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

[377] were incited, by the French commercial regulations, to

chap. XVI.} 1760.

engage in the carrying-trade of the French sugar, islands; and they gained by its immense profits. This trade was protected by flags of truce, which were granted by the colonial governors. ‘For each flag,’ wrote Horatio Sharpe, who longed to share in the spoils, ‘for each flag, my neighbor, Governor Denny, receives a handsome douceur, and I have been told that Governor Bernard in particular has also done business in the same way.’¹ ‘I,’ said Fauquier, of Virginia, ‘have never been prevailed on to grant one; though I have been tempted by large offers, and pitiful stories of relations lying in French dungeons for want of such flags.’² In vehement and imperative words, Pitt rebuked the practice; not with a view permanently to restrain the trade of the continent with the foreign islands, but only in time of war to distress the enemy by famine.

In August, the same month in which this impassioned interdict was issued, Francis Bernard, whom the Board of Trade favored as the most willing friend to the English Church and to British authority, was removed from the government of New Jersey to that of Massachusetts. But the distrust that was never to be removed, had already planted itself very deeply in the province. ‘These English,’ men said to one another, ‘will overturn every thing. We must resist them; and that by force.’ And they reasoned together on the necessity of a general attention to the militia, to their exercises and discipline; for they