From Popple’s British Empire in America (1732).
The rule by which good ends sanctified base means came to its limit. Belcher, who had not been without high support,[285] was removed on the 6th of May, 1741; when he had sufficiently indoctrinated his opponents in his own wily ways, and they had not hesitated to use them.
William Shirley, the governor who succeeded on the same day, was an English barrister, who had come to Boston some time before (about 1733-35) to seek his fortune. He looked about for offices in the gift of the home government, and began soliciting them one after another. When the Spanish war came on, he busied himself in prompting enlistment, and took care that the authorities in England should know it; and Mrs. Shirley, then in that country, had, to her husband’s advantage as it turned out, the ear of the Duke of Newcastle. Shirley was in Rhode Island acting upon the boundary question, which was then raised between Massachusetts and her neighbor, when his commission arrived, and he hastened to Boston to take the oath.
Shirley had some excellent qualities for political station. He was courtly and tactful, and when at a later day he entertained Washington he captivated the young Virginian. He was diligent in his duties, and knew how to retreat when he had advanced unadvisedly. He governed his temper, and was commonly wise, though he did not possess surpassing talents.[286] In his speech to the legislature he urged the strengthening of the defences of Boston, for the Spanish war still raged; and he touched without greatly clarifying the financial problem. He tried in a more civil way than his predecessor had followed to get his salary fixed; but he could not force a vote, and a tacit understanding arising that he should be sure annually of £1,000, he desisted from any further attempts to solve that vexed question. A month later, he went to Commencement at Cambridge, and delivered a Latin speech at the proper moment, which was doubtless talked over round the punch in the chambers, as it added one scholarly feature to a festival then somewhat riotously kept. There was more dignity at the Boston lecture, when Benjamin Colman preached, and when his sermon was printed it had in an appendix the address of the Boston ministers to the new governor, and his Excellency’s reply. Spencer Phips was retained in the chair of the lieutenant-governor, but a new collector of Boston came in with Sir Henry Frankland, the story of whose passion for the maid of a Marblehead inn is one of the romances of the provincial history of New England.[287]
Boston was now a vigorous town, and held probably for the next forty years a larger space in the view which Europe took of the New World than has belonged to her since. Forty topsail vessels were at this time building in her ship-yards. She was despatching to sea twice as many sail as New York, and Newport was far behind her. Fortunes were relatively large, and that of John Erving, the father of Shirley’s son-in-law, was perhaps the largest of its day. He earned a few dollars in ferrying passengers across to Cambridge on a Commencement Day; put them into fish for Lisbon, there into fruit for London, and the receipts into other commodities for the return voyages, until the round of barter, abundantly repeated, made him the rich man that he became, and one who could give tea to his guests. The privateers of the merchants brought royal interest on their outlay, as they captured goods from the French and Spanish traders. Yankee wit turned sometimes unpromising plunder to a gain. One vessel brought in “a bale of papal indulgencies,” taken from a Spanish prize. Fleet, the printer, bought them, and printed his ballads on their backs. Another Boston merchant, of Huguenot stock, had given the town a public hall. This benevolent but keen gentleman, of a limping gait, did not live long to add to the fortune which he inherited. The first use that Faneuil Hall was put to was when James Lovell, the schoolmaster and a writer in the local magazines, delivered a eulogy there on this same Peter Faneuil,[288] while the loyal Bostonians glanced from the speaker to the likeness of George II., which had already been hung on its walls.
Shirley with the rest saw that war with France could not be far off. There was preparation for it in the treaty with the Six Nations, which was made at Philadelphia in July, 1742. In August Shirley himself had treated with the eastern Indians at Fort St. George’s. The next year (1743) the line of western settlements in Massachusetts was strengthened by the occupation, under William Williams, of Poontoosuck, now Pittsfield, and Williams was later instructed to establish Fort Shirley (at Heath), Fort Pelham (at Rowe), and Fort Massachusetts (in Adams, near the Williamstown line).
In 1744 the war came.[289] The French, getting advices from Europe earlier, attacked Canseau before the English were aware of the hostile decision. Though France had published her declaration in March, the news did not reach Boston till the 2d of June. Men’s thoughts passed from the “Great Awakening” to the stern duties of a war. “The heavenly shower was over,” said Thomas Prince, who saw with regret what he thought a warfare with the devil pass by; and Fleet, the wit of the newspapers, pointed to an opportune comet, and called it “the most profitable itinerant preacher and friendly New Light that has yet appeared among us,” while all the pulpit orators viewed it after other and their own fashions. Perhaps the lingering puritanism saw an omen or a warning in the chimes just then set in the tower of Christ Church. A lottery in full success was not heinous enough in those days, it would seem, to be credited with all the divine rebukes that it might be now.[290]
There was danger on the coasts. The armed sloops of Rhode Island and Connecticut were cruising between Martha’s Vineyard and New Jersey, and the brigantines of Massachusetts watched the coast north of Cape Cod.[291] But the retaliatory stroke was soon to come in the expedition against Louisbourg.
Dr. Douglass, who had grown into prominence in Boston, prophesied the failure of a scheme which had the barest majority in the assembly, and the chances were certainly on his side: but a desire to show what could be done without the military aid of England aroused the country, and not a little unworthy hatred of Romanism helped on the cause. One parson at least was ready to take along with him a hatchet to hew down the altars of the papist churches. A company from Plymouth, under Sylvanus Cobb, was the earliest to reach Boston. Massachusetts mustered 3,250 men, and the transports which sailed out of Boston harbor with this force made a fleet of a hundred sail, under convoy of nine or ten armed vessels, the whole carrying not far from 200 cannon.