclamation against the practice (1740), said it gave "great interruption and brought confusion into trade and business," and "reflected great dishonor on his Majesty's government here." In 1720, Parliament passed what was known as "the Bubble Act," designed to break up all private banking companies in the United Kingdom chartered for the issue of circulating notes; this Act was made applicable to the colonies in 1740, and reinforced in 1751, the last-named Act forbidding the further issue of colonial paper money except in cases of invasion or for the annual current expenses of the government, these exceptional cases to be under control of the Crown. In 1763 all issues to date were declared void; although ten years later (1773), provincial bills of credit were made receivable as legal tender at the treasuries of the colonies emitting them. The controversy between the colonies and the home government over these issues of a cheap circulating medium developed much bitterness on the part of the former, who deemed the practice essential to their prosperity; and it was one of the many causes of the Revolution.
Acts of Navigation and Trade.
Another constant source of irritation were the parliamentary Acts of Navigation and Trade (page [104]). In the continental colonies there was no popular sentiment against smuggling or other interference with the operation of these obnoxious laws. In no colony were the Acts strictly observed; had they been enforced they would have worked unbearable hardship. Massachusetts particularly offended the Board of Trade by openly refusing to provide for their more rigorous execution; coupling its stubborn behavior with the bold assertion, quite contrary to ministerial ideas, that the colonists were "as much Englishmen as those in England, and had a right, therefore, to all the privileges which the people of England enjoyed."