George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[51] and not the allies of England; owing allegiance, and

chap. II.} 1749.

not entitled to subsidies. The requisite appropriation was made by the equity of parliament; yet Pelham himself, the prime minister, declared that the grant was a boon. Massachusetts had already, in January, 1749 by the urgency of Hutchinson, voted, that its public notes should be redeemed with the expected remittances from the royal exchequer. Twice in the preceding year, it had invited a convention of the neighboring colonies, to suppress jointly the fatal paper-currency; but finding concert impossible, it proceeded alone. As the bills had depreciated, and were no longer in the hands of the first holders, it was insisted, that to redeem them at their original value would impose a new tax on the first holders themselves; and therefore forty-five shillings of the old tenor, or eleven shillings and threepence of the new emission, were, with the approbation of the king in council, redeemed by a Spanish milled dollar. Thus Massachusetts became the ‘hard-money colony’ of the North.¹

The plan for enforcing all royal orders in America by the act of the British parliament had hardly been abandoned, when the loyalty and vigilance of Massachusetts were perverted to further the intrigues against its liberty. In April, 1749, its Assembly, which always held that Nova Scotia included all the continent east of New England, represented to the king ‘the insolent intrusions’ of France on their territory, advised that ‘the neighboring provinces should be informed of the common danger,’ and