For days at a time I sometimes saw nothing of this kind but eccentric nobleman. A woman in England was said to have wounded his life, and it was rare that we had any female guests at Greenway Court, except Anne Cary, the sister of George William Fairfax’s wife. I found it not good for me to be in her company, for in some way she brought to my mind a boy love, which I had resolved no more to entertain, but which I found it difficult to master.
Miss Cary stayed no long time, and others came and went, but for the most part I had his lordship to myself. There were days when he was absent in the woods with a servant, or alone. At others he would remain all day shut up in a small log house, not over fifteen feet square, where he slept, and, as he said, very ill. It was his custom, however, to join me at supper, and then to remain smoking, which I never learned, and taking his punch. He was either full of talk or so silent that we would not exchange a word while he sat staring into the fire. Sometimes, when tired, I fell asleep, and, on waking, found him gone to bed. When disposed for conversation, he was apt to be bitter about his native land, and once said that the best part of it had come away.
My brother Lawrence and he were the only persons of our own class I ever knew in those days who, to my surprise, foresaw serious trouble from the selfish policy of the crown and the greed of English merchants, who desired to keep us shut out of the natural way of sea trade. I should have been most ungrateful, which I never was, had I not felt my obligations to Lord Fairfax. His great wealth and high position kept even my mother satisfied that what pleased my patron could never be complained of, and so, for a season, I was let to go my own way.
He led me to feel sure that, soon or late, 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 a later time encourage Marquis Lafayette in his design upon Canada, knowing that if we succeeded in the war, and with French troops were able to take Canada, France would claim it as her share of the spoils, and thus hem us in from Louisiana to the Great Lakes. Indeed, this was very early a constant fear throughout all the colonies, and especially in New England, where the notion of being shut in by a popish nation added to their uneasiness.
When considering this matter, I recall the effect of the capitulations of 1759, for at that time, in order to quiet the French after England had taken Canada, and to get the Canadians to accept willingly English rule, vast and unwise privileges were granted to the Church of Rome. Still later the Quebec Act of 1774 decreed that Quebec should be held to extend over all the country west of the Ohio and up to the lakes, and thus that the privileges enjoyed by the Romish Church should prevail over all this great dominion.
While the Stamp Act and the laws restrictive of trade did variously annoy the separate colonies, the Quebec Act produced a still more general dissatisfaction.